My presentation will explore the connections between two novels not often thought of together: Anne Michael's _Fugitive Pieces_ and Tim O'Brien's _The Things They Carried_. The importance and limitations of storytelling is of central importance to both of them, and in particular storytelling as a way of dealing with traumatic memory. In _Fugitive Pieces)_ both of the narrators attempt to come to terms with the Holocaust, and in _The Things They Carried_ the narrator Tim attempts to deal with his memories of serving in the Vietnam War. There are striking similarities between their approaches, such as the parallels that can be drawn between Jakob Beer's storytelling about his younger sister Bella and Tim's storytelling about the young Vietnamese soldier he (supposedly) killed. They are trying to find a way to talk about what is almost unspeakable. Storytelling can also harness for good the otherwise ambivalent power of language, which can both offer healing and completely dehumanize the victims of war and genocide. However, memory is such a deeply embodied force that storytelling alone does not have the power to totally heal. Often, what haunts the narrators of _Fugitive Pieces_ and _The Things They Carried_ the most are fragmented bits of memory that cannot be tied down into any sort of coherent narrative. In the end, what saves the narrators is the same physical world that condemned them to suffering: Tim must revisit the physical terrain of Vietnam before he can finally tell his daughter that "That's all finished," and Jakob Beer, the first narrator of _Fugitive Pieces_, finally finds grounding in his relationship with his second wife Michaela. Most striking of all, however, might be the closing image in _Fugitive Pieces_ of an old couple who survived the Holocaust: "like a miraculous circuit, each draws strength from the other." I would also like to briefly address the striking similarities in the way that O'Brien and Michaels each talk about their work: each believes strongly in the centrality of storytelling and getting the reader to make the story his or her own.
