提姆·奥布莱恩

威廉·蒂莫西·“提姆”·奥布莱恩 (英语：William Timothy "Tim" O'Brien，1946年10月1日—)，美国小说家。提姆主要因撰写与越南战争有关的战争小说而知名。提姆曾在其中服役。其最知名的作品《士兵的重负》（一本半自传小说）就是受越战中的经历启发而来。

主要作品

如果我死在战区，请为我收殓并运回家乡。（If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home）（1973）

北方的灯光（Northern Lights）（1975)

兄弟，你经历了什么？（Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy）（1975）

原子时代（The Nuclear Age）（1985）

士兵的重负（The Things They Carried）（1990）

森林中的湖（In the Lake of the Woods）（1994）

恋爱的汤姆猫（Tomcat in Love）（1998）

七月，七月（July, July）（2002）

Dad's Maybe Book（2019）

Tim O'Brien (born October 1, 1946) is an American author who served as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Much of his writing is about wartime Vietnam, and his work later in life often explores the postwar lives of its veterans.

O'Brien is perhaps best known for his book The Things They Carried (1990), a collection of linked semi-autobiographical short stories inspired by his wartime experiences. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a 2006 New York Times poll named it one of the best works of American fiction of the last twenty-five years. In 2010, the paper described it as "a classic of contemporary war fiction". His war novel Going After Cacciato (1978) was awarded the National Book Award.

O'Brien taught creative writing, holding the endowed chair at the MFA program of Texas State University–San Marcos every other academic year from 2003 to 2012.

Biography

Early life

Tim O'Brien was born in Austin, Minnesota, on October

1, 1946, the son of William Timothy O'Brien and Ava Eleanor Schult O'Brien. When he was ten, his family – including a younger brother and sister – moved to Worthington, Minnesota. Worthington had a large influence on O'Brien's imagination and his early development as an author. The town is on Lake Okabena in the southwestern part of the state and serves as the setting for some of his stories.

O'Brien earned his BA in 1968 in political science from Macalester College, where he was student body president. That same year he was drafted into the United States Army and was sent to Vietnam.

Military service

He served from 1969 to 1970 in 3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment, part of the 23rd Infantry Division that contained the unit that perpetrated the My Lai Massacre the year before his arrival. O'Brien has said that when his unit got to the area around My Lai (referred to as "Pinkville" by the U.S. forces), "we all wondered why the place was so hostile. We did not know there had been a massacre there a year earlier. The news about that only came out later, while we were there, and then we knew." O'Brien earned a Purple Heart after being struck by shrapnel during a grenade attack.

In later talks and essays, O'Brien has described how conflicted he felt when he was drafted. Growing up, he said he often felt both restless and shaped by its conservative civic culture. Opposed to the Vietnam War, he spent the summer of 1968 working in a meatpacking plant, which he described as physically exhausting and emotionally draining, while he worried about his draft notice. O'Brien has recalled feeling pulled in two directions: toward his anti-war convictions on one side and, on the other, toward family expectations, hometown loyalties, and fear of being seen as a coward if he refused to serve. In his public lectures, he uses this period to illustrate the moral pressure many draftees experienced as they decided whether to enter the Army, resist the draft, or leave the country.

First book

Upon completing his tour of duty, O'Brien went to graduate school at Harvard University. Afterward he received an internship at the Washington Post. In 1973 he published his first book, a memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, about his war experiences. In it, O'Brien writes: "Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories."

Teaching and professional work

O'Brien has taught at Texas State University–San Marcos, where he offers workshops in the MFA program. He has also been involved in the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. At Bread Loaf, he was engaged with a range of literary traditions that allowed him to shape the work of writers beyond the university setting.

After the birth of his first child, O'Brien quit writing entirely to focus on fatherhood. Later, O'Brien returned to writing with Dad's Maybe Book, titled by his son, Tad. Dad's Maybe Book is about and for his sons, in which O'Brien reflects on storytelling as a form of connection across generations.