Oct 24, 2018 By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 7 min read

As a retired English teacher, Sherry Hamilton has done her fair share of reading, and a whole lot more.

“When you start a book, you know right away if it’s going to affect your life,” she said. “And I knew right away this one would.”

The work in question is “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien’s 1990 collection of linked short stories based on his Vietnam War experiences.

“Once I had finished the book, I thought, there’s no way that our students shouldn’t read this,” Hamilton recalled, and she promptly went to work on having it approved for her advanced-placement English class of seniors at Peters Township High School.

The school will serve as the venue for the Peters Township Library Foundation’s second annual Novel November event, scheduled for 7 p.m. Nov. 7 and featuring none other than U.S. Army veteran and National Book Award recipient William Timothy O’Brien.

Hamilton, who taught in Peters Township School District for 31 years, is thrilled to meet an author for which she has developed a deep admiration. She also is thrilled to have the opportunity to introduce him for a daytime assembly at the high school when he’s in town.

Her first exposure to O’Brien came in 2006 while attending a professional conference at Allegheny College in Meadville, where she kept hearing colleagues talk about “The Things They Carried.”

“They said that it was very hard to get this book into the curriculum because it was a very intense novel, and the language was very graphic and so forth,'” she recalled. “So I thought, I have to read this. And it completely blew my away. I mean, completely. I have never read anything quite like it.”

The book basically is a series of vignettes ¬- many have been published as short stories – tied together by a main character called Tim O’Brien, a fictional portrayal of the novelist: For example, he has two sons in real life, but references a daughter in the book.

“Tim actually says there’s a difference between ‘happening’ truth and ‘story’ truth,” Hamilton explained. “‘Story’ truth kind of goes toward the emotion.”

About the author

A Minnesota native and U.S. Army veteran, Tim O’Brien received the National Book Award in Fiction in 1979 for his novel “Going After Cacciato.”

In 2005, “The Things They Carried” was named by The New York Times as one of the 22 best books of the past 25 years. It received the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Award in fiction and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The French edition of “The Things They Carried” received one of France’s most prestigious literary awards, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger.

The title story from “The Things They Carried” received the National Magazine Award and was selected by John Updike for inclusion in “The Best American Short Stories of the Century.

O’Brien’s novels have sold more than 6 million copies and have been translated into 20-plus languages. Her served as a consultant for the third season of the NBC series “This Is Us,” which explores the character Jack’s tour of duty in Vietnam.

And so instead of simply reporting on events, O’Brien develops characters and situations to provide readers with a sense of personal investment, and by extension, a greater understanding of what troops went through in Vietnam.

“It’s disturbing. It’s totally disturbing. He sugarcoats nothing, and he shouldn’t.,” Hamilton attested. “When you’re reading this, you have to stop and just absorb it, because some of it is so horrible.”

Because of that and other reasons, strong language at the forefront, school administrators have been known to balk at the notion of teachers assigning “The Things They Carried” to students. Such was the case when Hamilton approached then-Superintendent Nina Zetty about the possibility for AP English.

“She called me about a day or two after she started to read it, and she just said, ‘Sherry, do you know how many times the F-bomb is used in this book?'” Hamilton recalled. She asked Zetty to finish the book before making a judgment.

“About a week later, she called back and said, ‘Our kids have to read this.'”

There was a condition.

“The first year we did it, she wanted me to use permission slips,” Hamilton said. “After that, we were good. The parents were good with it. I think a lot of the parents read it because they were wondering, why are we signing a permission slip for this book?

“And the kids loved it.”

Among its fans is Andre Hanlon, who in 2009 was seeking a topic for his valedictorian speech at commencement.

“At first, I had a lot of trouble deciding what I was going to talk about,” he recalled. “I had some first drafts of a different speech that wasn’t very good.”

Then he decided to draw from his recent reading of “The Things They Carried.”

“The book is literally and metaphorically about what that group of soldiers carried with them,” he explained. “So I made a speech that was similar about my experience and my classmates’ experiences at Peters Township High School.”

Another of Hamilton’s former students who carries an enduring appreciation for the book is 2011 graduate Carley Adams.

“The thing that sticks in my memory of when Sherry handed out the books and started taking about them was the name Tim O’Brien and how many times she said that name during the first 30 minutes,” she said. “I remember being so interested in her passion about this author. It was the first time I think I had heard an English teacher talk about a specific author with that type of enthusiasm.”

As she read, Adams developed a particular sense of identification with one of O’Brien’s characters, a Native American soldier.

“I remember Kiowa as the calming presence in the group, and he was the one who would help the men talk about what they were experiencing and not just keep it all bottled up,” she explained. “I remember just instantly latching onto this character and thinking, I think that’s how we all ought to be. And that’s how I want to be.”

For Hamilton, assigning “The Things They Carried” came with some revelations pertaining to her students.

“I noticed something that I had not seen before, and that is when they would come into talk – AP seniors love to talk about what they’re reading – they were very subdued, very quiet,” she said. “They did talk, and as we went along, they got more and more open about it. But this was something they didn’t really know about, and this was something that was disturbing to them. And it was just hard for them to express themselves at first, because there was such a wall here.

“But it was good, too, because they were knocking down that wall, she continued. “And even though they’ll never know what those soldiers really faced, they got a little bit of a view of it.”

For tickets and more information about the Novel November event, visit ptlibrary.org.