In The Lake of the Woods sold well and was much adulated in 1994. It's been on my reading list for a long time, and I've finally gotten around to it. In plot, it's uncannily reminiscent of Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (on which I reported some months ago). Wilson's novel is post-WWII; O'Brien's is post-Vietnam. In each novel, the semi-autobiographical ex-soldier protagonist has committed unspeakable acts that he conceals from his loving wife; his silence embitters the marriage. In both books, the central figure embarks an ambitious career, but he is haunted by his past. Eventually, by force of circumstance, closeted history re-emerges and a crisis is precipitated. Deliberate and willed amnesia is the common theme of both books — in fact, neither the characters nor their creators can bring themselves to confront the past except obliquely.
I've come to In The Lake of the Woods thirteen years too late. I'm sure that it had immediacy and power when it was fresh and new, but now it seems contrived and obvious. The machinery of the novel — multiple interlocking flashbacks, third-person commentary, authorial interjections, etc. — may have worked in 1994, but is now marvelously self-conscious and ostentatiously "literary." I know that Vietnam was a trauma for all concerned and I respect O'Brien's sincerity and pain. I just wish In the Lake of the Woods weren't so thin and pseudo-mysterious and evasive.
Is there a great novel of Americans in Vietnam or is it still waiting to be written? It was a particularly ugly war and it was the watershed experience for people of my particular generation. Do we have a War and Peace?
Question: How many masterpieces would it take to compensate for the disaster? Answer: There isn't enough paper.
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