Tim O'Brien: His Life and Works

All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it.

--Michael Herr, 1989

Tim O'Brien is almost synonymous with the Viet Nam war. He has joined the ranks of Philip Caputo and Eric Herr as painfully astute chroniclers of this dark blemish in America's recent history. The Viet Nam war was the turning point of an entire generation, and the experience forever changed the way writers would see the world. World War I ushered in a new era of modernism; Viet Nam, likewise, gave birth to a generation of writers and artists affected by the tragic (and apparently senseless) loss of life.