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???? 80s: i have read this only 2 times, over decades, but memories of the book persist. this is the first vietnam book i have read, most of my familiarity is through films like apocalypse now. this book is also as fantastic, also as extreme, and the idea that the only escape from a horror is through the imagination, to me this suggests the value of art. there is the wonderful, deadpan recitation of deaths that begin the book. there is les evenements of paris 1968... there is everything in between...

Qu’arriverait-il si un soldat décidait tout bonnement de quitter la jungle vietnamienne et de partir pour Paris, à pied? Quelle serait la marche à suivre pour le reste du peloton? N’aurait-on pas l’obligation de se lancer à sa poursuite, de tenter de le rattraper? Quitte à se retrouver, avec lui, à Paris, quelques milliers de kilomètres plus loin? C’est possible, non? C’est « faisable », ce n’est pas « totalement farfelu », non?

Going After Cacciato est ce genre d’expérience littéraire qui frôle la perfection, en fonctionnant à la fois comme métaphore, comme conte burlesque, comme discours hyper réaliste sur la violence physique et morale de la guerre et les fantasmes grandiloquents de l’écrivain en devenir.

Un roman qui réussit à se construire à mesure sur des « et si » et des « pourquoi pas », sans jamais s’effondrer, comme un rêve éveillé, une hallucination extralucide. Sans doute une des œuvres les plus fascinantes du XXe siècle sur l’absurdité de la guerre et sur le pouvoir de l’imagination.

First things first. If you want to read a book about the war in Viet Nam, only one, make it this one.

It's 1969, and Cacciato, a soldier in the US Army, has had enough. He deserts, leaving clues for the other men in his unit indicating that he's decided to walk to Paris. Now they're obligated to go after him, to follow him until he's captured. And if that happens to take them to Paris, that's fine with them.

It's 1969, and Paul Berlin is a Private First Class in the Viet Nam War. On guard duty at the top of a tower, he watches the sea, reviews his experiences so far, and tries to run away inside his head, far far away, from all the terrible things he's seen and done. To find the good mixed in with all the bad, as his father suggested.

I read about World War II all the time. There were two sides. One was good and one was evil. The good guys knew what they were fighting for. The bad guys…well, the very best one can say about them is that they were led by bad men. It is a war that is easy to understand, to appreciate. And when soldiers died, they died in the service of something greater than themselves, a mission to save humanity from unspeakable madness.

But the Viet Nam War was something else. Going After Cacciato is an anti-war novel in the pattern of All Quiet On the Western Front. By the time you come to the end of this hauntingly beautiful, evocative novel, Tim O’Brien will illuminate for you exactly what was wrong with this war, and how different it was from the ones we had fought before.

I am left with a kaleidoscope of sensory overload. The feel of high, unmoving green grass brushing against my legs, the fetid smell of the rice paddies. The fatigue from the endless march, the red dust of the dirt path on my boots, the mercury color of the sky and sea, the awful knowledge of the terrible ways a man can die. The unreadable expressions on the faces of the people we are there to help. The alien landscape, littered with enemy corpses, pitted and charred after the US Army firebombs it. The sound a personnel mine makes when a man walks over it. The pervasive gnawing of fear.

An interesting, memorable war novel set in the late 1960s in Vietnam. Paul Berlin was drafted to be a soldier in Vietnam. He recalls his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, mainly focussing on his comrades and the tragedy of seeing a number of soldiers he knew die. Paul reflects on his life and his lack of purpose and learnings through his war experiences. Whilst at an observation point in Vietnam, he drifts off to sleep and dreams about the tracking down of a fellow soldier named Cacciato, who had disappeared. Cacciato had always stated that he was going to go to Paris. Berlin with his Lieutenant and five other soldiers follow Cacciato in order to capture him and bring him back to their camp.

A worthwhile read, however OBrien’s linked short stories collection, ‘The Things They Carried’, - about life as a USA soldier in Vietnam, is a more powerful and insightful novel and highly recommended.

‘Going After Cacciato’ won the 1979 National Book Award.

Similar in approach to The Things They Carried, but not nearly as successful, largely because in trying to get around the problem of how to write a war story about a war as metaphysically unhinged as Vietnam, O'Brien settles here on the weary kelson of the hallucinogenic, it-was-all-a-dream plot that, by its very architectonics, evacuates all the drama from the drama and leaves behind little but the words themselves. For a writer like Pynchon, or Joyce, this might succeed. But O'Brien's success in The Things They Carried stems from pathos. That book succeeds by showing how the soldier's pain blurs the factuality of his storytelling, and his inability to tell the straight story of Vietnam heightens that book's dramatic energy, instead of deflating it.

"What part was fact and what part was the extension of fact? And how were facts separated from possibilities? What had really happened and what merely might have happened? How did it end?"

Normally a book of 336 pages is nothing daunting and usually takes about 2-3 days of reading time. I spent well over one week on Going After Cacciato, filled one entire spiral-bound notebook with notes and questions and went through almost an entire package of little sticky tabs for marking things I wanted to come back to later. Because I felt that this is a book that I genuinely wanted (and still want) to understand, I got up in the wee hours of the a.m. to read before anyone was up and came downstairs to interrupt me. I bought books about Tim O'Brien & books about approaching Vietnam War literature, I skimmed then downloaded copious amounts of scholarly articles about Cacciato, and well, you get the drift here. There is so much going on here that it deserves much more time and intense scrutiny than I've given it, and if that doesn't recommend it, I don't know what will.

Considering my fascination and admiration for this novel, this book is best experienced by the reader, so what I'm going to say here is going to be relatively brief. The novel opens with a haunting paragraph, a list of the deaths of people who were in main character Paul Berlin's squad:

"It was a bad time. Billy Boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie Tucker. Billy Boy had died of fright, scared to death on the field of battle, and Frenchie Tucker had been shot through the nose. Bernie Lynn and Lieutenant Sidney Martin had died in tunnels. Pederson was dead and Rudy Chassler was dead. Ready Mix was dead. They were all among the dead."

Then in October, Cacciato, another platoon member, "left the war," ... "Split, departed." He had told Paul Berlin that he would be going off to Paris -- 8,600 miles, walking all the way. Cacciato's route was to take him

"up through Laos, then into Burma, and then some other country...and then India and Iran and Turkey, and then Greece, and the rest is easy."

The decision is made by the lieutenant that the squad will go after Cacciato -- and so it begins. Incredible premise for a novel about the Vietnam War, isn't it? As the squad makes its way on the 8,600-mile trek, at some point you begin to realize that things that happen on the way to Paris link to the squad's real war experiences in Vietnam, the second narrative strand in this book, which eventually tells the stories of how the ten men listed at the beginning died. In the third thread, Paul Berlin reflects on the war and his place in it over one night on watch in an observation post along the South China Sea, and it is also there that he begins to work out the possibilities of "What happened and what might have happened," to Cacciato and by extension, to himself and the squad chasing after the AWOL soldier. Time moves slowly in the observation post, giving Paul Berlin space to realize that the "critical point" is that "It could truly be done." Cacciato's flight also gives Paul Berlin time to reflect on the question of fear, the soldier's constant companion, and courage:

"The issue, of course, was courage. How to behave. Whether to flee or fight or seek an accommodation. The issue was not fearlessness. The issue was how to act wisely in spite of fear. Spiting the deep-running biles: That was true courage. He believed this. And he believed the obvious corollary: The greater a man's fear, the greater his potential courage."

O'Brien has created a story that blurs the lines between reality and imagination, fantasy and fact, leaving it to the reader to try to sort it all out somehow. Reality and facts are definitely present in this story, as are, believe it or not scenes of restlessness and tedium in the midst of war, but all are related in a disjointed, jarring sort of way that likely reflects the often surreal Vietnam war experiences of those who were there and how they processed internally what they saw and how they remembered things later. On the flip side, there are several instances in this book that not only verge on but fall smack into the territory of the surreal.

As noted above, this is a novel that needs to be experienced individually -- while a number of readers were totally turned off by the verge into the fantastical, for me it's probably one of the most powerful, well-written books I've ever read. Any book that wants to make me get into the head of the guy who wrote it or that keeps me thinking about it long after the last page is turned is more than worthy.

Two stories unfold simultaneously in Going After Cacciato, one I was riveted by and another I felt alienated by. The disjointed nature of the novel didn't come as a shock; Tim O'Brien's masterpiece The Things They Carried was a compilation of harrowing short stories penned between 1975 and 1990 on the subject of the Vietnam War. In this novel, published in 1978, O'Brien's attempt to contrast the external experiences of a young army specialist conscripted into the war while taking the reader into his imagination, where the possibilities of walking out of the war all the way to Paris are explored at length, didn't come together for me.

The novel begins with twenty-year-old Spec Four Paul Berlin surrounded by death and bad times while serving his Vietnam combat tour in October 1968. Much of his squad have been killed, three in tunnels, including a disliked lieutenant who insisted on obeying SOP. The new leader of Third Squad is Lieutenant Corson, a Korean War veteran though stricken with dysentery, is well-liked due to his adherence to "informal SOPs," permitting the men to destroy the tunnel networks they find rather than searching them. Their medic Doc Peret notifies the LT that a feeble-minded soldier known as Cacciato has left, having mentioned to Paul Berlin that he's headed for Paris. On foot.

Paul Berlin joins Doc, the LT and what's left of Third Squad as they head into the high country in pursuit of Cacciato. At point is a pugnacious southerner named Stink Harris. The squad's good humor man is Eddie Lazzutti. Sergeant Oscar Johnson is loved by virtue of his luck, having survived nine combat tours, though his claims that he's from Detroit are not believed by the other men. Harold Murphy is a heavy gunner who wants to turn back almost from the start, even as the squad quickly leaves the war and its dangers behind. They make visual contact with Cacciato, who seems committed to walking the 8,600 miles to Paris.

Humping to Paris, it was one of those crazy things Cacciato might try. Paul Berlin remembered how the kid had spent hours thumbing through an old world atlas, studying the maps, asking odd questions: How steep were these mountains, how wide was the river, how thick were these jungles? It was just too bad. A real pity. Like winning the Bronze Star for shooting out a dink's front teeth. Whistling in the dark, always whistling and smiling his frozen white smile. It was silly. It had always been silly, even during the good times, but now the silliness was sad. It couldn't be done. It just wasn't possible, and it was silly and sad.

Their mission to retrieve Cacciato apparently over, Third Squad is back in Quang Ngai on the coast of the South China Sea. Paul Berlin pulls arduous middle-hour guard and to occupy his mind, begins imagining the possibilities: what if they pursued Cacciato all the way to Paris? Spending six days marching through the jungle, the men hold a vote on whether to return to the war or keep going after Caccicato, facing desertion themselves. Harold Murphy disappears in the night, but the others keep going. Crossing into Laos, Stink shoots one of two water buffalo carrying a cart with three women in it, a young English speaking refugee named Sarkin Aung Wan and her two aunts.

While Lt. Corson wants to leave the women, Sarkin Aung Wan becomes compelled by the idea of traveling to Paris. She attaches herself to Paul Berlin and promises she can guide the squad to their destination. The specialist alternates between flights of fancy to remembrances his past: arriving in Chu Lai on June 3 and receiving woefully inadequate survival training, patrolling the villages of the muddy Song Tra Bong, getting lost in the woods as a child while at Indian Guides camp, his father in Fort Dodge, Iowa advising his son that while at war to focus on the good while ignoring the bad. Paul Berlin attempts this through his elaborate fantasy world.

Going After Cacciato is remarkably compelling when it comes to following Paul Berlin through his flesh and blood experiences in Vietnam. A lot of novelists are content to go from Plot Point A to Plot Point B, but what makes Tim O'Brien worth being studied is the vitality in his fiction. There are no straight lines in his stories, which soar and descend like the vital signs on a patient in intensive care. In the afterword, O'Brien maintains that rather than a war novel, he sees Going After Cacciato as a peace novel. Rather than adventure, it is well-calibrated toward the experiences of a soldier, taking us into his world and frame of mind.

"How many days you been at war?" asked Alpha's mail clerk, and Paul Berlin answered that he'd been at war seven days now.

The clerk laughed. "Wrong," he said. "Tomorrow, man, that's your first day at the war."

And in the morning PFC Paul Berlin boarded a resupply chopper that took him fast over charred pocked mangled country, hopeless country, green skies and speed and tangled grasslands and paddies and places he might die, a million possibilities. He couldn't watch. He watched his hands. He made fists of them, opening and closing the fists. His hands, he thought, not quite believing. His hands.

Very quickly, the helicopter banked and turned and went down.

"How long you been at the war?" asked the first man he saw, a wiry soldier with ringworm in his hair.

PFC Paul Berlin smiled. "This is it," he said. "My first day."

On page 76 it becomes clear that the walk to Paris exists only in the mind of Paul Berlin and while I could easily relate to why a dream like this would occur to a soldier, I didn't want to read it. I wanted to get back to the story where something was at stake. I don't like reading dream sequences and here too, I glazed over portions that take place in India or Afghanistan. Once the squad hits Paris, I was skipping pages. This concept might have been better serviced in a short story and while I recommend the novel for O'Brien's electrifying prose, as a novel, I think it half works.

This is a tough book to give five stars to. Not because it isn't worthy, but because it is bound to be misleading. Going after Cacciato begins innocently enough. We meet Paul Berlin, a private in Vietnam and we meet his squadmates and we begin to see the struggles and the triumphs of these men. Then Cacciato, a happy idiot along the lines of Chancy the gardener (from the film Being There) who decides he's had enough and he's going to walk the 8,600 miles to France. Thus begins the chase and thus begins the book in earnest.

Going After Cacciato is a book about the war. It is a war that not that many people agree about and fewer people understand. And so Paul Berlin is not a reliable narrator. He knows he is not reliable, but he is attempting to straighten out the facts and to understand them. Also, however, he is trying to deceive himself. This makes for some surprising reading. The book takes a series of more and more surprising turns that begin to make the reader question what, exactly is going on. What is going on, however, is a war that is a just as crazy.

Is this an anti-war book? Sure. It's certainly not pro-war. I would argue that it seems to be, instead, a representation of the war as it was perceived, both by the soldiers as well as the public. It succeeds amazingly, both in its representations of the real and the unreal. It is confusing, but with reason and it will become clear to the astute reader who pushes forward.

Going After Cacciato

O’Brien is the pre-eminent writer of the American soldier’s experience in Vietnam. This novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979.

A soldier Cacciato goes AWOL while on patrol in Vietnam. He tells the squad that he’s had enough of the horror and is going to walk to Paris, France. We learn that the squad is determined to hunt him down even across the continent. It shortly becomes clear that the search is really a fantasy in one of the soldier’s head who is jealous of Caciatto’s plan. This surviving soldier’s fantasy is interspersed with the realistic, and often horrific, experiences of what happened to wipe out half the squad in the weeks prior.

One of the most powerful chapters in this novel, or any other war novel, was entitled Landing Zone Bravo. Pedersen, one of the squad members, is scared of heights and freaks out as they head to the landing zone. When the chopper lands the crew chief has to shove Pedersen out of the chopper into the rice paddies. The whole area is taking heavy fire. Pedersen is shot in the leg moments after landing and then shot again. He is unable to continue. It seems that he has been shot inadvertently or even intentionally by the gunners from his own chopper. Pedersen composes himself and begins to shoot back at the chopper as it leaves the zone. He makes several directs hit into the fuselage leading the reader to believe that it may crash. Instead the chopper flies over Pedersen and he continues to fire until the chopper is just a shadow against the setting sun. This chapter and others highlight the plight of the infantryman and the lack of a clear line between the VietCong soldiers and American soldiers as they experience many of the same horrors.

4.5 stars. This novel is on par with The Things They Carried, O’Brien’s blockbuster compilation of Vietnam short stories. The writing here borders on the beautiful and flows really well. In part because O’Brien describes the scenes and imagery without going overboard on the short choppy vernacular often used in other Vietnam books.

Find a way through.

A volte con i libri è una questione di temperatura.

Hai presente quella smania che ti prende, quel desiderio insopprimibile di andare avanti pagina dopo pagina, quel bisogno di ritagliarti dello spazio per poter finalmente riprendere in mano il volume che ti ha catturato? Una sorta di febbre che mi ha colpito questa estate leggendo Le cose che portiamo di Tim O’Brien, tanto da convincermi a mettere le mani su Inseguendo Cacciato, dello stesso autore.

Inseguendo Cacciato è la storia di un soldato americano in Vietnam (Cacciato, appunto, cognome italiano originale nel testo) che abbandona i compagni nella giungla e parte per raggiungere Parigi a piedi. Una diserzione, certo, ma con un pizzico di folle poesia che la rende intrigante. Il plotone dei commilitoni è incaricato di riportarlo alla base e parte quindi al suo inseguimento.

Inseguendo Cacciato è certamente un gran testo. Un ottimo romanzo, quadrato e sognante nei punti giusti, con pagine che trasudano dell’esperienza fatta in guerra dal suo autore. Eppure, non mi ha innalzato la temperatura oltre un misero 37eddue, quella fastidiosa alterazione che infiacchisce ma non accende. Certamente colpa mia, e della carica di aspettative che vi avevo riposto.

http://capitolo23.com/2019/08/16/inse...

This was a bit trippy, slightly surreal story. This made it a bit of a puzzle as the reader slowly figures out what’s really going on; what really happened and what didn’t. We have a bit of an unreliable 3rd person limited narrator. The story was also rather moving.