Friday, November 6, 2009 10:34 PM CST
Prize-winning author speaks at Jones lecture
By HOLLY THOMAS, For the JG/T-C
A 9-year-old sat and dreamed about being a writer, influenced by such book series as The Berenstain Bears and Hardy Boys. But the boy grew up and the playfulness of writing took a backseat to the real world.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science, and writing was still on his mind, but war yielded that dream. Drafted to serve in Vietnam, he experienced things that made him finally decide to “stop thinking about writing, and just write.”
Influenced by authors such as Ernest Hemingway and James Jones, author of “From here to Eternity” and “The Thin Red Line,” he was finally ready to write.
Tim O’Brien, bestselling author, is known for “The Things They Carried,” “If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home,” and “July, July.” He is the recipient of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction and Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in Fiction, and a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.
O’Brien spoke at The James Jones Lecture Series in the Black Box Theatre at the Eastern Illinois University Doudna Fine Arts Center Friday night to a crowd of veterans who served in WWII, Vietnam, Iraq, along with others.
He said he came to Eastern to pay honor to a fellow writer on war.
“James Jones influenced me as a writer,” he said. “The Thin Red Line didn’t prepare me for war, no book, however compelling, will shoot bullets at you. It prepared me for the day I began to write.“
James Jones wrote historical fiction impacted by the time he served in World War II.
The James Jones Lecture Series was established by the EIU College of Arts & Humanities along with the English and history departments in conjunction with the James Jones Literary Society.
O’Brien said though James Jones influenced him, the two authors are different, Jones wanted to be a soldier; O’Brien did not.
“James Jones was a hero, I was a coward,” he said. “The America of James Jones was not the America of Tim O’Brien.“
Though there were many differences between July 1969 and July 1942, O’Brien said he and Jones shared much more than they did not.
“In the end killing is killing and dying is dying,” he said.
O’Brien said the life a writer is hard, “a lot of sitting alone.“
People feeling something they have never felt before, is a goal with every story, he said.
“All I can do is write the best books I can,” he said. “I do what I do to stir emotions. What a soldier goes through is not always what you think.“
O’Brien told stories of the man he is today and the boy he was the summer he carried around the draft notice in his back pocket.
“I write fiction so people can understand the truth of what I was feeling,” he said. “Truth doesn’t always have the same meaning. Sometimes you can’t get to truth any other route but through fiction to make people feel how you actually felt.”
The James Jones Literary Symposium continues today with coffee and donuts at 8 a.m. in the Doudna Fine Arts Center.
Author Kaylie Jones (daughter of James Jones) will read from her recently published memoir, “Lies My Mother Never Told Me,” and will also talk about “War in the Home,” growing up in the shadow of her father, his experiences in combat and his knowledge of war.
The 2009 James Jones Lincoln Trail College Writing Award will be presented. And the 2008 and 2009 winners of the James Jones First Novel Fellowship Award - a $10,000 prize - will each read from their works.
After lunch, Thomas Jones, a recently named JJLS board member, will discuss his memories of a year in the bush during the Vietnam War during which he was wounded and came home and wrote the novel, “Lost Survivor.”
The symposium concludes with a student panel, organized by EIU history professor Jinhee Lee, entitled “World War II Memories in Japan and Beyond.”
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