O'Brien

[Aaron Yeater]

While i agree with previous contributors that Tim O'Brien is an 
excellent writer writing about Vietnam, i'm not sure he (or anyone 
else) has yet to produce the "great vietnam war novel".  Cacciato, 
The Things they Carried and In the Lake of the Woods all are about a 
people who were in Vietnam, but his best writing is about characters 
dealing with the aftermath of Vietnam--Stone's "Dog Soldiers" is much 
the same way...There is however, imho, a great vietnam movie, which 
is apocalypse now (i know some people don't like coppola's stuff, but 
i think, intentionally or not, it is one of the few films about any 
war that is successfully unsentimental...)