Going After Cacciato

published	September 1st 1999 by Broadway
first published	1978
binding	Paperback
isbn	0767904427 (isbn13: 9780767904421)
ebook
pages	352
literary awards	1979 National Book Award winner
description	"In October, near the end of the month, Cacciato left the war." In Tim O'Brien's novel Going After Cacciato the theater of...more [close] "In October, near the end of the month, Cacciato left the war." In Tim O'Brien's novel Going After Cacciato the theater of war becomes the theater of the absurd as a private deserts his post in Vietnam, intent on walking 8,000 miles to Paris for the peace talks. The remaining members of his squad are sent after him, but what happens then is anybody's guess: "The facts were simple: They went after Cacciato, they chased him into the mountains, they tried hard. They cornered him on a small grassy hill. They surrounded the hill. They waited through the night. And at dawn they shot the sky full of flares and then they moved in.... That was the end of it. The last known fact. What remained were possibilities." It is these possibilities that make O'Brien's National Book Award-winning novel so extraordinary. Told from the perspective of squad member Paul Berlin, the search for Cacciato soon enters the realm of the surreal as the men find themselves following an elusive trail of chocolate M&M's through the jungles of Indochina, across India, Iran, Greece, and Yugoslavia to the streets of Paris. The details of this hallucinatory journey alternate with feverish memories of the war--men maimed by landmines, killed in tunnels, engaged in casual acts of brutality that would be unthinkable anywhere else. Reminiscent of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Going After Cacciato dishes up a brilliant mix of ferocious comedy and bleak horror that serves to illuminate both the complex psychology of men in battle and the overarching insanity of war. --Alix Wilber [close]
date added	11-17-06 edit book

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Sophia rated it:

11/04/07

The subjective nature of life and reality has driven people to seek objective counsel in religion, astrology, spirituality, or any other source that claims some kind of sturdiness in a world of uncertainty. Theodor Adorno, a twentieth century philosopher, suggests that literature shouldn’t play to this weakness of the mind for “completeness and continuity” which follows an “epistemological impulse”. Getting at truth means exposing different angles, even if they contradict. “Reality...more The subjective nature of life and reality has driven people to seek objective counsel in religion, astrology, spirituality, or any other source that claims some kind of sturdiness in a world of uncertainty. Theodor Adorno, a twentieth century philosopher, suggests that literature shouldn’t play to this weakness of the mind for “completeness and continuity” which follows an “epistemological impulse”. Getting at truth means exposing different angles, even if they contradict. “Reality is fragmentary”, to present one answer is a misrepresentation. Multiple perspectives are what fuel thought, so that ultimately the written word doesn’t act as though it’s figured itself out.

Nothing can be truer of Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, in which the main character Paul Berlin finds himself on a constant quest for answers in a reality of contradictions and subjectivity. O’Brien brilliantly portrays Berlin’s story of Vietnam through fragments and an array of possibilities that cleverly leaves the reader’s mind open to many avenues of understanding and interpretation.

The Book is divided into three prominent parallels. The present time, memories of the war, and the tale of chasing Cacciato, which takes place in Paul Berlin’s imagination. All of these are interspersed within the novel. While the present and his imaginary tale are recited chronologically, the actual war events get mangled out of a distinct timeline.

O’Brien also poses an array of questions: can a soldier escape war through imagination? Does war have it’s own identity separate from individual war stories? Are we to be against this war? Is there a purpose? And so on.
These questions are never directly answered. In fact, the novel is presented with dueling perspectives and contradictions, none of which seem to receive any precedence or emphasis. Perhaps O’Brien himself doesn’t claim to know, and perhaps he implicitly asks us to take on Adorno’s philosophy: to reflect on its complexity, and accept this very quality as a characteristic of war’s reality: That there’s a storm of questions, but no one right answer to shelter us. The truth is a synthesis of contradictions and perspectives.

In many ways this portrayal of war offers a tension between Apollonian Tendencies (notions of identity and individuality) and Barbarian Dionysian (de-individuation and the complete loss of oneself) as displayed in classical Greek Tragedies. Though they are opposite tendencies, they can exist simultaneously, especially in war. There exist the individuals, who differ in perception and personality, but are thrown into a situation that causes de-individuation, anonymity, and often “mob brutality”. Paul Berlin relates how at times it was easier to use people’s symbolic names, or just remember them in songs, for de-individuating them mollifies the burden of their grotesque death.

This is the reality of war to O’Brien, and reality as an object to Adorno. It has it’s own “inner coherence” and “harmony” that is only misconstrued by attempting to undermine it’s complex nature via “an overarching concept”. At the close of the novel the reader is not meant to have any presumptuous solutions, but rather bask in the limbo of its humility, so that through some miracle of fiction, the author manages to inject in the reader a vague dose of the haunting confusion, and psychological labyrinth that only a soldier knows.

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Robert rated it:

01/23/08

bookshelves: finished, owned-and-still-own

Read in June, 2003

Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato (Dell, 1978)

...P>Going After Cacciato is both the story of a troop of soldiers sent to pursue Cacciato, a comrade who deserted, and the story of one member of that troop, PFC Paul Berlin, spending the night in an observation post. For those who haven't yet read it, I won't spoil it by saying how those two stories intertwine. Cacciato has somehow glommed onto the odd idea that it's possible to walk from Vietnam to Paris, and has decided to set out doing just...more Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato (Dell, 1978)

...P>Going After Cacciato is both the story of a troop of soldiers sent to pursue Cacciato, a comrade who deserted, and the story of one member of that troop, PFC Paul Berlin, spending the night in an observation post. For those who haven't yet read it, I won't spoil it by saying how those two stories intertwine. Cacciato has somehow glommed onto the odd idea that it's possible to walk from Vietnam to Paris, and has decided to set out doing just that. The soldiers follow him, reaching a critical point when they cross the border into Laos, and ultimately decide to keep going. They get farther and farther from Vietnam, but find that the shenanigans of the war stay with them pretty much wherever they go; as a Viet Cong officer they meet in Laos tells them, "the land is your enemy."

In that sense, yes, it is most certainly a novel about the Vietnam War and how it sticks in the heads of veterans long after they've left the field (though some of the tricks O'Brien pulls toward the end of the novel undercut that). And it is a good one; the very absurdity of the plot is enough to keep the reader flipping pages. But if one is looking for the definitive Vietnam War novel, one is probably better served searching out Gustav Hasford's brilliant short novel The Short-Timers (upon which the film Full Metal Jacket is based, albeit loosely) or, perhaps, Lucius Shepard's Life During Wartime.

Not to say Cacciato is not well-written, engaging, fun to read, and an overall darn fine book. It is all of those things, and I have spent far more of this review denigrating the buildup than the actual book (as my rating will surely convey). Tim O'Brien is a solid writer, his characters are well-developed (though some of the supporting cast is two-dimensional; they're not in the book long enough to get a good feeling for them, really, and by the end one understands why this is and finds it somewhat justified), the plot moves along at an acceptable pace, and the surrealism of the premise is original in the extreme. Just don't let the buildup get to you. **** ...less

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