For us, in Viet Nam, it was a sense of just circularity—we were going in circles. Without the sense of winning anything, without a sense of destination.
Novelist Tim O'Brien often writes about the Vietnam War, in which he served from 1968 to 1970.
His writing career was launched in 1973 with the release of If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home.
He is perhaps best known for The Things They Carried, a collection of related stories about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. He received the National Book Award in 1979 for Going after Cacciato.