Peace is a shy thing

Peace is a shy thing The life and art of Tim O'Brien

Alex Vernon, 1967-

Book - 2025

"The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of the war in Vietnam and one of the best writers of his generation, drawing on never-before-seen materials and original interviews. "Vietnam made me a writer." -Tim O'Brien Featuring over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and others-not to mention countless exchanges with Tim O'Brien himself-Peace is a Shy Thing provides a nearly day-by-day, gripping account of O'Brien's thirteen months as an infantryman in Vietnam and gives equal diligence to reconstructing O'Brien's writing process. This meticulously researched biography explores the life and journey that turned O'Brien into a literary icon... and a household name. It includes an unpublished short story about O'Brien from a college girlfriend, documentation of his comical involvement with the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate, and a 1989 attic exchange between American and Vietnamese writers on the eve of the publication of O'Brien's most beloved book, The Things They Carried, years before the two countries normalized relations. Peace is a Shy Thing is as much a history of the era as it is a story of O'Brien's life, from his small-town midwestern mid-century childhood, to winning the National Book Award and his status as literary elder statesman. A story which Vernon, a combat veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a literary scholar trained by officers and professors of the Vietnam era, is uniquely suited to tell"--

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Subjects
O'Brien, Tim, > 1946-
O'Brien, Tim, > 1946- > Criticism and interpretation.
Authors, American > 20th century > Biography.
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 > Veterans > United States > Biography.
War stories, American > History and criticism.
American fiction > 20th century > History and criticism.
Biographies.
Genres
Biographies
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press 2025.
Language
English
Main Author
Alex Vernon, 1967- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
x,546 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : maps, illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781250358493
  • Part I. Collision
  • Busy Timmy
  • Sweetheart of the Sông Krong Kno
  • Soapbox
  • Adventures in amity and melancholy
  • Greeting
  • In the mill
  • Rubicon days
  • Into the combat zone
  • May was the cruelest month
  • The summer of '69
  • Gator days
  • Part II. Returnee
  • Lines of departure (1)
  • Combat coda : if I die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home
  • Lines of departure (2)
  • Juvenilia
  • A man of mythic realism : Northern lights
  • Endings and beginnings
  • Over the hill : Going after Cacciato
  • Apprenticeship's end
  • Part III. Dreams that suppose awakenings : The nuclear age
  • How it mostly was
  • A work of fiction : The things they carried
  • When peace is hell
  • Double consummation and causal transportation : In the lake of the woods
  • Tomcat in love : Tomcat in love
  • Welcome to Texas : July, July
  • Family man and elder statesman : Dad's maybe book
  • This is us : America fantastica.
Review by Booklist Review

Tim O'Brien is one of the most acclaimed writers of our time. His work is among the most anthologized and appears in more school curricula than any other American author. Touted as the first literary biography of O'Brien, Vernon's nuanced portrait is particularly insightful in tracing the development of O'Brien's themes, from the trauma of war to the elusive nature of truth and memory. The well-researched narrative utilizes interviews and correspondence to seamlessly blend biographical details with literary analysis, supported by an in-depth look into O'Brien's complex identity as both a writer and a veteran while highlighting the ways in which his firsthand experiences are intricately woven into his fiction. Vernon traces O'Brien's life and art from his early life, his experiences as a soldier during the Vietnam War, and his struggles with the aftermath of his service, and explores how they are inextricably linked. This braiding of personal history and the creative journey poignantly finds O'Brien grappling with the perils of fame, masculinity, and war, while expanding the boundaries of storytelling.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Comprehensive life of author Tim O'Brien, one of the great laureates of the Vietnam War. "All you bastards are going to die in World War III." So promised a drill sergeant when O'Brien, having lost a student deferment, was called up to Army boot camp. He could have chosen another service branch--enlisting, say, in the Navy, which offered safer odds--or defected to Canada, as, according to biographer and fellow vet (of the Iraq War) Vernon, O'Brien contemplated doing. Yet he complied, a mediocre soldier at first who "performed his tasks without enthusiasm but also without grumbling." A kid from small-town Minnesota with an unhappy childhood, O'Brien did a lot of growing up in "the tropical killer-dreamscape," as he later called Vietnam. As Vernon notes, O'Brien returned with a lifetime's worth of themes and stories to write about, and his work proves as much:The Things They Carried is standard reading in colleges around the country, far more so than any other contemporary book--and, Vernon writes, "at 9.3 ounces,The Things They Carried was one of the things some soldiers carried in Afghanistan and Iraq." Similarly,Going After Cacciato, about the chase for a deserter in country, is hailed as a kind ofCatch-22 for the Vietnam era, whileIn the Lake of the Woods brings aspects of the war back home. For all that, somewhat mysteriously, "O'Brien resents being known as a war writer," even though he warned Vernon that he is not quite first-tier enough otherwise to merit such a study, which might be dismissed as "of minor importance." Though Vernon does not lift O'Brien out of the category of interpreters of the Vietnam War, he does do solid service in recounting O'Brien's life and broader work. A well-considered work of literary biography of a writer ranked among Hemingway and Crane as a chronicler of combat. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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