Contests

Bristol Community College 2011 OneBook Essay Contest

Winner:

Fictional Truth

by Shaun Navin

I hate war stories. I hate the real ones anyway. They hold too much pain and suffering, which this world is fraught with already. The horrifying reality that human beings are so willing to kill each other is a truth I hold with disgust. I shy away from the term “necessary evil” because I don’t believe it is necessary. However, I do understand there are things worth fighting for. My discomfort in dealing with questions of this particular morality is the cause of my dislike for war stories. Simply said, they make me uncomfortable.

That being said, I began my reading of Tim O’Brien in a very superficial way. I didn’t really care about him, Vietnam, or anything he had to say about it. The Things They Carried is required reading, so I’ll read it. I’ll answer the questions and do my best to forget about it. When I have a task to perform, I’ll do it. It doesn’t mean I’m going to agree to learn something from it. I’ll read the material, process the information enough to answer the questions, and regurgitate what is necessary so I can move on like it never happened. I read “On the Rainy River”, did the assignment, and tried to forget about it. Only the story was thought provoking in spite of my attempt to avoid reflection. I had to admit, although I didn’t share O’Brien’s view on responding to the draft, I felt his shame. I may not have agreed, but I empathized.

I progressed from this level of “not caring” and lack of interest to a grudging respect for Mr. O’Brien’s work. Although this particular story held a view that conflicts with mine, the honesty of a man so baring his soul, admitting his shame, and sharing his experience with me in such an open way moved me. I disagree vehemently with a man going to war as cowardice and see fleeing a draft as abandoning one’s country and fellow man. But his honesty about his feelings reached me. He believed the war was wrong, and his view of his actions was shameful. Emotional honesty of this level is uncommon. I found myself respecting this man in spite of our difference of opinions.

As for “Good Form”, I read it with a measure of contempt. At the words, “Almost everything else I invented” (171), I lost interest. That’s not true. I didn’t believe it. Not deep down where it matters. I chose not to believe that it was true, because I didn’t want to. I was starting to like Mr. O’Brien in spite of our differences, and I didn’t like thinking of him as dishonest. The stories held so much more meaning to me because I believed them. I dismissed the whole idea of “story truth” and forgot about it. But that’s not true either. I can’t stop thinking about it.

My thoughts were haunted with the curiosity not just of the stories collected in the book but a need to understand the man who wrote them. What motivated a man to feel this way, so different from my view of serving in the military? I spent time e-mailing my uncle, a Vietnam Veteran, to gain his perspective. Amongst other things he shared, one story he told me, which showed an honesty I hold dear, was about what he was thinking right before he came back stateside and the vast difference between the world there and his life here at home. As he tells it, he was “an FO with the 101st calling in and adjusting fire for the Artillery and Cobra Gunships with a loaded M-16 and more firepower at my fingertips than I ever could have imagined. My biggest fear was going home after a year away and forgetting where I was and asking my mother to pass the f—kin’ butter across the kitchen table.” That’s real. It drove the impact of everything else he’s told me home in the same fashion Tim O’Brien says you need to embellish the “normal stuff” to make the “truly incredible craziness” more believable. If I found out the story about the butter was untrue, it would demolish what I’ve learned on his perspective of the war because I would begin to question everything.

After that I watched a video lecture given about The Things They Carried held at BCC on September 28, given by Bob Kerr, a Vietnam Veteran. Watching with something akin to morbid curiosity, I digested everything I heard quickly and picked it over for gems of inspiration to gain further insight. Within five minutes, I had the wind knocked out of me. When Bob Kerr stated that Tim O’Brien himself had told him, “That never happened” (regarding “On the Rainy River”), I was distraught. Everything I didn’t want to believe about “Good Form” was true. I couldn’t dismiss it any more. I felt betrayed. This man had shared with me a deep moving emotional truth and “it never happened”??!? I felt as if he had done nothing more than toy with me. He made a mockery of my values after I had so respected his. It was a personal affront. How dare he insult me like that? That story ought to be true. I let that cheapen the story for me at the time. It left me feeling as if I were being patronized like a fool that is too ignorant to understand the impacts of war. I refuse to be lied to and manipulated. I was disgusted with everything Tim O’Brien. This nonsense about “not having to tell the truth to tell the story” was just a dishonest man’s way to justify his lies. We were through. I’m going back to reading the book, answering the questions, and forgetting we ever met.

But that never happened. Instead I began to feel guilty. Who am I to judge this man? How can I decide what the right way for him to convey his emotion is? So I kept thinking about it. Of which I was reminded, Mr. O’Brien must be doing something right.

As I acknowledged my guilt over judging a man who had fought for the country I propose to hold dear, a country I have never served on such a level, I began to find an acceptance of his method. Through conversations about his work, I began to see that this is his way of getting things across. I began to understand that I should be grateful that he is able to share with me these things through any medium. He quite obviously had already impacted me and stimulated an emotional transition. Hating to admit I am wrong, I ashamedly confessed to finding the value in his words. But there was so much more.

Over the following weeks, assignments and e-mails to my professor lighted on the subject of “story truth” until it became the focus of both. Bits of insight were shared and I slowly accepted the ideas as things slid into place. Then a real connection was made. “Consider the power of myth and fairy tales”: eight words I read in an e-mail that pushed me from acceptance to appreciation, literally overnight. I spent the night considering these words and how much I understood their import before I even read them. I read fantasy. A lot. I kicked the idea around all night and was still considering it in the morning while I got my son ready for school.

As I zipped up his jacket and walked out the door, hand in hand on the way to the bus stop, I experienced a moment that clarified the impact of fiction writing on my life. It was an emotional scene in the movie of my life that defines the influence of story-book fantasies on the reality of my world.

Books have played a large role in my life. I was read to at night religiously by my mother when young. Dad stepped in when I was a little older and read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to my siblings and me at the kitchen table before bedtime, one chapter at a time. This initiated my love of both reading and fantasy. When I was in fifth grade, I read “The Hobbit” myself. It is the first book I ever read of my own initiative from cover to cover in one sitting. I didn’t just read it; I went to Middle Earth. Within a year I was on to The Fellowship of the Ring and Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon. This began a lifelong love affair with everything Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, Stephen King, Dean Koontz (this one is a love/hate thing), Dragonlance Saga, Robin Hobb, Orson Scott Card, and more recently, George Martin, Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss (literary genius).

I’ve always considered my obsession with fantasy an escape from this world, a place to go where none of the trials and tribulations of life matter and the simple enjoyment of this “other place” is all that’s important. But that isn’t entirely true. The books I read are fraught with struggles and intrigue, insurmountable difficulties, and peril beyond reckoning. It’s the nobility, honor, and integrity of the characters in these books that so draws me, the flawed Galad Damodred of such high standing morality, or the resourceful Kvothe Kingkiller with his tragic flaws. They offer the solutions I seek to the questions I find in the real world. They teach me how to cope.

There is no one here showing me how to overcome my self-doubts and insecurities. There is no one who has the answers to my individual suffering. There is also no one who can show me how to deliver the unique joys I find in living by the standards set forth in the material I read.

This brings me to the point, the emotional truth. The stories I read are decidedly fictional. These are not real places, they are not real people, they never truly happened. But the feelings do. The love for my child, the honor in my family name, the willingness to fight and die for something believed in; these are all things I learned from stories. The values I hold most dear are ones I learned from people who have only lived in the hearts of readers like me. With them I have shared a fantasy, and an emotional truth.

I bring this now to my son. I read to him every night. I have made two false starts already with The Hobbit, but he’s still too young. I will be patient. I wish to introduce him to the characters who will reinforce what I teach him about love, loyalty, kindness, integrity, honor, and the magic that exists in the feelings experienced every day when I walk him to the bus while he howls at the neighbor’s dog. You see, he’s a wolf. He tells me wolfs eat snakes. And pigs…..and crying little boys. I’ve seen myself that they chase the neighbor’s guinea hens. I can see him make the connections. The snakes were reading material one night, of course the pigs were another, and what wolf doesn’t eat crying little boys? Only five, he has swords, and with them he defends us from the “bad guys and monsters” because he is strong.

As I walked down the lane to wait for the bus, I was overcome with emotion over just how lucky I am. Every time I’ve read about the joys experienced in the simple things in life were crystalized in that walk. Every film, book, or image I possess in my heart and mind of a father/son moment were in those five minutes. I’m overwhelmed with the intensity of my love for this little person I’m molding into a man. I wish I had the gift of articulating these feelings in a way that would impact others to experience the myriad of joys that radiated from this five minute wait for the bus. I do not have a gift for fiction writing though. My limitations in that department keep me a reader.

I believe I understand why one doesn’t have to tell the truth to tell the story. The truth is the feeling. The truth is the concept, the value, what is shared with us in the story that matters. It doesn’t matter if it’s a war story or a “far off place” that never was. What matters are the feelings it instills in the reader, and its impact on that person’s life. Although I set out to “read and forget”, things worked out a little differently. However, I still don’t like war stories. They make me uncomfortable.

Bristol Community College 2011 OneBook Art Contest

Many of you are reading The Things They Carry by Tim O’Brien this fall, a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War, filled with vivid imagery. We would like to showcase your visual responses to the book. Any student currently enrolled at BCC is invited to create and submit some form of visual expression related in some way to the book. This is open to students in all disciplines.

Your artwork could be anything from a poster, painting, sculpture, or puppet to a comic strip or a storyboard for time-based media and needs to be either (1) about the book in some way, or (2) inspired by some theme in the book, but not necessarily related directly at all to the book. The project description you put on your entry form must explain the connection of your artwork to the book. If your work is chosen for exhibition, your project description will be displayed with your work.

Selected entries will be displayed in the Brick area of H building. In addition, there will be a first place award of $100, a second place award of $50, and honorable mentions presented to the winning students at our closing OneBook event on December 8th in the Jackson Arts Center Theater, 12:30-2:30 PM.

Submissions will be accepted no later than Friday, December 2, 2011 at 2:30 in H213 (Erik Durant’s office) and H215 (Marisa Millard’s office). Entries will be judged by a panel of BCC Art Program instructors. All submissions must be original work and accompanied by an official Entry form, including project description.

Art Contest Submission Policies

Only current BCC students are eligible for the contest.
All creative work must be accompanied by a completed entry form and should be ready to display.
Art Contest submissions will be accepted no later than Friday, December 2, 2011 at 2:30 in H213 and H215. No entries will be accepted after 2:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 2nd.
Entries will be judged on Friday December 2nd , after 2 p.m. and winners will be notified by phone or email. In addition, winners and juror’s choice entries will be displayed in the Brick area of H building for two weeks.
Although precautions are taken to secure and care for all submissions, all entries are left at the owner’s risk. BCC is not responsible for theft or damage to any work. Your signature on the entry form means you have read and understood the above statement.
All entries must represent your own work without inappropriate assistance of any kind. Plagiarism will immediately disqualify an entry.
All entries must be a response to the subject or theme/s of the BCC One Book for 2011, The Things They Carry by Tim O’Brien. A student may submit a maximum of two entries.
All prizes will be awarded at the final One Book ceremony (date and time to be announced).
Please be aware that entries may be published and distributed in some format: this may include publication on the web and for educational purposes including distribution in the classroom and at conferences. By submitting your work, you are permitting the publication and distribution of your work.

First prize: $100.00
Second prize: $50.00

Art Contest Entry Form