Tim O'Brien (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature)

This collection of seven essays, like the carefully linked collection of vignettes within Tim O'Brien's most popular book The Things They Carried, contains multiple critical and biographical angles with recurring threads of life events, themes, characters, creative techniques, and references to all of O'Brien's books. Grounded in thorough research and this author's multiple interviews with O'Brien, Herzog's work illustrates how and why O'Brien merges his life experiences with his creative production. He rarely misses an opportunity to introduce these defining life events into his writing. Underlying this critical study are O'Brien's fractured love stories, war stories, and life choices that characterize not only his personal life but also the stories he tells in his war memoir, novels, and travel narrative/confessional "The Vietnam in Me."