The Things They Carried
PRI: Selected Shorts, WNYC
“The Things They Carried” is a powerful fictional depiction of the reality of America’s doomed enterprise in Vietnam. It is the title story of a book in which O’Brien follows one platoon of grunts, and its fantastic literary conceit is that their experience can best be conveyed by detailed listings of the actual things that the men carried in their backpacks and pockets, and on their shoulders and necks. When the cataloguing of these things makes the imaginative leap into a description of the less physical things they carried—to include such burdens as guilt, and fear, and memories—the piece earns its status as a great American short story.
The reader is Dylan Baker, whose numerous film and television credits include appearances on “The Good Wife”; “Law and Order”; “Monk; and “Spiderman 3.”
From WNYC
