1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910819828503321

Autore

Heberle Mark A

Titolo

A trauma artist : Tim O'Brien and the fiction of Vietnam / / Mark A. Heberle

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Iowa City, : University of Iowa Press, c2001

ISBN

1-58729-328-5

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (375 p.)

Disciplina

813.54

813/.54

Soggetti

Vietnam War, 1961-1975 - Literature and the war

Post-traumatic stress disorder - United States

War stories, American - History and criticism

Postmodernism (Literature) - United States

Psychic trauma in literature

Soldiers in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 325-335) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Preface; Introduction: Vietnam as Figure and Symptom: "We've All Been There"; A Trauma Artist; The Fiction of Vietnam; 1 Fabricating Trauma; "The Vietnam in Me"; O'Brien's Endless War; Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Vietnam; PTSD and Writing; O'Brien's Art of Trauma; Writing Beyond Vietnam; 2 A Bad War; Origins of ""If I Die in a Combat Zone""; Fictionalized Testimony; O'Brien's Self-Representation: Soldier Versus Writer; Moral Combat; ""Combat Zone"" as Source for a Career; 3 The Old Man and the Pond; Self-Displacement in ""Northern Lights""; Literary Mimicry: Realism, Symbolism, Allegory

Harvey's Story: Vietnam as TragicomedyPaul's Story: The Feminization of Virtue; Novel Revisions; 4 A Soldier's Dream; The Re-covering of Trauma: Paul Berlin as Tim O'Brien; ""Cacciato"": From Short Stories to Trauma Narrative; "Going After Cacciato": From Catalog to Breakdown; Paul Berlin: From Breakdown to Trauma Writing; The Quest for Cacciato: Fantasy and the Burial of the Dead; The Observation Post: Retraumatization and Endless Fantasy; 5 The Bombs Are Real; An Ambitious Failure?; The Traumatization of William Cowling; Parabolic



Fiction: Mutual Assured Destruction and Civil Defense

""The Nuclear Age"" and VietnamThe Failure of William Cowling; 6 True War Stories; Recirculated Trauma, Endless Fiction; ""The Things They Carried"" as Self-Revision; "How to Tell a True War Story": Misreading Tim O'Brien; Other Refabrications of Trauma; "The Lives of the Dead": Bringing Them Back Alive; 7 The People We Kill; Trauma, Tragedy, National Disgrace; Metafictional Investigations; The Breakdown of John Wade; Tragic Revisions; John Wade as Paradigm and Persona: Tim O'Brien's Trauma; Psychobiography, History, and Fiction; 8 Guys Just Want to Have Fun; Vietnam and the Age of Clinton

A Dictionary of LoveIn Defense of Thomas Chippering; PTSD as Comedy/Vietnam as Parody; Saving Tim O'Brien: ""Tomcat in Love"" as Countertherapy; Conclusion: A Trauma Artist; Posttraumatic Nation; Academic Polemics; Responsible Dreams; Appendix: ""Diagnostic Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, DSM-IV""; Notes; References; Index

Sommario/riassunto

A Trauma Artist examines how O'Brien's works variously rewrite his own traumatization during the war in Vietnam as a never-ending fiction that paradoxically ""recovers"" personal experience by both recapturing and (re)disguising it. Mark Heberle considers O'Brien's career as a writer through the prisms of post-traumatic stress disorder, postmodernist metafiction, and post-World War II American political uncertainties and public violence.