Just got back from listening to Tim O’Brien speak at Monroe Community College. The Things They Carried turns 20 this year, and I think it’s been around 12-15 years since I read it. I couldn’t remember a lot of specifics, just the feelings. It made an impression on me, one that lasted all this time — as soon as he started reading, I remembered exactly what chapter he was reading from.

O’Brien, as you might guess from his standard author photo in cap and sweatshirt, is a very likeable, down-to-earth kind of guy. His demeanor makes reading his stories all the more affecting, since you wind up picturing this affable guy, who ought to be ought back with a beer grilling some ribs, in the Vietnam jungle with a rifle slung over his shoulder. How do we do this to people — ours, theirs, anyone?

O’Brien strikes me as a writer’s writer — a short-storyist, even though TTTC is considered a novel. He brings alive the moment, without hitting you over the head with the moral. He knows the power that fiction has to communicate something that can’t be delivered with nonfiction.

His advice for writers: 1) Be like a donkey; be stubborn and write everyday so that you don’t lose the train, the feel of the story. 2) Read a lot. That pretty much sums it up. I’m always amazed when I meet writers — or people who want to write — who don’t read.

At the booksigning, I asked him for the names of some contemporary wartime writers, seeing as how Trust will feature a veteran of the Iraqi war. He gave me a couple names of the top of his head, ones that I’d already found but haven’t read yet so it’s good to know I’m not barking up the wrong pulped tree. Nathaniel Fick and Kayla Williams, in case you’d like to check them out.