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{ "item_title" : "Peace Is a Shy Thing", "item_author" : [" Alex Vernon "], "item_description" : "The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of Vietnam War and one of the best writers of his generation, with never-before-seen materials and interviews.Vietnam made me a writer. --Tim O'BrienFeaturing over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and others--not to mention 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. Alex Vernon's comprehensive research uncovered countless gems about O'Brien's life and the journey that made him into a literary icon, including an unpublished short story about O'Brien from a college girlfriend, documentation of his comical involvement with the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate, and a 1989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 midcentury 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 cover.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/25/035/849/1250358493_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "37.00", "online_price" : "37.00", "our_price" : "37.00", "club_price" : "37.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "37.00" } }
Peace Is a Shy Thing|Alex Vernon

Peace Is a Shy Thing : The Life and Art of Tim O'Brien

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Overview

The first literary biography of Tim O'Brien, the preeminent American writer of Vietnam War and one of the best writers of his generation, with never-before-seen materials and interviews.

"Vietnam made me a writer." --Tim O'Brien

Featuring over one hundred interviews with family, friends, peers, and others--not to mention 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. Alex Vernon's comprehensive research uncovered countless gems about O'Brien's life and the journey that made him into a literary icon, including 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 midcentury 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 cover.

Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781250358493
  • ISBN-10: 1250358493
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • Publish Date: May 2025
  • Dimensions: 9.44 x 6.45 x 1.47 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.72 pounds
  • Page Count: 560

Related Categories

    1. Books
    2. Biography & Autobiography
    3. Literary Figures
    1. Books
    2. History
    3. Wars & Conflicts - Vietnam War

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    1

Tim O’Brien’s memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home and his semiautobiographical collection of stories, The Things They Carried, continue to be staples in high school and college courses because they capture the ambivalence, fear and psychology of young men facing the horrors and inanities of the Vietnam War. Now, O’Brien’s friend, literary historian and Gulf War veteran Alex Vernon devotedly offers a comprehensive glimpse into O’Brien’s life and work in Peace Is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien.

Drawing on interviews with O’Brien and on close readings of his work, Vernon traces the writer’s life through his upbringing in Minnesota, his days at Macalester College, his tour of duty in Vietnam and his marriages. The “tropical killer-dreamscape” of Vietnam seeped into O’Brien, fueling his desire to be a great writer and providing him with the subjects and themes of his many books. As Vernon points out, the struggle between competing moral positions lies at the heart of O’Brien’s writing. Although O’Brien was opposed to the war in Vietnam, he also believed in civic service and the American dream. This dichotomy manifests in the storylines and tensions of novels such as Going After Cacciato and In the Lake of the Woods, as protagonists struggle with uncertainty when faced with ethical quandaries. Vernon points out that in O’Brien’s fiction, “movement is essential” and “counterpoints the writer’s and reader’s sitting, sitting, sitting.” O’Brien’s writing requires readers to be actively engaged with the movements of characters in hellish landscapes, and his writing also asks readers to be actively engaged in the moral dilemmas of his characters. 

It’s a hefty volume at over 500 pages, and Veron’s plot summaries of O’Brien’s novels are sometimes overly long. However, splicing illustrative passages from the texts allows him to zero in on key aspects of O’Brien’s writings. Peace Is a Shy Thing is in part a fan’s notes; the men’s 20-plus year friendship provides the bedrock of O’Brien’s candid interviews, presenting a portrait of a giant in American letters. 

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