A trauma artist : Tim O'Brien and the fiction of Vietnam / Mark A. Heberle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Heberle, Mark A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Literature and the war.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975.

Post-traumatic stress disorder--United States.

Post-traumatic stress disorder.

War stories, American--History and criticism.

War stories, American.

Postmodernism (Literature)--United States.

Postmodernism (Literature).

Psychic trauma in literature.

Soldiers in literature.

O'Brien, Tim, 1946---Criticism and interpretation.

O'Brien, Tim.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (375 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, c2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A Trauma Artist examines how O'Brien's works variously rewrite his own traumatization during the war in Vietnam as a never-ending fiction that paradoxically ""recovers"" personal experience by both recapturing and (re)disguising it. Mark Heberle considers O'Brien's career as a writer through the prisms of post-traumatic stress disorder, postmodernist metafiction, and post-World War II American political uncertainties and public violence.

Contents:

Preface; Introduction: Vietnam as Figure and Symptom: "We've All Been There"; A Trauma Artist; The Fiction of Vietnam; 1 Fabricating Trauma; "The Vietnam in Me"; O'Brien's Endless War; Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Vietnam; PTSD and Writing; O'Brien's Art of Trauma; Writing Beyond Vietnam; 2 A Bad War; Origins of ""If I Die in a Combat Zone""; Fictionalized Testimony; O'Brien's Self-Representation: Soldier Versus Writer; Moral Combat; ""Combat Zone"" as Source for a Career; 3 The Old Man and the Pond; Self-Displacement in ""Northern Lights""; Literary Mimicry: Realism, Symbolism, Allegory

Harvey's Story: Vietnam as TragicomedyPaul's Story: The Feminization of Virtue; Novel Revisions; 4 A Soldier's Dream; The Re-covering of Trauma: Paul Berlin as Tim O'Brien; ""Cacciato"": From Short Stories to Trauma Narrative; "Going After Cacciato": From Catalog to Breakdown; Paul Berlin: From Breakdown to Trauma Writing; The Quest for Cacciato: Fantasy and the Burial of the Dead; The Observation Post: Retraumatization and Endless Fantasy; 5 The Bombs Are Real; An Ambitious Failure?; The Traumatization of William Cowling; Parabolic Fiction: Mutual Assured Destruction and Civil Defense

""The Nuclear Age"" and VietnamThe Failure of William Cowling; 6 True War Stories; Recirculated Trauma, Endless Fiction; ""The Things They Carried"" as Self-Revision; "How to Tell a True War Story": Misreading Tim O'Brien; Other Refabrications of Trauma; "The Lives of the Dead": Bringing Them Back Alive; 7 The People We Kill; Trauma, Tragedy, National Disgrace; Metafictional Investigations; The Breakdown of John Wade; Tragic Revisions; John Wade as Paradigm and Persona: Tim O'Brien's Trauma; Psychobiography, History, and Fiction; 8 Guys Just Want to Have Fun; Vietnam and the Age of Clinton

A Dictionary of LoveIn Defense of Thomas Chippering; PTSD as Comedy/Vietnam as Parody; Saving Tim O'Brien: ""Tomcat in Love"" as Countertherapy; Conclusion: A Trauma Artist; Posttraumatic Nation; Academic Polemics; Responsible Dreams; Appendix: ""Diagnostic Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, DSM-IV""; Notes; References; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 325-335) and index.

ISBN:

9781587293283

1587293285

OCLC:

50322405