Description

Due to rights issues, the audio of this interview is not available online. Please contact San Diego State University, Special Collections and Archives if you wish to be granted access to the original audio. Larry McCaffery interviews Tim O’Brien in O’Brien’s Cambridge apartment. O’Brien explains his writing in light of his experiences in the Vietnam War, including the idea of whether he is a “Vietnam writer” and his decision to go to Vietnam and not desert from the army. They discuss in depth O’Brien’s novel Going After Cacciato and how it relates to other works on the war. O’Brien goes in-depth into his writing habits, including the starting point for his books (“I try to dramatize an idea”). O’Brien expounds on his ideas about experimentalism in fiction. There is a long discussion about a possible influence from Hemingway upon O’Brien’s writing. O’Brien discusses the ideas he uses in his novel Northern Lights while also discussing what he sees as the book’s flaws. An edited version of this interview appears on pages 262 to 278 of Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists, ed. Tom LeClair and Larry McCaffery, University of Illinois Press, 1983.