O'BRIEN, Tim.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Fire in the Hole [If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home.] Rare uncorrected proof copy of the author's first book, inscribed by him on the half-title, "To Michael, Tim O'Brien". This early state of the text preserves noteworthy textual differences from the published version, including a crucial paragraph in which O'Brien explains his original conception of the work as "reportage", deleted after his vision changed from reporting to storytelling.In the published version, Chapter 3 concludes, "Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories". This proof version retains O'Brien's excised follow-up continuation: "...He can tell war stories. He can report." It is followed by an additional paragraph where he expands on this idea, stating unequivocally, "This book is reportage". O'Brien removed these references to himself as a reporter after his Vietnam War companion Erik Hansen, who appears in the work, persuaded him in a letter that "I think your book is much more than reportage... When it comes down to the big 'I' there are no facts!" (cited in Buchanan, p. 622)."As the deletions from If I Die show, it is possible that O'Brien didn't see a necessary or distinct difference between storytelling and documentation. Or, better yet, he didn't seem to make such a distinction before 1972. That changed, however, as his later work would repeatedly draw specific attention to the line between the two" (

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