Abstract
Beginning with an exploration of the theoretical definition of autofiction and what distinguishes it from autobiography, Foust Vinson’s essay first examines what is at stake in making such a distinction, before moving to an analysis of how Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried employs autofictive elements to explore the history of the Vietnam War. The chapter considers how O’Brien consciously complicates the lines between fact and fiction to draw the readers’ attention to the notion that history and memory are always tied up in narrative and story, and even while such understandings of the past may be constructed or inauthentic, they can still help us to better engage with and understand our histories and ourselves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Adams, Timothy D. ‘Design and Lie in Modern American Autobiography.’ Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
Calloway, Catherine. ‘“How to Tell a True War Story”: Metafiction in The Things They Carried.’ Critique 36.4 (1995): 249–57.
Cooke, Dervila. Present Pasts: Patrick Modiano’s (Auto)Biographical Fictions. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.
Cusset, Catherine. ‘The Limits of Autofiction’ (2012). Available at www.catherinecusset.co.uk/wp-content/…/02/THE-LIMITS-OF-AUTOFICTION.pdf. Accessed 7 March 2017.
Eakin, Paul J. Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Hassebrock, Frank, and Brenda Boyle. ‘Memory and Narrative: Reading The Things They Carried for Psyche and Persona.’ Across the Disciplines: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, Learning and Academic Writing 6 (2009): 1–14.
Jones, Ginger. ‘Unreliable Memoirist: The Tim O’Briens of The Things They Carried.’ Narrative Being Vs. Narrating Being. Eds. A. Panajoti and M. Krivokapić. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
Kaplan, Steven. ‘The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.’ Critique 35.1 (1993): 43–52.
Larrier, Renée. Autofiction and Advocacy in the Francophone Caribbean. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006.
Lejeune, Philippe. On Autobiography. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Lomperis, Timothy J. ‘Reading the Wind’: The Literature of the Vietnam War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987.
McAdams, Dan P. The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. New York: William Morrow, 1993.
McCay, Mary. ‘The Autobiography of Guilt: Tim O’Brien and Vietnam.’ Writing Lives: American Biography and Autobiography 39 (1998): 115–21.
Munté Ramos, Rosa-Àuria. ‘The Convergence of Historical Facts and Literary Fiction: Jorge Semprún’s Autofiction on the Holocaust.’ Forum: Qualitative Social Research 12.3 (2011).
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990.
Olney, James. ‘Autobiography and the Cultural Moment.’ Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Schmitt, Arnaud. ‘Making the Case for Self-Narration Against Autofiction.’ a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 25.1 (2010): 122–37.
Silbergleid, Robin. ‘Making Things Present: Tim O’Brien’s Autobiographical Metafiction.’ Contemporary Literature 50.1 (2009): 129–55.
Sturgeon, Jonathon. ‘The Death of the Postmodern Novel and the Rise of Autofiction.’ Flavorwire (2014). Available at http://flavorwire.com/496570/2014-the-death-of-the-postmodern-novel-and-the-rise-of-autofiction. Accessed 7 March 2017.
Tuck, Lily. ‘True Confessions of an Auto-Fictionist.’ Literary Hub. Available at http://lithub.com/true-confessions-of-an-auto-fictionist/. Accessed 7 March 2017.
Volkmer, Jon. ‘Telling the ‘Truth’ About Vietnam: Episteme and Narrative Structure in The Green Berets and The Things They Carried.’ WLA: War, Literature, and the Arts 11.1 (1999): 240–55.
Wesley, Marilyn. ‘Truth and Fiction in Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried.’ College Literature 29.2 (2002): 1–18.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Foust Vinson, S. (2018). Lives in Story: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. In: Dix, H. (eds) Autofiction in English. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89902-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89902-2_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89901-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89902-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)