The Things They Carried

While these short stories surrounding the Vietnam War are fictional, Tim O'Brien's previous experience as a soldier makes them feel real. And that's part of the point of the book; in the short story “How to Tell a True War Story”, O'Brien explores verisimilitude, or how something can both be fiction but seem true:

“In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way... ...The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.”

seems

“What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again.”