Okay. What an article...
So what I could glean from this criticism was that O'Brien's The Things they Carried is a postmodern work, but does not seek to change the reader's opinion of the war. Neilson's argument is based off of the lack of Vietnamese culture and humanization of the Vietcong soldiers as well as the limited scope of his narrative. O'Brien focuses on the writing truth but in postmodernism, the truth varies so much from person to person-it becomes almost worthless to attempt to dictate it.
The common theme in each individual story is finding truth and how to write it for an audience that cannot understand the strain, the horror, and fear all veteran's from Vietnam experienced. It doesn't matter how or what you tell the audience or if the stories actually happened: "a thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth." As long as a story feels real, and can maintain some amount of reality "normal" people can grasp, it is more true than the truth itself. "The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong" (although could have really happened at one point, or even contain some grain of truth) creates so much disbelief within this reader and turns reality on top of its head. But the stories of Kiowa's death, although conflicting on some parts, form a bigger and better truth because it is more believable and real to see a good friend die in a shit hole, than bringing a girl from home into a war zone and seeing her transform into a war goddess. The same goes for "How To Tell A True War Story": the death of a good friend is very believable, but slaughter of a water buffalo in a cruel and gruesome manner provides some disbelief. There is no such thing as a true war story- "be skeptical" if you do believe in one, because truth in a war zone cannot exist with certainty.
Now back to Neilson. O'Brein's narrative is only on the soldiers' and the devastation they felt with the deaths of their men and the constant strain of the war zone on them; however, Neilson argues that to be ab effective Vietnam novel, O'Brien should have focused on the devastation the caused and the real pain they felt in return. But because he accepts the theories and pillars of postmodernism, O'Brien's best grasp of the truth and pain of Vietnam is from his own experience and a separate entity from generalizations of the war. He himself cannot understand the amount of devastation caused in Vietnam, and therefore cannot rewrite the prevailing perception of the Vietnam war, and does not try to. Postmodernism teaches us that the truth exists in many forms, so the truth of Vietnam is different for everyone; for some it is the uprising of the youth in our country, or an example of the terrible foreign policy out country can implement, or even the pain Vietnam continues to suffer from. Neilson's argument that O'Brien's book does not seek to change the view point of the masses of Americans (which in hindsight is true) but it cannot because of its postmodern structure and form.
