-- Guest Lecture --
                                    Mike Kelley:
                     Tim O'Brien & Anti-War Writing

Dina,

Your presumption that Tim O'Brien was writing an anti-war novel may be in error. Lot's of people write about sex and betrayal in the human experience, does that me they write about those things because they are anti-sex and anti-betrayal? Or because they want to instill some moral compass in the readers? Homey don't think so...

I doubt Tim or any other author who draws upon their Vietnam experience really writes in the hope of stopping wars. I draw, paint and write about the experience myself because it's what I know and I feel a compulsion to share it with others. That is all. If anyone wants to label what Tim O'Brien does or what I do as anti-war, that is the baggage they bring to the picture. I think we're both just storytellers. Nothing more and nothing less. We enjoy telling stories and having people read them. If our readers and observers learn something or think they learn something from what we tell them, well that's fine, but I sure as heck don't think we're here to repeat what everybody already knows; sure wars are hell but so what? Lots of things in life are hell and lots of things in my life have been worse than combat ever was!

In my own heart I'm not anti-war per se, I would have to say. I can tell you what happens in war, and that what happens in war is sometimes the obvious and at others the not so obvious. I can tell you that much of what happens in war is often outrageously comical and filled with laughter. I can also honestly tell you some of the best, most important and enjoyable moments of my life occurred in war and that I treasure the friendships forged in that crucible as no others in my life.

Does my telling you that people really do get shredded into hunks of mincemeat by enemy mortar shells; that dear friends can disappear in in the instant of a blinding flash and pink spray; that watching helplessly while a comrade bleeds 
to death deep in some godforsaken jungle clearing is painful beyond words; that fear can dismember you piece by piece and swell your tongue so big you can't swallow or breathe; that sleeping in the rocks and mud and cold rain is very uncomfortable beyond the imagination...Does my telling you these things tell you something you don't already know? I don't think it does.

Any fool knows war is hell. What they don't know are the details in between the heaven and the hell of it; the spaces between the notes as it were... Everyone knows war is hell but most of us simply don't care. War is a lot more fun and a lot more interesting than most other things in life and as Michael Herr once exclaimed, "Take the glamour out of war? Hell, you CAN'T take the glamour out of war!"

Also, despite their intense horrors and dehumanization, wars are sometimes necessary and what happens in them not always evil. As long as the veneer of civilization remains as thin as it obviously is (to wit, Rwanda, Bosnia and Yugoslavia), societies damned well better have a warrior class on hand to protect their values and safety.

Wars are interesting too, aren't they? Each has its own peculiarities and ours had more than its share. Sometimes they are sublimely beautiful, especially at night with parachute flares drifting through the sky like lanterned ships at sea, with the read and green tracers arcing across the sky and ricocheting crazily after reaching the earth again, the distant crumps and whistling of artillery and popcorn sound of some distant contact drifting through the night. When you're not in the fight, war can be beautiful...as odd as that might sound.

I think Tim O'Brien is a great writer but I cannot classify him as an anti-war writer. He simply tells it like it was, and he does it better than anyone I know.

I think students should try to express what a writer makes them feel or what they think they learn from a writing. Trying to analyze why a writer writes a story or what it is a writer wants you to learn is academic gymnastics without a substantive purpose. I don't think it matters at all why I might write something; what's really of interest are the emotions it might evoke in my readers; was I able to put them in my shoes and to show them what I've seen? That's the exciting stuff!

If it isn't already painfully evident that I really don't know what I'm talking about to you yet, it should be. Good Luck!

Cheers,
Mike Kelley
D Co 1st/502d Infantry, 101st Airborne Div 69/70
www.vwam.com/vets/m60mike.htm

What a nice question. I have no idea who you are, but I assume you were looking at some of my web assets.

This week I am teaching Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," an antiwar poem. Usually, depending on the course I add two others, "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Owen, and "Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed, the theme of which is simply, make love, not war. Why do all this in college? Two reasons. The first is that someday some of these students may have to make decisions. When I was a sophomore, one of my close friends--and he still is a close friend--grew up to be the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. Many of my other friends were Generals in the Persian Gulf. Another classmate who taught English and taught these poems is the #2 person in the Army. You never know when some lesson from those works might influence a decision.

On a closer to home note, all of those soldiers in THE THINGS THEY CARRIED were former students, draftees, whatever. Each person has to make a decision about whether to serve and how to serve, whether to protest and how to  protest. In my classes I have veterans and deserters,  anti-communists and communists and I ask each of them to tell their story.

I have in my office a taped interview I did with the most  taught author in America, Maxine Hong Kingston, and I spent three years in a writing seminar
for veterans that she put together. Tim O'Brien came, Larry Heineman, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Grace Paley, and Ron Kovic. And in that interview Maxine asserts flat out that by studying war now we are preventing war a thousand years from now.

I'm not sure I understand exactly how that works, but I have faith in Maxine and in education. I have taken the liberty of sending this on to three other veterans who are friends of mine; Paul DeCillis, Mike Kelley, and Bill Hunt. Each of them is a humanitarian, and I do not know if they will have time to respond to you, but they may have more profound things to say. If I had an active class doing critical thinking about these issues--which I will have again in the Fall--I would send your question on to the students, and ask them to respond. Thanks for asking.

As Tim O'Brien precisely notes, "war is as easy to stop as glaciers"- obviously a force not to be stopped with a single anti-war novel. What then, is the true purpose to writing an anti-war novel. Is it to educate, to exert sympathy towards veterans, to provoke the reader into further anti-war thoughts and actions, etc.
If in fact it is as unrealistic a goal to cease the fire as it is to stop a glacier, why then compose an anti-war book?

Nevertheless, O'Brien also states that it is stories that  save us. My question -HOW? If a single anti-war book will (clearly) neither prevent nor end war, 
what makes the war  story a savior?

With sincere appreciation for your response,
Dina Gorokhovskaya