Getting to the Truth
In his new book, Tobey Herzog dives into an award-winning author’s feints and contradictions and surfaces with a revelation for the literary world.
The day after he retired, Professor of English Emeritus Tobey Herzog H’11 began writing a series of essays about Tim O’Brien, the award-winning author and fellow Vietnam veteran he has studied for nearly 30 years. That book— Tim O’Brien: The Things He Carries and the Stories He Tells—was published last spring.
WM sat down in July with the venerable Wabash teacher and scholar to talk about the book, his interactions with O’Brien, the writer’s life, and what’s next.
WM: So you’re on campus for a talk about this book and you encounter a Wabash alumnus who says, “Who the hell is Tim O’Brien?” What do you tell him?
Herzog: Tim O’Brien, a Vietnam combat veteran, is probably the most important soldier/author to come out of the Vietnam War. His book, The Things They Carried, is one of the most widely taught books in high schools and colleges in the United States and abroad.
Even though most of his books deal with Vietnam battlefields and Vietnam veterans, his books are accessible to a much wider audience because he deals with what he calls the war of the living, which is everything from divorce to breakups of love relationships to dealing with alcoholic fathers to making difficult moral choices that define the rest of your life.
What was the first Tim O’Brien book you read?
Going After Cacciato. It won the National Book Award in 1978. I remember reading it and thinking, “This book was more than just war stories.”
I was fascinated by the narrative structure, how at times it’s puzzling, because as a reader you’re trying to figure out what’s real and what’s imaginary.
It’s also a book about how you write fiction and the interplay of imagination and memory.
I realized, Not only is this a great book to introduce students to the Vietnam War, it’s also a great book to introduce students to the art of fiction and how you structure a narrative.
I still think it’s his best book.
What drew you into making O’Brien’s work the focus of your scholarship?
Sometimes when you read a piece of literature, you say, “I understand what his narrative strategy is,” or “I understand how he’s shaping his theme.” In O’Brien’s case it was, “I understand how this is coming from his own life experiences and how important it is in his life.”
I've always felt that connection when I read his literature. I know what he’s doing. I get him.
You’ve written this book as a series of essays and included your personal interactions with the author, even your personal experience as a Vietnam veteran. Why that approach?
I’m the type of person who has to write in chunks. I’m not a linear writer—I start here, finish 20 pages and then I think, “There's another idea,” and I start there and go 20 pages in a different direction.
This book is the first attempt I know of to do a much more in-depth look at O’Brien’s personal life. In terms of biography and literary criticism, it probably comes down more on the side of biography. My premise is that to understand what Tim O’Brien writes about, you have to understand Tim O'Brien.
You said that the narrative structure in Going After Cacciato leaves readers trying to figure out what’s real and what’s imaginary. That’s a theme not only for O’Brien, but also your books about him.
That’s both the joy and frustration in writing about Tim O’Brien. I've interviewed him three times—1995, 2005, and 2014—and talked with him when he was here on campus and a few times at some public readings he’s done.
But with O'Brien, you’re never quite sure when he’s telling you something if it actually happened, or if it's part of his imaginative re-creation of his life, as he’s doing in his books.
Even he’s not sure. There’s this quote from him in the book: “Everything I’ve done in my life is part of my fiction, and separating what’s true and
what’s not true is even difficult for me as an author.”
One of my chapters in this book asks, “Why does Tim O’Brien lie?” I set up a series of hypotheses. But I don’t solve the mysteries; I weigh out possibilities for people to think about and come to their own conclusions.
I’ve noticed that in your lectures about O’Brien over the years—you tend not to make those final conclusions.
Absolutely. O’Brien says once the mystery is gone, once the mystery is solved, there’s no interest.
Still, that’s got to be a tough challenge for you as a biographer: Trying to separate fact from fiction from your primary source.
O’Brien dealt with his father's alcoholism by becoming a magician at a very young age in junior high. He learned magic. He would perform at birthday parties and school assemblies.
Being a magician, then moving into becoming a novelist, he’s still doing the same magic, the magic with his characters, the magic with his stories. Being in control, setting up illusions, and seeing if the audience can figure out what’s going on.
There are times he lies to himself to protect himself.
This is a guy you care about. Would you describe him as a friend?
We’ve had a continuous relationship since 1994, when he was first on the Wabash campus. We might go two or three years without any communication, but then when I ask him, “Could I interview you?” or send him an email or questions, he's very willing to do it. When I saw him in Chicago in 2015, we started talking about our kids.
Sounds like you are someone he can trust.
I think he does trust me. I’ve always been really prepared when I go in for these interviews. He knows I’ve done my research, that I'm going to ask thoughtful questions that he enjoys responding to.
I also think he trusts me not to probe too far into the person, that I’m not going to make all these revelations and speculations.
He has done so many interviews, but I think he’s shared with me some things that he has not shared with other people.
In your new book, he seems to have paid that trust back with an exclusive.
The last essay deals with the question critics have been asking for some time: “Is Tim O’Brien writing another novel?” His last novel came out in 2002. I’ve got quotes from about a 13-year period from him about this. In one interview he says yes, and it’s kind of about a father, and son, and a father who’s now concerned about his son’s welfare.
Then in 2014 he tells me, “I gave up writing 12 years ago. My main focus now is being a father and I devote all my time to that.”
But two weeks after I’d sent in the final proof for this book, I wrote to him and said, “I’m done.” He wrote back and said: “Slaving away on my own new book. Sometimes elated, sometimes depressed as always. I’m 410 pages into it with maybe another 150 pages still to go.”
That’s what he said on February 22, 2018, and that’s the last sentence in my book.
Many of our readers will know O’Brien’s work from your freshman tutorial and your course on modern war literature. I’ve talked with alumni who call those classes among their most formative.
I see alumni and so many of the comments are about the freshman tutorial and the Vietnam books we read. The fact that several of them are still reading in that genre is rewarding to hear.
When you retired, you went almost straight into this project.
I watched a lot of people suddenly thrust into no routine, no place to go, trying to find themselves, feeling irrelevant. I decided I’ve got to have a focus because I know what my mental makeup is.
I started planning in 2012. I knew that on June 30, 2014, when I retired out of my office in Center Hall, I was going to have a carrel in the library and write this book.
How does this life of a writer compare to you as a teacher?
I am an introvert. There was something about a classroom, however, that allowed me to move from an introvert to an extrovert, willing to take chances, tell stories, and do things. I felt comfortable. The classroom was absolutely one of the best environments I could be in. It was the thing that I knew I would miss the most when I retired. The relationships with the students, I really miss that.
But I’m also a solitary person. I’m an only child. Even when I was a grad student, I had a little carrel on the fourth floor of the Purdue Library. When I was an undergraduate in a fraternity house, I had a little study area in the boiler room that I'd go off by myself.
I remember asking you how you were enjoying retirement about a year in, and you said that the best thing is you get to have conversations and you don't have to worry about rushing back to class.
While I was teaching one of the most important devices I had was my watch. I’m very time-oriented because I’d always have a lot of things going on. I need to get this done.
Retirement freed me from that.
So, what’s next?
I’m going back and looking at pieces that I’ve done for Wabash Magazine, my life in the NBA, and some of my chapel speeches. So much of it is connected by sports. That's the underlying thread in my life. Vignettes from my life with the jumping off point of sports, but getting into bigger issues about fathers and sons.
What have you learned from Tim O’Brien as you enter into this phase of writing about your own life?
What I’ve learned is writers are good liars.
Yes.
And to recognize the importance of mystery, and that part of it is not coming to conclusions about your life. Leaving it open ended, that it's something still in progress.
But that’s exactly the reason why a lot of people do write something like your next project—they don't understand it, so they want to come to some closure.
I know if I write this book, I'm not going to come to closure. I will have laid it out in a way that I can consider it from different angles.
Which is exactly the same thing you've done with...
Tim O’Brien. And it’s exactly what he does in his writing.
“The angle creates reality,” is a quote from one of his books. He takes basic events from his own life, basic moral decisions, basic emotions, and he explores it from different angles.
Each angle transforms that thing into a different situation, a different mystery, different issues to consider. It’s what it’s all about.
Innovator
Peter has made such a difference at Wabash, and especially in our department. He’s expanded the courses in music, been an innovator in offering electronic music courses and performance to our students. This year marked the Fourth Annual Electronic Music Concert at Wabash.
Reliable. Resourceful. An initiator. We will miss our colleague’s vital contributions.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JAMES MAKUBUYA, at the retirement reception for Professor of Music Emeritus Peter Hulen, who retires after 14 years at Wabash.
Twice Honored
Associate Professor of German Brian Tucker ’98 earned the McLain- McTurnan-Arnold Award for Excellence in Teaching in April, only months after delivering the College’s most distinguished lecture, the LaFollette Lecture in the Humanities. Tucker is the first professor in the College’s history to receive both honors in the same academic year.
Instilling Passion
I still remember my first class with Professor Tucker my freshman year. My immediate first impression was not, this guy loves German, but rather, this guy loves teaching and really cares about his students.
Of course, he loves German. But three years later I stand by that impression. As a teacher, he commands the room with a palpable enthusiasm. He meets students where they are, understands their successes and struggles (in and out of the classroom), and encourages them to be the best they can be.
I think one of the greatest illustrations of his excellence as a teacher is his ability to instill a passion in his students, regardless of their initial interest in German.
—ERICH LANGE ’19, German double major
The stories you tell, the stories you believe, the stories you care most about are an important part of your identity, so language and literature have made you human. In the long term, the fictional narrative helped make homo sapiens the dominant human species… in the local sense, stories make you who you are:
You are a story, I am a story, we are a story.
PROFESSOR BRIAN TUCKER ’98, from his Chapel Talk, September 2016
Not Just Black and White
A grant from the National Science Foundation is expanding Psychology Department Chair Karen Gunther’s research on color vision.
Karen Gunther wanted to be an artist when she grew up.
She made her first quilt in elementary school and loved doing it, but in junior high she decided she was better suited for science or math.
She never let her creative side wane, though. She knitted and sewed with both of her grandmothers, and she picked up quilting again while studying biopsychology at Oberlin College.
“I wanted to somehow combine quilting with science,” Gunther says, “so I ended up studying color vision.”
Gunther says it’s fun “immersing” herself in color, and her passion for her work extends to her personal life. She continues to create quilts, has shown them locally, and her office is adorned with various forms of colorful expression.
The wedding rings for her and her husband, who is also a vision scientist, were designed based on their field of study. Coral, chrysoprase, and lapis stones were used to symbolize the three cones found in the retina—red, green, and blue. Onyx lines the sides of their rings to represent the stimuli the couple uses in their research.
Now that she’s received a grant worth more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation, Gunther’s research is about to expand.
“Vision scientists have recently determined that the retina routes the cone signals into three ‘cardinal color’ pathways: red vs. green, bluish vs. yellowish and black vs. white,” she explains. “But how do people perceive colors beyond the six cardinal colors—the ‘non-cardinal’ colors?”
The grant will fund three years of research into that question as well as summer interns for Gunther.
And though the waiting period was long, Gunther says she never stressed.
“The primary expectation of Wabash faculty is to teach, with secondary emphasis on research, so my job doesn’t rely on the grant as it would at more research-intensive schools. Some researchers are on “soft” money; they need to get grants to get their salaries.
“I wanted the grant, it would be satisfying, it would fund more summer interns, but I wouldn’t lose my job without it.” —Christina Egbert
“Luminous, Lucid, and Deeply Felt”
“Over and over I found myself startled and moved by discoveries these poems enact,” writes award-winning poet Chase Twitchell of What I Got for A Dollar, Milligan Professor of English Emeritus Bert Stern’s new collection published earlier this year.
“Luminous, lucid, and deeply felt… this is one of the most rewarding books I’ve read in a long, long time.”
“There isn’t a poem in this book I can resist,” adds National Book Award-winning author David Ferry.
So it’s a daunting task to choose only one or two to reprint from the 83 pieces in a volume that offers a reader so much.
But for those who know Stern and remember or know of his daughter, Rachel—who as a child died a cruel and prolonged death by leukemia—two poems printed side-by-side in the book are must-reads. Powerful reminders—or revelations—of this man’s determination to live wide awake and to reflect upon life’s tragedies without flinching, and to find hope, even love, in the darkness.
REASONS FOR NOT WRITING A POEM
Because it can’t suck milk from the breast.
Birds will not land on it.
Dirt tears of cold rivers break over mud banks.
No sap in the polished wood.
The rage of brothers fighting next door shakes my bedroom walls.
I hear war’s ramcrackacow just as well as you do, but war and its dead can’t read.
The trees shush silence me.
Melodies a Syrian woman sings while the torn soldier curses his wound can’t stop the bleeding.
The stars burn all night and don’t say a word.
Don’t ask me if I love you. Touch my hand.
—Bert Stern
REVENANT for Rachel
Today is white. In dim light your spirit hovers so near I can hear you, though not the words.
Can you hear mine, begging for a gift from time to make you whole, who were snatched away almost before we’d found each other.
Though once, when I lay on the floor and held you up above me, our smiles met, and all your unspent life shone like a ruby.
—Bert Stern
From What I Got for a Dollar: Poems by Bert Stern. Reprinted with permission. Read more at: www.grid-books.org/what-i-got-for-a-dollar/