Literature is a medium of truth-telling. Literature about literature is a medium of truth about truth. Tim O’Brien’s fictionalization of experiences in the Vietnam war, “The Things They Carried,” has the weight of a memoir unburned by facts. The question of fiction’s ability to uncover truth better than events is raised and answered at the same time. The work as a whole affirms this idea. With etudes of events told straight, elevated by commentary by the author, who, in the capacity of the book, is a character himself, the collection of stories gives the true experiences of war through fiction. At the outset, the work is labeled as a work of fiction, though the author had been in Vietnam. But it is a work more truthful than the lies facts