RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Magical Realism in Tim O'Brien's Vietnam War Fiction
A1 Schramer, James
AB Although Tim O’Brien has denied the literary influence of GabrielGarcía Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges and their versions of “magicalrealism” on his work, he has produced a body of work about the Americanexperience in Vietnam that corresponds closely to what AlejoCarpentier referred to in his preface to his first novel, El reino de estemundo (The Kingdom of This World, 1949), as lo real maravillosoamericano. This essay argues that O’Brien’s “magical realism” is notthe result of a traceable literary heritage; it is, rather, the product ofsocial and political conditions in the United States that began withAmerican political and military hegemony after World War II and continuedup to and beyond its defeat in Vietnam. Living with the memoryof a war he did not want to fight is difficult enough for O’Brien. It iseven more difficult for him to live in a country whose leaders continueto deny American culpability in that war. For O’Brien, the magical andmarvelous are more than stylistic tricks; they are his means of not onlyescaping but also of exposing the reality of a war conducted by thosewho proclaimed they had to destroy in order to save, who insisted onthe “plausibility of denial.”
PB Servicio de Publicaciones. Universidad de La Laguna
SN e-2530-8335
YR 1999
FD 1999
LK http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/30341
UL http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/30341
LA en
DS Repositorio institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
RD 27-nov-2024