FratFiles

• Save Paper

hat stories can do, I guess, is make things present." That's how Tim O'Brien put it in "The Things They Carried," which was published in 1990 and which is one of the finest books, fact or fiction, written about the Vietnam War. I don't remember ever hearing a novelist make a more modest claim for the power of stories, at least not a novelist of Mr. O'Brien's stature. The statement itself -- stories make things present -- is unassuming, and it is offered to the reader diffidently, as if the writer were about to deny the possibility of saying anything useful at all about stories. Perhaps it suggests the discomfort of a storyteller who has, for the moment, slipped outside his story, except that outside his story is where Tim O'Brien has nearly always been, taking refuge -- as he says in his striking new novel, "In the Lake of the Woods" -- "in the fine line between biology and spirit," between some literal, if unknowable, truth and the truth whose only evidence is the story that......

View the rest of this paper...

Approximate Word Count: 2503
Approximate Pages: 11 (250 words per double-spaced page)

Similar Essays

1. In The Lake Of The Woods
   

   in the lake of the woods hat stories can do, I guess, is make things present." That's how Tim O'Brien put it in "The Things They Carried," which was published in 1990 and which is

2. In The Lake Of The Woods
   

   In The Lake Of The Woods "…It wasn't just the war that made him what he was. That's too easy. It was everything – his whole nature…" – Eleanor K. Wade IS THIS AN ADEQUATE

3. Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
   

   snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake

4. Robert Frost's: &Quot;Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening&Quot;
   

   beauty of the woods that makes him stop in the first place. Also the lines "Between the woods and frozen lake," "The darkest evening of the year," and "The woods are lovely, dark

5. What Happened To Kathy Wade
   

   it. But if we decide to do so the past will only come to haunt us. In the novel In The Lake of the Woods, we see that there is a fine line between love and insanity. And John