Categories
GUEST EDITOR

From The Desk Of Wooden Wand: “The Things They Carried” By Tim O’Brien

James Jackson Toth (better known by his nom de plume, Wooden Wand) and MAGNET go way back. We’ve been rabidly following his prolific, genre-eschewing career over the last decade: 100-plus records and counting, from short run seven-inches and handmade CD-Rs to major releases on some of the world’s most respected indie labels, including Kill Rock Stars, Ecstatic Peace and Young God, covering everything from the freakiest of folk to the most American rock ‘n’ roll money can buy. We’ve been lucky enough to have him as guest editor of magnetmagazine.com a couple of other times over the years, and he’s hooked us up with great mix tapes and been a constant source of great discussions about music. Toth will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with him.

Toth: Not sure how I missed this classic novel during my brief, legendary-in-some-circles obsession with books about Vietnam (Michael Herr’s Dispatches is still a favorite), but I finally got around to reading it and devoured it in just a few sittings. There is a humanity and elegance to Tim O’Brien’s writing that I find mostly absent from other “wartime” literature, and I found his descriptive prose engrossing and often beautiful, despite the subject matter. People occasionally ask me what inspires me to write the lyrics I do, and I tell them it is just as often authors like O’Brien as any classic songwriter in the tradition.

Video after the jump.