Even That Story Is Made up.. Huh?

We read works of fiction all the time, so reading something that isn't true really doesn't bother me. Usually that's the fun part. But thinking that a work is true for well over half the book, then finding out it was mostly all a lie is kinda irritating.

"I want you to feel what I felt" (page 171). If you wanted us to feel how you felt, then maybe you should have written about how you felt. Not about how you would have felt if what actually happened was way cooler. "I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth" (page 171). How the heck can fake be truer than truth?

Why don't you (*Crazy Idea*) write a novel about how you actually felt? See how that sells.

I know I seem mad, but I'm not really. I respect Tim as an author and veteran. He also seems like a pretty nice guy. And I guess maybe I understand what he was trying to do. Maybe the feelings he shares with us throughout the book match more closely to the feeling that he felt he should feel during the war, but like he said, he was too afraid to feel them. I think either way, we get an inkling of what it was like to be in the Vietnam war. (That's probably a stretch).