Tim O'Brien - The Things They Carried

For the record, I don't traditionally like the 'war memorial' genre. I also tend to dislike books that others gush over, although that could just be a case of inflated expectations.

However.

Tim O'Brien's memoir about his experience in the Vietnam war begins with an item-by-item list of all of the things that his company carried - literally - during their time in Vietnam. My initial skepticism of such a trite literary conceit was rather spectacularly undeserved, though, a fact that began to dawn on me as O'Brien moved smoothly through physical items into items of memory or experience that these men carried with them. This theme carried through the entirety of the book, though unobtrusively so, gently nudging me every so often to think about how each story would weigh on each character.

Perhaps that was the most intriguing thing about the book, though. O'Brien is an openly unreliable narrator whose self-awareness turns that unreliability into a virtue. In fact, the pugnacious nature of his unreliability seems itself to be a literary device, showing that one of the things he carries is his desire to have experienced all of these things, so that he can legitimately write about them. At the very least, he carries the weight of his obligation to tell the stories that so many of them cannot.

In terms of structure, the vignettes have a dreamlike unreality to them that reflects the surreal quality traditionally applied to the Vietnam era. I can't be sure if this is deliberate, but whether premeditated or not, O'Brien's reflection of the dazed sort of horror that everyone seems to feel about Vietnam is the perfect foil for his uncompromisingly unreliable storytelling. The loose structure of the vignettes seem to be O'Brien's way of showing how his memories of that time are both disjoint and fluid - each story is vividly distinct from others, yet as the book progresses the narrator obfuscates what happened to whom and when, and dead characters pop back to life, then are dead again as he jumps back and forth in time.

Though at times O'Brien's "don't romanticize this, nothing I say here is true" theme can be a bit grating, the book is beautifully constructed and written. O'Brien strikes the difficult balance between impactful emotional content and sappy self-indulgence, and the result is a book well worth reading.

George Orwell- Burmese Days

There is a pattern in Orwell's books: the main character is a pathetic guy, fatally flawed from birth, but basically good (unless it's autobiographical, in which case the main character is awesome); the other characters are criminals at heart, and the one exemplary, saintly character gets dragged through the mud and usually dies at the end (kind of like Jesus). The main character takes a feeble stab at saving himself and "Jesus" but ultimately fails due to circumstances that capitalize on his numerous weaknesses (again, unless it's autobiographical, in which case, the main guy has no weaknesses and solves problems by moving to another country).

Burmese Days is not a huge exception! I read it to get a pseudo-historical perspective on the British occupation of the Irrawaddy delta region, since Orwell was stationed there for a while and the novel would undoubtedly be a loose disguise for his personal observations and opinions. Which it was.

As an early novel, it isn't very good. The plot is silly (most likely intentional) and smacks of allegory. The main guy, Flory, is a lone (and silent) voice of dissent in a sea of imperialistic bigotry. He hates his mediocrity but manages to perpetuate it with every action, except for his friendship with a saintly Indian doctor, the one guy he can talk honestly with. Then a girl shows up, a girl whom he falls in love with and dreams he can share his silent opinions with, but she turns out to be a horrible bitch, a female copy of the other white guys. This is not to deter Flory. Her approval, by either boosting or deflating Flory at critical junctures, determines how well he defends his Indian friend, whose status hinges on his relationship with the white guys, and who has come under attack by a corrupt Burmese magistrate.

Orwell never waxes pedantic, opting instead to sound less like commentary and more like observation (one of his main strengths, and probably a large factor in avoiding the banning of his books). He never says outright, "the only smart character is the corrupt Burman, the only decent character is the gentle Indian doctor, the white guys and Burmese slaves are sniveling, terrified bastards." But...that's exactly what the book tells you. Racism is put into context, the smart guy wins, the gentle guy loses, and all in all, the book ends up being as silly as it is realistic.

Please no snarky comments about Orwell's real name. 'George Orwell' is a way better selection than Eric-name-so-mundane-I-already-forgot.