[FEMALE NARRTOR] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part by

Hillco Partners, a Texas
government affairs consultancy,

Claire and Carl Stuart,

and by Laura and John Beckworth,
Hobby Family Foundation.

[EVAN SMITH] I'm Evan Smith.

His acclaimed novels include

"The Things They Carried,"

"July, July"

and "Going After Cacciato,"

which won the National Book
Award in fiction 40 years ago.

His memoir, "Dad's Maybe
Book" has just been published.

He's Tim O'Brien,
this is Overheard.

[SMITH] Let's be honest,

is this about the
ability to learn

or is this about the experience

of not having been
taught properly?

How have you avoided what
has befallen other nations

in Africa and...

You could say that
he made his own bed,

but you caused him
to sleep in it.

You know, you saw a
problem and over time,

took it on and...

Let's start with the sizzle
before we get to the steak.

Are you gonna run for President?

I think I just got an
F from you, actually.

This is Overheard.

(audience applauding)

[SMITH] Tim O'Brien, welcome.

[TIM O'BRIEN] Great
pleasure, thank you.

[SMITH] Good to see you again.

[O'BRIEN] You too.

[SMITH] This book, I was
so moved by this book,

which is called "Dad's
Maybe Book," because?

[O'BRIEN] Well,
because for 17 years,

it was a maybe book.

[SMITH] Didn't know that it
would actually get done, right?

[O'BRIEN] I wasn't sure I was
even writing a book, Evan.

I began the book as a little

two page love letter

to my kids.

I'm an older father, or
you can subtract the -er.

I'm an old father.

[SMITH] Right.

First son born at 58.

[O'BRIEN] 56, I think.

I could be wrong.

(audience laughing)

[SMITH] I was trying
to do the math

at various points in this

and I just stopped 'cause
I went into journalism

not to do math so I
thought, "Don't do it."

But, mid-50s.

[O'BRIEN] Late to mid.
[SMITH] Late to mid fifties.

[O'BRIEN] Somewhere in there.

[SMITH] And you're
in your mid-70s now.

[O'BRIEN] Right, and I wanted
to leave behind for my kids

what I wish my own
father had left for me.

Some messages that
I could pick up

as a middle age or older guy

and read something that
my dad had left for me,

maybe a message of
love or of instruction.

[SMITH] Right.

[O'BRIEN] An admonishment.

And as an older father,

I felt that squeeze of mortality

that I'd felt years
before in Vietnam.

And the book was written
not to be a book, at first,

just for the kids.

And gradually pages accumulated.

And, my wife and my children

would talk about this.

And at one point, my younger
kid, his name is Tad,

suggested, you know,

he said to me, "Will this
ever really be a book?"

And I said, "Well, sometimes
they end up in trashcans."

Sometimes, as many of mine
have, just thrown away.

So I said "Maybe."

And he said, "Well,
call it what it is.

"Call it your maybe book."

He said, "Tell the
truth for a change."

[SMITH] Right, yeah.

[O'BRIEN] Because I've been
writing novels all this time.

[SMITH] Well, that's right,
it's truth in advertising.

It was your maybe book,

but it actually turned
out to be an actual thing.

It is as you describe it.

It is a series of short
and longer letters, almost,

in chapter form

to your sons who
are now how old?

[O'BRIEN] 16 and 14.

[SMITH] 16 and 14.

But as you say, you started
out as an older father,

conscious of the fact
that as they got older,

the way these things work,

you're gonna get older.

And when they hit an age
where it would be time

for them to really get
to know you as a person,

you would hopefully
still be with them,

but at least would be much older

and probably a good idea to
commit this stuff to paper now

for all time.

[O'BRIEN] Yeah, there's
a line in the book

that when my children
get to know me

they will know an old man.

[SMITH] They'll know
an old man, right.

[O'BRIEN] And they're
there now, in a way.

I'm 73 today, it's my birthday.

[SMITH] Today's your
birthday, as we sit here.

(audience applauding)

Actually, if you look in that
cup, there's cake, actually.

[O'BRIEN] I thought
this was rum.

[SMITH] It seemed kind of lumpy.

Happy birthday to you.

[O'BRIEN] Thank you, thank you.

[SMITH] Happy birthday to you.

[O'BRIEN] It's like
celebrating a hernia, however.

[SMITH] Being that age?

[O'BRIEN] You get
to be that old.

[SMITH] But you know, the idea
of having kids at that age,

the age that you did,

is still unusual,

people still have kids
at a much earlier age,

but you live in a
city, Austin, Texas,

that is like the Peoples
Republic of Peter Pan Syndrome.

[O'BRIEN] It is, yes.

[SMITH] I mean, this is not
the most unusual phenomemon

where you live,

but in most places,

deciding to have
a kid at that age,

there are grandparents
at your age.

[O'BRIEN] Oh, I know.

All of my own children's friends

have parents who are at least

a full generation
younger than I am.

All of them.

There may be one exception,

who in fact, might be in
this room right now with us,

but aside from that person.

So they're conscious of my gray
hair and my hearing problems

to the point at which,

maybe five years ago

when he was nine or so, ten,

my older son, Timmy,

began coming crying
to me at night

saying, "You're old
and you're gonna die."

And I mean really crying.

[SMITH] Yeah.

[O'BRIEN] Night after night,

he couldn't get it
out of his head.

And I couldn't lie to him.

The best I could do was
say, "Yeah, I know,"

and not much beyond that.

And the book, in a way,

is a way of dealing
with something,

which on the surface may
seem morbid to people,

consciousness of the
finality of our own lives,

but to me it's not
in the least morbid.

It's part of the human
experience, life and death.

And there's a certain

wisdom and excitement

that comes with being
a father at my age.

I doubt that at 39 or 29,

I would have been so utterly
devoted to my children,

that I would give up
writing books for 17 years.

[SMITH] Because, in fact,
the last book you published,

that's an excellent point,

the last book you published,
"July, July" is 2002.

[O'BRIEN] Yeah.

[SMITH] It has been
literally 17 years

since you published a book,

and you're someone who has
had an extraordinary career,

your books have
been bestsellers,

they've won awards,

you've been revered, correctly,

by people inside and
outside of book publishing.

And yet for 17 years,
no Tim O'Brien books

because you wanted to be a dad.

You made a decision.

[O'BRIEN] I made a choice that
you cannot be a good father,

the chief requirement
of being a good father

is to be present.

You can't do anything
else without being there.

And as a writer who would
squirrel himself away

in a room for

12, 15 hours a day writing,

and then when I come
out of that room

full of all the stresses
that a writer feels.

Is the book any good?
Will people like it?

Will I like it? The characters
going through your head,

you're not wholly present.

[SMITH] You're no longer
working, but you're working.

[O'BRIEN] You're still working.

[SMITH] You're still working.

[O'BRIEN] And I just,

I can't be a father again.

[SMITH] You made a
choice and you knew

that you were never
gonna get that time back.

[O'BRIEN] Yeah, and the time
will not be returned to me.

[SMITH] Can I tell
you something?

As a person who had a kid
a little earlier than you,

first child born at 30,

second child born at 34.

I was comforted to see
that you didn't know

a hell of a lot more about
being a parent at your age

than I did.

I thought that the problem
was, you know, youth,

was the problem.

No, it's hard to be a parent

whether you're 30 or
whether you're 56.

[O'BRIEN] Of course.

[SMITH] Whatever it is, right?

[O'BRIEN] Of course.

[SMITH] It is a mystery,
parenthood is a mystery.

Maybe you never solve the
mystery of parenthood,

but you're no better
prepared to solve it

at 56 than you are at 30.

[O'BRIEN] No.

[SMITH] So this
book is about you,

and this book is
also about them.

[O'BRIEN] Yes.

[SMITH] But this book is
also about two other things.

It's about your own father,

and invariably because
everything you write

is about Vietnam and
the experience of
having been at war,

it's about that.

Now, it is not fiction,
it's non-fiction.

Your other books are novels.

I wanna come to the
Vietnam thing in a second,

but I really want you
to talk about your dad

because your dad is a very
present character in this book,

even though, as you say,

you wanted to turn the page
from your own experience

and have a different
experience with your own kids.

But I want you to
talk about your dad

because I think
your dad really does

jump off the page in this book.

[O'BRIEN] Well, I can
summarize it quickly.

I idolized my father.

He was fun to be
with, he was funny,

he loved to read.

Children loved him,
he loved children.

But he was an alcoholic,
and a bad one.

He was institutionalized
twice in my childhood,

so he was absent from the
house for long swaths of time.

[SMITH] Physically absent.

[O'BRIEN] Physically absent,

and when he was present,

he was present

with friend vodka going
through his veins.

It was chemistry.

He was not a bad man.

And in most ways, when sober,

a great guy

to have as a father.

I'll never know if
he even liked me,

much less loved me.

I suspect he--

If he did love me, his
love was utterly silent.

And the impression I got

as an eight, nine, ten,

twelve year-old kid growing up,

was he didn't like me very much,

constantly finding fault

with how I looked,
the things I did,

how straight I could throw a
baseball, things like that.

This is, I was--

I was afraid of him,

that I remember setting up an
alarm system in my bedroom,

two little bells
and some string,

so if the door opened
I'd be awakened.

And I remember going
up into the kitchen

and taking all the sharpest
knives out of the drawers

and hiding them in my room

because when he did drink,

it was a dangerous household.

The tensions were terrible.

And it didn't really end

until many decades later

when he finally got
too old to drink.

He just couldn't.

At which point we did
make a kind of peace.

He moved here to
Texas, to San Antonio,

to a retirement
home with my mom,

and a kind of

strange peace settled in.

It wasn't father son talk,

it was just the
absence of something

which was the
absence of tension.

[SMITH] Yeah, it's amazing.

And it's again, so vivid now,

thinking about as
you've described it,

and part of that I think may be

his generation was just
a different generation.

[O'BRIEN] It was.

[SMITH] To look at the world

and the responsibilities
of parenting,

the relationship with the
younger generation differently,

but he sounds like, as
well, a singular character.

Very specific.

And again, your exercise
as you chronicle it here,

of being a good parent,

is necessarily a reaction
as much to that--

[O'BRIEN] It is.

[SMITH] --as it is to anything.

It's just like
elections are always

about the last year's
then the next year's.

Parenting is in some
ways about the last

as much as it is about the next.

[O'BRIEN] Very true.

And oddly, even my experience
as a soldier in Vietnam,

which I know you're
going to move to,

is related to my dad.

He had been a sailor
during World War II,

he was at Iwo Jima, Okinawa,

and I remember
fondling his medals

which he kept in a little
drawer under his socks

in his bureau.

I wanted to please
my dad so badly.

And that fed into my ultimately

saying "yes" to
a war I despised.

[SMITH] Right, but as you
correctly pointed out,

because you refer in here
to the generation of,

or I should say I've
heard you talk about,

I don't know if it's
literally in this book

so much as what you've said,

you talk about the
contemporary generation

of people who've
just come back from

Iraq, Afghanistan, and all that,

the difference
between them and you

is they made the decision.
It was their choice to go.

[O'BRIEN] Very much.

[SMITH] Your generation,
people like you,

you went because that
was what you had to do.

You had to go as opposed
to you chose to go.

And that's a big difference.

[O'BRIEN] It's a big difference.

In the Vietnam War, the
wolf was at the door

for all the families.

The draft was there,

and all the families
across America

were in one way or
another confronted

with personal, moral choice.

You had to put your
body somewhere,

in a jail or in Canada,

or in a war.

But you had to
park it somewhere.

And, as you say, the
fundamental difference now

is that wolf is
only at the doors

of those who voluntarily,

whose sons or daughters
voluntarily choose
to go to a war.

[SMITH] And we
respect the decision

because it is not everybody
who makes the choice

to sacrifice themself
and their lives,

whether they come
back changed or not.

[O'BRIEN] Absolutely.

[SMITH] Who doesn't come
back changed, right--

- -for their country?

We respect the choice,
but it is a choice.

[O'BRIEN] It is a choice.

[SMITH] It's a vastly
different thing.

So let's come back around
to Vietnam in a second.

By my estimation, this is your
first real non-fiction book.

[O'BRIEN] Since my very first.

[SMITH] Since the
very, very first.

[O'BRIEN] The very
first book when I was...

[SMITH] Which was a
war memoir, right?

[O'BRIEN] It was a
memoir of time at war.

[SMITH] But every
book has also been,

to one degree or another,

so straightforwardly or not,

it's been about Vietnam,
it's been about the war.

[O'BRIEN] Yeah, in
one degree or another,

maybe not Vietnam, per se.

[SMITH] But the experience.

[O'BRIEN] The experience
of being 21 years old

and maybe dying
with your next step.

And the experience of
making moral choices,

not just to go to a war but
how do you behave in a war?

It's easy to lose
your moral gyroscope

when there's frenzy and
death all around you.

[SMITH] And Vietnam was a
long time ago, at this point.

But as you say, I've
heard you say many times,

war goes on and on in memory.

[O'BRIEN] It does.

[SMITH] It doesn't
really ever end

as a reference point for you
or as a backdrop for you.

[O'BRIEN] It doesn't, nor
does it end for my children.

They have to live with a father

who goes silent and goes sad,

whose memories it'll
stare into space.

So we have to count among

those who are influenced by wars

that go on and echo
on through history.

What about the mothers who
have lost their children

in a war?

Wars don't end for them when
you sign a peace treaty.

[SMITH] And in some
places, years after, right?

I mean years after--
[O'BRIEN] Years after.

[SMITH] --a mother will
have or someone will have,

a family member will have
this moment of awareness.

[O'BRIEN] Even to this day
there is some 93-year-old woman

or 98-year-old woman
down in Orlando, Florida

who wakes up at
two in the morning

and says, "Where's my baby?"

[SMITH] Right.

[O'BRIEN] Her baby has
been dead for 50 years.

[SMITH] 50 years, right.

[O'BRIEN] But it
hasn't left her.

And it's so easy for Americans,

and for all of us,
not just Americans,

to forget

that when you sign
a peace treaty,

the war doesn't
stop in the heads

not just of the soldiers

but of everyone who
surrounds soldiers.

[SMITH] You can look
away but it's not over.

I was struck so much

by your participation

in the television
series "This Is Us,"

which in its third season,

had a series of episodes related
to the Vietnam experience

that you co-authored, you
co-wrote those scripts.

And you incorporated aspects

of your own
experience in Vietnam,

into this storyline.

[O'BRIEN] I did.

[SMITH] And it struck me
again how it's never over.

It's a constantly replenishing
source of material.

It's still very emotional.

I'm remembering something
involving from that,

help me flesh this out,

something involving
fishing with grenades.

[O'BRIEN] Yeah, the incident
that was recounted in

"This Is Us,"

[SMITH] In the series.

[O'BRIEN] --in the series,

occurred in different
form in my own experience.

We were encamped along
the South China Sea.

Some of my fellow
soldiers would go fishing.

They would get into
these round boats,

about twice the size
of this round table,

and they'd push it
out into the waves

and then they were
able to pole it out

into the deeper water.

And they would go
fishing not with hooks,

and they fished
with hand grenades.

They'd throw in hand
grenades to blow the fish up.

It was a kind of
prankster fishing.

[SMITH] Yeah.

[O'BRIEN] It wasn't fishing.

They did it for fun.

You're 22 years old and you
got a crate of hand grenades.

Let's have some fun.

But it turned unfunny
on a July day in '69

when one of my friends
was out in a boat,

and the grenades had gotten wet,

and greasy-feeling,

and dropped one of them
after pulling the pin,

and it fell into the boat,

and he was killed.

And I and maybe eight other
guys had to wade out there,

and pull what had
essentially been,

it was basically mush.

It was like pulling
slush out of a boat.

[SMITH] Oh, God.

[O'BRIEN] A man who
was not engaged,

he was in a war but he
wasn't engaged in warfare.

He was engaged in
being a kid, basically.

It stuck with me,

partly because it was such
a terrible thing to look at,

but partly because I liked
the guy, and all these years--

And so when "This Is Us"
was looking for something

really terrible
that wasn't present

in every other Vietnam movie,

that was translated to the

brother of a leading character

dropping a grenade.

Only an American doesn't die,
it's a little Vietnamese boy.

[SMITH] Kid, right, yeah.

[O'BRIEN] And, I
think it worked.

It's tough on television
to do what you can do

in full theatrical movies.

It's hard to do it,

partly because "This Is Us"
is interrupted by commercials,

unlike virtually every
other show I watch.

But it's a well-written show
and it's a serious show.

When you say
co-authored, yeah, I did,

but the real arbiter of
what goes on the show

is its creator, as it should
be, a guy named Dan Fogelman,

and he and I did it together.

And I always deferred to him.

I get to leave the show.

I don't do it anymore,
but he's still doing it.

[SMITH] So, roll forward
to what happens now.

Your kids are in the
upper grades of school.

World's a dangerous place.

[O'BRIEN] Uh huh.

[SMITH] Would you
send your kids off?

Would you suggest, if
your kids came to you

and said we wanna
follow in your footsteps

and your dad's footsteps,

and go off and serve,
again by choice,

because presumably it
will still be by choice.

Do you have any
reservations about that

beyond the obvious
reservations as a parent

not wanting to put their
kids in harm's way?

[O'BRIEN] Well, I
don't have the problems

that other parents might have.

My children have lived
with me now for 17 years,

or 16 years and 14
years, respectively.

They know how I feel,

they know I was a soldier,

they know I didn't like it,

they know I didn't
believe in the rectitude

of our war in Vietnam.

They know that I believe that
a certain blood was shed,

3 million Vietnamese,
60,000 Americans,

for uncertain reasons.

The reasons were disputed

through families
and across America.

Ambiguity everywhere,

and so did my children
understand this.

I did tell them one evening

and I wrote about
it in the book.

I said, "You know, just
because I did something,

"doesn't mean you
have to do it."

[SMITH] Right.

[O'BRIEN] And Tad said,
"You mean like smoking?"

(audience laughing)

I said, "Yeah, great example."

[SMITH] That's probably
on the list, yeah.

[O'BRIEN] And Timmy said,
"You mean like swearing?"

and I said, "Yeah, that
belongs on the list."

And I said to them,

"You know, if your
dad were a bully,

"would you start
beating up on teachers?"

And Tad said, "Well, not
really, not like you."

Meaning, I've got a temper
that came out of Vietnam

that I get outraged
quickly and lose it,

that I didn't have
prior to the war.

[SMITH] And all
these years later,

[O'BRIEN] It'll come out.

[SMITH] It goes on and on.

[O'BRIEN] Another example.

So they know how I feel.

As a parent you can't
tell a kid go to a war.

[SMITH] Right, but
you understand, Tim,

as much as it was
that experience as
you just described,

at the same time there's
something really honorable

about putting yourself
in that situation.

I mean, you could
understand where

everything else that you've
said, not withstanding,

they may say there's a
lot of honor and dignity

in making that choice.

[O'BRIEN] There is.

I mean, all human beings have
to make our moral choices.

The children will be
independent human beings.

I've done my best to
give them my feelings

about the world we live in.

I don't think you
should kill people

unless you're pretty sure
it's the right thing to do.

[SMITH] Yeah.

[O'BRIEN] Vietnam, we weren't
pretty sure as a country.

We were totally divided.

That's the kind of
thing I can say to a kid

but he has to--

[SMITH] Make the choice himself.

[O'BRIEN] --make the choice.

[SMITH] It's almost
always confusing

whether it's the right
thing or not, right?

So I wanna say as we wrap here,

I wanna talk about
the end of this book.

So the last bit in this book

is effectively a letter to them

many years in the future.

[O'BRIEN] Yes.

[SMITH] After you are
presumed to be long gone.

[O'BRIEN] Yeah, it's a letter--

[SMITH] It was the part
that really got me.

It was the part that got me.

[O'BRIEN] Good, got to
me too, to write it.

It's a letter to Timmy and Tad

that on my 100th birthday I
asked them to do something.

I'll be dead by then.

Most likely.

And if I'm not, do it on my
110th birthday, but do it.

Go play a round
of golf together,

just not as golfers,

but for the quietude
and the time together,

the walking.

And feel the joy

of your feet

treading on the
ground beneath you

and feel your own

trajectory through life,

which is short, as life is,

and often tenuous as life is.

Golf balls go astray,
and so do people.

But feel that this is something

and pretend that I'm with you.

I won't be.

Have a couple of
drinks afterwards,

and share a few stories
about your youth,

maybe even about me.

Although my memory by that
point will be very faded,

if they remember at all.

Much of my childhood
has evaporated.

I don't remember much.

But it's a way of

trying to give my
children a message.

As I said way back in our talk,

I wish my dad had said
something like that,

where on the anniversary

of his 100th birthday,

I would be following his voice

saying go play a round of golf

or go to a baseball game

in his memory.

I think I do live in
fear of being forgotten

by my own children.

[SMITH] You won't be forgotten.

I mean the thing
about this book is

you are not gonna
be forgotten anyway,

but the accomplishment
of this book

is that I think it
rose to meet the goal.

You hit it.

[O'BRIEN] Good.

[SMITH] And the last
words in the book are

"I loved you. Dad."

That's how you signed this.

[O'BRIEN] It is.

I was in Paris when I
wrote that last line.

[SMITH] Oh man, it just got me.

[O'BRIEN] And my wife read
the conclusion and she said,

"You can't write 'I
loved you,' past tense."

And I said, "I think
it's gotta be that way."

[SMITH] It's
perfectly on message.

[O'BRIEN] And Meredith
finally agreed.

[SMITH] Great.

Tim, it's good to be with you.

Congratulations on the book,

and let's hope
it's a big success

as everything else you've done.

[O'BRIEN] Thank
you, thanks so much.

[SMITH] Tim O'Brien.

(audience applauding)

[SMITH] We'd love to have
you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at
klru.org/overheard

to find invitations
to interviews,

Q and A's with our
audience and guests,

and an archive of past episodes.

[O'BRIEN] My object is not to
appeal to the intellect alone,

although partly,

but it's to appeal
to your stomach

and to your heart and
the back of your neck.

And with "Dad's Maybe Book,"

that was my effort.

I didn't wanna write
a parenting book.

I don't have any advice to give.

[NARRATOR] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part by

Hillco Partners, a Texas
government affairs consultancy,

Claire and Carl Stuart,

and by Laura and John Beckworth,
Hobby Family Foundation.

(chimes)