Looking back at my age, gender, and disposition, perhaps it should’ve been Esther Greenwood who first spoke to me - that certainly would’ve been a more comforting stereotype. After Lake, I sought out different books and expected more of them. It was the first time that I realized there were books out there that weren’t just about what they were about. I first read it about sixteen years ago in a stifling un-air-conditioned and over-crowded classroom, and with all my 90s angst I was prime for it to get under my skin. In The Lake of the Woods holds a special place in my memory. None of it ever seemed real in the first place. A nightmare like that, all you want is to forget. Looks real black and white now – very clear – but back then everything came at you in bright colors. Tim O'Brien is now a visiting professor and endowed chair at Texas State University - San Marcos (formerly Southwest Texas State University) where he teaches in the Creative Writing Program. O'Brien's career as a reporter gave way to his fiction writing after publication of his memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Send Me Home. Having the opportunity to do an internship at the Washington Post, he eventually left Harvard to become a newspaper reporter. No doubt he was one of very few Vietnam veterans there at that time, much less Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) holders. O'Brien's tour of duty was 1969-70.Īfter Vietnam he became a graduate student at Harvard. He was assigned to 3rd Platoon, A Company, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry, as an infantry foot soldier. O'Brien was against the war but reported for service and was sent to Vietnam with what has been called the "unlucky" Americal division due to its involvement in the My Lai massacre in 1968, an event which figures prominently in In the Lake of the Woods. Graduation in 1968 found him with a BA in political science and a draft notice. Tim O'Brien matriculated at Macalester College.
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