Dad's Maybe Book

by Tim O'Brien

Overview

Best-selling author Tim O’Brien shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humor, and rewards of raising two sons.

“We are all writing our maybe books full of maybe tomorrows, and each maybe tomorrow brings another maybe tomorrow, and then another, until the last line of the last page receives its period.”
 
In 2003, already an older father, National Book Award–winning novelist Tim O’Brien resolved to give his young sons what he wished his own father had given to him—a few scraps of paper signed “Love, Dad.” Maybe a word of advice. Maybe a sentence or two about some long-ago Christmas Eve. Maybe some scattered glimpses of their rapidly aging father, a man they might never really know. For the next fifteen years, the author talked to his sons on paper, as if they were adults, imagining what they might want to hear from a father who was no longer among the living.
 
O’Brien traverses the great variety of human experience and emotion, moving from soccer games to warfare to risqué lullabies, from alcoholism to magic shows to history lessons to bittersweet bedtime stories, but always returning to a father’s soul-saving love for his sons.
 
The result is Dad’s Maybe Book, a funny, tender, wise, and enduring literary achievement that will squeeze the reader’s heart with joy and recognition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780618039708
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/14/2019
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

TIM O’BRIEN received the National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are The Things They Carried, Pulitzer Finalist and a New York Times Book of the Century, and In the Lake of the Woods, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing.

Date of Birth:

October 1, 1946

Place of Birth:

Austin, Minnesota

Education:

B.A., Macalester College, 1968; Graduate study at Harvard University

Table of Contents

1 A Letter to My Son 1

2 A Maybe Book (I) 5

3 Row, Row 9

4 Skin 22

5 Trusting Story 23

6 First Words 33

7 Home School 34

8 The Best of Times 40

9 Highballs 45

10 Spelling Lesson 49

11 Home School 50

12 Hygiene 58

3 The Magic Show (I) 59

14 Abashment 69

15 Sushi 70

16 Pride (I) 75

17 Balance 78

18 Child's Play 90

19 Telling Tales (I) 91

20 Telling Tales (II) 97

21 Pride (II) 101

22 What If? 110

23 Home School 112

24 Home School 119

25 The Old Testament 123

26 Timmy and Tad and Papa and I (I) 124

27 The Language of Little Boys 150

28 Home School 154

29 Turkey Capital of the World 158

30 Pride (III) 172

31 Pacifism 179

32 Timmy and Tad and Papa and I (II) 181

33 Home School 193

34 Home School 198

35 Easier Homework 231

36 Timmy's Bedroom Door 232

37 Lip Kissing 235

38 The King of Slippery 236

39 Timmy and Tad and Papa and I (III) 241

40 Timmy's Gamble 252

41 Dulce et Decorum Est 253

42 Pride (IV) 255

43 War Buddies 258

44 A May be Book (II) 269

45 The Magic Show (II) 273

46 Practical Magic 276

47 An Immodest and Altogether Earnest Proposal 277

48 The Golden Viking 289

49 Timmy and Tad and Papa and I (IV) 296

50 Getting Cut 309

51 Home School 318

52 Home School 321

53 The Debating Society 324

54 Sushi, Sushi, Sushi 328

55 Timmy and Tad and Papa and I (V) 332

56 Into the Volcano 345

57 And into the Stew Pot 349

58 Lesson Plans 356

59 Tad's Literary Advice 365

60 One Last Lesson Plan 366

Acknowledgments 371

Notes on Sources 373

Editorial Reviews

09/23/2019

This tender memoir begins in 2003, when 58-year-old novelist O’Brien (The Things They Carried) has a one-year-old son and another one on the way. In the format of letters to his sons, he shares the joys of fatherhood, which are muted by the prospect that his children may know him only as an old man—or not know him at all (“Life is fragile. Hearts go still”). For the next 15 years, with the ashes of his father in an urn on his bookcase, O’Brien writes for his children what he wished his father had left him: “Some scraps of paper signed ‘Love Dad’.” O’Brien covers nights of colic, basketball games, and homework battles, but this is not a compendium of cute witticisms. He taps into the dark corners of his mind, sharing an analysis of, say, the parallels between the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775 and his 1969 tour of duty in Vietnam’s Quang Ngai Province. He then presents a well-reasoned argument for replacing the word “war” with the phrase “killing people, including children,” and war’s impact on culture. O’Brien concludes with a humorous, moving letter of instruction for his 100th birthday. With great candor, O’Brien succeeds in conveying the urgency parents may feel at any age, as they ready their children for life without them. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

If this does, in fact, prove to be the last thing he writes, it is a touching conclusion to a literary career that has left us with a shelf of enduring novels, memoirs and short stories. Mr. O’Brien, like Hemingway, didn’t necessarily write about war as much as something larger: our shared humanity.” —Wall Street Journal “[A] stirring blend of memoir, letters to his young sons, and meditations on the humbling nature of parenthood . . . It’s a work that’s the spiritual inheritor of John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley and Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country. Like those, Dad’s Maybe Book dwells on the state of America and American life. He takes absolutism to task, finds qualifications for his own pacifism and considers the paradox of a moral society that allows for forever war.”  —TIME Magazine “Brilliant . . . To say the book is about ‘fatherhood’ is akin to saying that Catch-22  is about World War II.” —VVA Veteran (Vietnam Veterans of America) “This moving, heart-wrenching book, so raw in the best of all senses, will make you weep after exulting in life’s energies and 'maybes.' It is genuinely human at every level." —Providence Journal “[A] poignant, resolute meditation on parenthood and on life.”  —The Oregonian “Tim O’Brien is back in top form . . . Rather than as a war writer, O’Brien might also object to being thought of as a spiritual writer, the way one thinks of Camus, Hemingway, or Tolstoy. But there he is. One of the essentials.” —DeWitt Henry,Woven Tale Press “This book should resonate with any parent who lies awake at night pondering the meaning of existence and what sort of legacy should be left behind . . . a satisfying finale to O’Brien’s illustrious career.” —Lincoln Journal Star   “A bountiful treasury of fatherly advice, memoir, literary criticism, history, political commentary, and a dash of magic and miracles . . . There are smiles and tears awaiting the reader on every page of this often emotionally charged book, and enough wisdom in it about what it means to be a parent, and a decent human being, to fuel many hours of personal recollection and reflection.” —BookReporter   “A gorgeous book, a love letter and legacy.” —Psychology Today’s “One True Thing” blog   “This loving gift to [O’Brien’s] now-teenage sons is sprinkled with literary criticism, writing tips, thoughts on his relationship with his father and philosophy on aging and mortality . . . Tender and hilarious.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “[O'Brien] poignantly captures the trials of parenthood... Interspersed throughout are memoiristic chapters sharing his fears and political awakening during his military service in Vietnam and passionately articulating his antiwar beliefs. Like most dads, O'Brien carries the hopes, fears, and dreams of his children in his own heart.”  —Booklist   “A warm account of life as an older dad with two growing sons.” —Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel   “A collection of&mdash —

From the Publisher

2019-07-28
Ruminations and reminiscences of an author—now in his 70s—about fatherhood, writing, and death.

O'Brien (July, July, 2002, etc.), who achieved considerable literary fame with both Going After Cacciato (1978) and The Things They Carried (1990), returns with an eclectic assembly of pieces that grow increasingly valedictory as the idea of mortality creeps in. (The title comes from the author's uncertainty about his ability to assemble these pieces in a single volume.) He begins and ends with a letter: The initial one is to his first son (from 2003); the terminal one, to his two sons, both of whom are now teens (the present). Throughout the book, there are a number of recurring sections: "Home School" (lessons for his sons to accomplish), "The Magic Show" (about his long interest in magic), and "Pride" (about his feelings for his sons' accomplishments). O'Brien also writes often about his own father. One literary figure emerges as almost a member of the family: Ernest Hemingway. The author loves Hemingway's work (except when he doesn't) and often gives his sons some of Papa's most celebrated stories to read and think and write about. Near the end is a kind of stand-alone essay about Hemingway's writings about war and death, which O'Brien realizes is Hemingway's real subject. Other celebrated literary figures pop up in the text, including Elizabeth Bishop, Andrew Marvell, George Orwell, and Flannery O'Connor. Although O'Brien's strong anti-war feelings are prominent throughout, his principal interest is fatherhood—specifically, at becoming a father later in his life and realizing that he will miss so much of his sons' lives. He includes touching and amusing stories about his toddler sons, about the sadness he felt when his older son became a teen and began to distance himself, and about his anguish when his sons failed at something.

A miscellany of paternal pride (and frustration) darkened by the author's increasing realizations of his mortality.

Kirkus Reviews

This audiobook is a memoir, a tribute, and a collection of advice by a 58-year-old first-time father who knows he loves his children and wants to be there, if not physically, then spiritually—as a wise guide throughout life’s challenges. Bestselling author Tim O’Brien (THE THINGS THEY CARRIED) narrates with a gravelly delivery and a tone of love and hope for his sons, knowing the struggles he had with his father and the special meaning that relationship has for boys. O’Brien uses judicious pacing and a comic tone to share wisdom, love, and a list of books for the boys to read. He also provides insight into his life as a writer. We are all the better for getting to know the thoughts and experiences of this eclectic author in his own voice. R.O. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile

This audiobook is a memoir, a tribute, and a collection of advice by a 58-year-old first-time father who knows he loves his children and wants to be there, if not physically, then spiritually—as a wise guide throughout life’s challenges. Bestselling author Tim O’Brien (THE THINGS THEY CARRIED) narrates with a gravelly delivery and a tone of love and hope for his sons, knowing the struggles he had with his father and the special meaning that relationship has for boys. O’Brien uses judicious pacing and a comic tone to share wisdom, love, and a list of books for the boys to read. He also provides insight into his life as a writer. We are all the better for getting to know the thoughts and experiences of this eclectic author in his own voice. R.O. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile