If Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 is the definitive surreal take on World War II then Tim O’ Brien’s Going After Cacciato does the same ting for The Vietnam War,

A platoon realise that one of the soldiers, Cacciato, has left and is off to Paris. The rest of the squad then go off to look for him, thus entering a surreal journey which borders between weirdness and brutal reality.

As they traverse through jungle and villages, the soldiers encounter the after effects of the war, ranging from mutilated people to mass killings and then there’s an overall strangeness which comes from the soldier’s psychosis. In between there are short background stories of each of the troopers, which emphasise the craziness of war.

Does anyone catch Cacciato? to be honest it’s not really the point, yes his departure is a sign that the Vietnam war will mess with your head and that is the main message of the book. At least in my opinion. Where in Tim O’ Brien’s The Things They Carried the stories were mostly based in reality, here it’s more deranged but nonetheless poignant.

tim o’brien has done it again

this novel is about a soldier and the imagination he lives with every day, aching for a peace he can never truly have while being stuck in a war (/ on a deserter’s journey) he doesn’t want to fight

a thought-provoking look into war and the affects it has on the mind and experiences

"You VC?" he demanded of a little girl with braids. "You dirty VC?" The girl smiled. "Shit, man," she said gently. "You shittin' me?"

I met Tim O'Brien briefly when he toured for In the Lake of the Woods back in 1994. Along with his signature he wrote on my copy of the book the word "Peace". I thanked him for his service to his country and I can remembered he paused for a moment, just long enough for me to think I'd completely FUBARed the situation. Then he stood up and shook my hand looking me in the eye for a little longer than was comfortable. There was this bristling energy coming off him and I found myself tongue tied. I'd planned to talk to him about his importance to Vietnam War literature. I stood there wrestling with my mind trying to force it to reengage to pop out of vapor lock. He handed the book back to me and I had to move on. I do wish that I hadn't stood there like a moron, but I wouldn't have traded that handshake for anything.

n  n    n  n  
n  Soldier Tim O'Brienn

Tim O'Brien was drafted into the United States Army in 1968 and served in Vietnam until 1970.

Cacciato has a dream. He will share this dream with anyone who will give him the time to tell it. He is convinced that he can leave the war in Vietnam and walk to Paris. One day he disappears and the platoon knows he has started to realize his dream. Paul Berlin is a dreamer. On every report card ever sent home to his parents teachers made a notation about his excessive daydreaming. In Vietnam he is focused much more closely on minute detail than he is on the scope of the war. For example after pickup basketball games he goes through every pass, every shot, every spin move; picking it apart, finding the errors, and fixing what went wrong. The war is like a fly buzzing in the window just within his peripheral vision, but the real world was existing behind his eyes.

In his fantasy world the platoon takes off through the jungle after Cacciato.

"Yes, they were in jungle now. Thick dripping jungle. Club moss fuzzing on bent branches, hard green bananas dangling from trees that canopied in lush sweeps of green, vaulted forest light in yellow-green and blue-green and olive-green and silver-green, the smell of chlorophyll, jungle sounds and jungle depth. It was true jungle. Soft, humming jungle. Everywhere, greenery deep in greenery, earth like sponge. Itching jungle, lost jungle. A botanist's madhouse."

Reality mixes in with fantasy as the platoon continues its quest to find Cacciato. All the members of the platoon are frustrated to various degrees with the war. "So here we are...nothing to order, no substance. Aimless, that's what it is: a bunch of kids trying to pin a tail on the Asian donkey. But no fuckin tail. No fuckin donkey."

n  n

In his mind Paul moves the platoon about like chess pieces on a board. Improbable circumstances develop needing improbable solutions for the fantasy quest to continue. I identified with Paul maybe too much. I have always spent an inordinate amount of time daydreaming and given the unbelievable circumstances that a front line soldier in Vietnam often found himself; I would be building cities, developing characters, and living as much as possible in a world of my own creating. Paris, to Cacciato and; therefore, for Paul, is looked on as the first city among civilization, and when they dream about leaving the war they are dreaming about escaping to the most civilized place on the planet.

This was a quick read. The whole time I'm marveling at the ability of Tim O'Brien to keep all the balls suspended in the air. He made me believe what was fantasy and disbelieve what was real. He discusses fear and courage and duty and the blurred lines that define all of them. An unusual Vietnam book, but a book that tries to shine a light on a war that made no sense whatsoever. A war "without clear moral purpose."

"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 believe this. And he believed the obvious corollary: the greater a man's fear, the greater his potential courage."

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From the start, the narrator, a young soldier from Iowa named Paul Berlin, counts off all the soldiers he’s known that have died during his deployment in Nam. Knowing them only by their nicknames, as he does, what we get feels impersonal at first, but as the story goes on, his memories become more and more personal about how those deaths affected him. A dreamer, young and innocent, Paul Berlin isn’t a reliable narrator, but he’s telling us his tale, not reciting history, and so this is okay.

This isn’t a “definitive” novel about the Vietnam War, but as the author says, every soldier remembers different things about every battle, and there will be as many versions of a war as there are soldiers. Paul Berlin’s story is small and personal, even as he and his platoon march west sort of chasing the AWOL Cacciato (another member of the platoon), in a slightly hallucinatory, dreamlike journey. Some of the story is hard to believe, but as Paul says again and again from his “observation post”, no one back home would believe the truth anyway.

A solid 3 and a half stars.

So I read this book almost 8 years ago in the book format and gave it three stars. And I just finished it in September 2020 in the audible format and I am upping it to four stars. The book was first published in 1978 and apparently the audible was finished in 2011. I found the book to be at times dragging and at other times dazzling. It really improved once I figure it out the switching back-and-forth from real Time to Real imagining. There is not so much of the jungle fighting that you get used to in Vietnam war stories. But there are plenty of paddies and enough war is hell blood and guts. There are some excellent moments of reflection. I am plenty glad that I listen to this book so long after I first read it. I have to admit I have no recollection of reading this book other than the words that I wrote at that time.

I want to mention that the Kindle book has an interesting after word Q&A with the author. Also an interesting readers guide at the end of the Kindle book.
**********************

that was one of the jokes. There was a joke about Oscar. There were many jokes about Billy Boy Watkins, the way he’d collapsed of fright on the field of battle. Another joke was about the lieutenant’s dysentery, and another was about Paul Berlin’s purple biles. There were jokes about the postcard pictures of Christ that Jim Pederson used to carry, and Stink’s ringworm, and the way Buff’s helmet filled with life after death. Some of the jokes were about Cacciato. Dumb as a bullet, Stink said. Dumb as a month-old oyster fart, said Harold Murphy.

This book is no joke. But you may find yourself laughing in spite of knowing that nothing in it is funny. It’s way too awful to be funny. Surreal page after page, dreams and nightmares, confusion and terror. All of these: strange, weird, odd, unreal, dreamlike, fantastic, bizarre.

Here is what some other GR reviewers had to say about this book:

Brilliant, hallucinatory and hypnotic, the narrative jumps around, jumbling continuity, reality, fear, duty and dreams as it deftly and completely messes with your head.
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
…
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.
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
…
Cacciato -- "dumb as milk" but always ahead, always out of reach -- leads them through a surreal landscape of rabbithole logic as if they were newly dead spirits trying to find their way in the fog of an unfamiliar netherworld.
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

So you get the idea that you have to have a flexible brain to read and enjoy this book, don’t you? You have to learn to drift along with the often illogical story but to be prepared for regular bits of realism. What does it take to be a heroic soldier in a war zone?

The blond-headed lieutenant watched him climb. Though he did not know the soldier’s name, this did not matter much, for the soldiers whose names he did not know he simply called Soldier or Trooper, whichever came to him first, and there was nothing impersonal or degrading about either word. He watched the boy’s strange mechanical walk, the lazy obscurity of each step, the ploddingness, and he felt both sadness and pride. He saw the boy as a soldier. Maybe not yet a good soldier, but still a soldier. He saw him as part of a whole, as one of many soldiers pressed together by the force of mission. The lieutenant was not stupid. He knew these beliefs were unpopular. He knew in his society, and many of the men under his own command, did not share them. But he did not ask his men to share his views, only to comport themselves like soldiers. So watching Paul Berlin’s dogged climb, its steadiness and persistence, the lieutenant felt great admiration for the boy, admiration and love combined. He secretly urged him on. For the sake of mission, yes, and for the welfare of the platoon. But also for the boy’s own well-being, so that he might feel the imperative to join the battle and to win it.

A bit of rah rah! And what did it all mean?

After the war, perhaps, he might return to Quang Ngai. Years and years afterward. Return to track down the girl with gold hoops through her ears. Bring along an interpreter. And then, with the war ended, history decided, he would explain to her why he had let himself go to war. Not because of strong convictions, but because he didn’t know. He didn’t know who was right, or what was right; he didn’t know if it was a war of self-determination or self-destruction, outright aggression or national liberation; he didn’t know which speeches to believe, which books, which politicians; he didn’t know if nations would topple like dominoes or stand separate like trees; he didn’t know who really started the war, or why, or when, or with what motives; he didn’t know if it mattered, he saw sense in both sides of the debate, but he did not know where truth lay; he didn’t know if Communist tyranny would prove worse in the long run than the tyrannies of Ky or Thieu or Khanh – he simply didn’t know. And who did? Who really did? He couldn’t make up his mind. Oh, he had read the newspapers and magazines. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t uninformed. He just didn’t know if the war was right or wrong. And who did? Who really knew? So he went to the war for reasons beyond knowledge. Because he believed in law, and law told him to go. Because it was a democracy, after all, and because LBJ and the others had rightful claim to their offices. He went to the war because it was expected. Because not to go was to risk censure, and to bring embarrassment on his father and his town. Because, not knowing, he saw no reason not to trust those with more experience. Because he loved his country and, more than that, because he trusted it. Yes, he did. Oh, he would have rather fought with his father in France, knowing certain things certainly, but he couldn’t choose his war, nobody could. Was this so banal? Was this so unprofound and stupid? He would look the little girl with the gold earrings straight in the eye. He would tell her these things. He would ask her to see the matter his way. What would she have done? What would anyone have done, not knowing? And then he would ask the girl questions. What did she want? How did she see the war? What were her aims – peace, any peace, peace with dignity? Did she refuse to run for the same reasons he refused – obligation, family, the land, friends, home? And now? Now, war ended, what did she want? Peace and quiet? Peace and pride? Peace with mashed potatoes and Swiss steak and vegetables, a full-tabled peace, indoor plumbing, a peace with Oldsmobiles and Hondas and skyscrapers climbing from the fields, a peace of order and harmony and murals on public buildings? Were her dreams the dreams of ordinary men and women? Quality-of-life dreams? Material dreams? Did she want a long life? Did she want medicine when she was sick, food on the table and reserves in the pantry? Religious dreams? What? What did she aim for? If a wish were to be granted by the war’s winning army – any wish – what would she choose?

Does gen-x or gen-y or gen-z get it? Is it just the baby boomers who remember Vietnam? And who waded into Iraq and Afghanistan in spite of that? Is Going After Cacciato just nostalgia, a lesson unlearned? Is this book from 1978 best left in 1978?

Being a winner of the National Book Award of 1979 doesn’t garner this book any extra points from me. I have been impressed by Tim O Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods and The Things They Carried but less so with Tomcat in Love and If I Die in a Combat Zone. I have July, July on my bookshelf to read one day. So, I guess you could say that I am a fan of Tim O’Brien who has not loved all his work. But I seem to keep coming back for more. Three stars for this one with some significant chunks of four star quality. Any book that suggests the absurdity of war has some star quality as far as I am concerned.

I was bored. Maybe I needed to read this one with a book club. Felt superficial compared to The Things They Carried.

This book is not for everyone. If you have trouble suspending disbelief or issues with magical realism, walk away now or read O'Brien's The Things They Carried. However, if you can just sit back and enjoy the ride as a master storyteller blurs the lines between reality and fantasy in such a way that there are no hard and fast truths (which is the point in most of O'Brien work), then you will most likely enjoy the experience. Going After Cacciato is less accessible than The Things They Carried because trying to discern the truth of what happens when Cacciato, a young soldier in Vietnam, chooses to go AWOL and walk all the way to Paris is difficult at best. A unit is dispatched to hunt Cacciato down, but encounters a number of bizarre twists and turns along the way (think Catch-22 meets Alice in Wonderland).

The narrative is split into three distinct time periods and told from the point of view of Paul Berlin. These distinct narratives focus on Berlin's first few months in the war, the hunt for Cacciato, and one night after the hunt for Cacciato is over (this occurs while Berlin is on night watch and thinking back to the hunt for Cacciato). The problem with making sense of the narrative comes from Paul Berlin himself--a young soldier ill-equipped to deal with the violence and atrocity of war, he uses his imagination to while away the tedious hours, as well as to re-create traumatic events with which he's not ready to cope. The point, however, is not what actually happens to Cacciato (in fact, upon a second reading, I found myself questioning the conclusion I came to after reading it for the first time), but how Berlin wisely or unwisely chooses to deal with events that are beyond his ability to control.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder

ADDIO ALLE ARMI - A FAREWELL TO ARMS



Era una guerra così fantastica che dovrebbero farne un film.
Una guerra splendida e umida, disse Stink Harris.

La guerra è uno degli incubi peggiori.
Ma se da un incubo ci si può liberare facendo un sogno - per esempio, sognando che dal Vietnam si può camminare verso ovest, a piedi attraverso il Laos, la Birmania, l’India, l’Afghanistan, l’Iran, la Turchia, e una volta ad Atene, il più è fatto: prossima tappa, e meta finale, Parigi. La città delle luci è la classica botta di vita, specie dopo l’incubo della guerra del Nam – allora, questo libro è un sogno.


Soldati statunitensi della 25ª divisione fanteria nella missione Search & Destroy dell'estate 1966.

Cacciato, più ottuso di una pallottola, uno che va a pesca nei crateri delle bombe, l’ha minacciato più volte.
E un giorno lo fa: non ne può più della guerra, del suo delirio, della sua noia e follia, della violenza e del sangue, delle esplosioni e degli spari. Un bel giorno Cacciato se ne va, s’avvia da solo a piedi dal Vietnam a Parigi: è la stagione dei monsoni e precorrendo Forrest Gump di un pacco d’anni e passi, s’incammina per ottomilaseicento miglia, tredicimilaottocento chilometri.
E così diventa disertore.


Soldati della 1ª divisione cavalleria aerea in azione durante la battaglia di Ia Drang.

La sua squadra, la terza squadra (primo plotone, compagnia Alpha, quinto battaglione del quarantaseiesimo fanteria) è costretta a inseguirlo, perché Cacciato adesso va fermato, arrestato, riportato alla base: non è una scampagnata, è una missione, è sempre guerra.

Però, presto diventa una scampagnata. E i soldati della squadra diventano altrettanti disertori.


Soldati statunitensi della 1st Cavalry Division in combattimento accanto ai loro elicotteri UH-1.

E siccome la guerra in Vietnam (che coinvolse anche la Cambogia e il Laos) fu guerra psichedelica e lisergica per eccellenza, capita che per terra si spalanchino buchi che inghiottono la squadra, il carro e il bufalo, la giovane deliziosa profuga e le due zie più anziane che piangono in continuazione la morte dell’altro bufalo. Buchi che si aprono in gallerie nelle quali sembra che si resterà intrappolati e prigionieri. Ma l’entrata è anche l’uscita, e per tornare a casa bisogna diventare profughi, da questi buchi si può anche cadere fuori e ritrovarsi in Birmania, o meglio, in Mandalay.
Cioè, Oltre Lo Specchio.


Marine statunitensi impegnati nel rastrellamento di un villaggio durante l'operazione Georgia nel 1966.

E siccome Cacciato è un po’ miraggio e un po’ Godot, capita di ritrovarlo circondato da monaci buddisti, anche lui in tonaca, però più simile a frate Tuck che a un vero religioso birmano.
Poi lo si vede sulla copertina di una rivista di Nuova Delhi: alle sue spalle il treno per Kabul.
A Teheran la squadra festeggia il natale tagliando un bell’abete nei National Memorial Gardens dello scià, albero che addobbano con medaglie, cordicelle, bombe a mano e candele. Conclusi i festeggiamenti natalizi, vedono un’esecuzione pubblica e presto rischiano la decapitazione proprio come il giovane soldato decollato in piazza, un altro disertore.


Forze USA bombardano col napalm posizioni Viet Cong nel 1965.

Tra fantasia e realtà, una fuga dalla guerra che è un viaggio della mente: la guerra è un’esperienza surreale cui si può sopravvivere solo abdicando alla razionalità.
Dice O’Brien:
È difficile separare ciò che è accaduto da ciò che è sembrato accadere. Ciò che sembra accadere diviene a sua volta accaduto, e così deve essere raccontato.


My Lai

Ma il protagonista non è Cacciato, quello del titolo, quello inseguito: il vero protagonista è Paul Berlin. Il romanzo è tutto dal punto di vista del soldato scelto Paul Berlin.
E per Paul Berlin, il sognatore, è tutto reale.
Ma, forse, anche no.

A prescindere dal mio smisurato interesse per la guerra del Nam, il romanzo di Tim O’Brien è un gran bel libro, probabilmente il miglior romanzo mai scritto sull’argomento.
Se non altro, il migliore che io abbia mai letto.



Le sue intenzioni erano benevole. Non era un tiranno, non era uno sbirro, non era uno yankee assassino. Era innocente. Questo avrebbe voluto dire agli abitanti dei villaggi, se avesse conosciuto la lingua, se ci fosse stato il tempo per parlare. Gli avrebbe detto che lui non voleva fare del male a nessuno. Nemmeno al nemico. Lui non aveva nemici. Non aveva fatto torto a nessuno. Se avesse conosciuto la lingua, gli avrebbe detto quanto detestava veder bruciare i villaggi. Detestava veder sconvolgere le risaie. Come diventava furioso e triste quando… un milione di cose, quando le donne venivano toccate sfacciatamente, quando ai vecchi venivano fatte calare le brache per perquisirli, quando, in un villaggio chiamato Thin Mau, Oscar e Rudy Chassler avevano ammazzato dieci cani per il gusto di farlo… Ma io no, avrebbe voluto dirgli. Gli altri, forse, ma io no. Colpevole forse di essere stato incerto, di essermi lasciato trascinare, di essere stato vittima della gravità e degli obblighi e deglie venti, ma – no! – non colpevole di intenti malvagi.

The Things They Carried is still O'Brien's best, in my opinion, but Going After Cacciato is not far behind. The ease with which he elicits emotions and the deftness with which he changes them is amazing. When he describes a chopper ride into a hot LZ you can almost see, hear, and smell the experience. He can make painful passages (like Chapter 44) such an essential part of the story that you welcome the pain. Best of all is his ability to surprise you time after time with subtle twists and turns. Everybody should be reading Tim O'Brien's writing.

an excellent although complex book that took me a while to get through. Another war book that shows or chest pumping political leaders have no idea when they glorify war. O'Brien was a great writer.

As good a Vietnam War novel as you're going to find. I'd rank it right up there with The Forever War, which has long been my favorite book based on 'Nam. This may have even more imagination and it certainly does not shy away from any of the harsh truths of war.

Inseguendo Cacciato è uno di quei libri che non avrei scelto di persona (chissà perchè la guerra del Vietnam non mi ha mai attratto come tanti altri tragici eventi bellici), ma che ho deciso di leggere lasciandomi attrarre da alcuni bei commenti che ho trovato qui. Un buon libro, devo dire, anche se faccio fatica a credere che sia il miglior libro mai scritto su quella guerra, come dice la copertina.

La guerra del Vietnam, anche per ragioni biografiche, ha impresso un marchio sulla mia infanzia. Erano gli anni '80 e agli USA bruciava ancora, e tanto quella scottatura (qualcuno sostiene che non siano stati in grado di superarla neppure adesso). E nel tentativo di sedare il dolore e l'umiliazione hollywood ci bombardava di film, alcuni dei quali vuoti e di puro intrattenimento (come dimenticare il mitico Rambo), ma altri che sono stati degli autentici capolavori, penso a Full Metal Jacket o Apocalipse now. E penso anche a NAM, la prima e unica pubblicazione in fascicoli che la mia famiglia sia stata in grado di portare a termine spinta anche dalla forte polarizzazione politica che c'era in quegli anni su questo tema, nella quale la mia famiglia era caduta in pieno.

Ecco. "Inseguendo Cacciato" in un modo scritto molto bene, con un immaginario potente ma non fumettistico, mi ha restituito la stessa impressione di quegli anni: una guerra terribile ma ipnotica, che ha qualcosa di onirico, di sfuggente, di deviante, come visto sotto gli effetti di una droga. E non solo perchè gli anni sessanta sono stati e li ricordiamo come gli anni dello psichedelismo e della fuga dalla realtà, ma proprio perchè il Vietnam per il soldato americano ha portato al massimo la spinta verso lo straniamento più totale. Il soldato americano non sapeva dov'era, non sapeva perchè stava combattendo, non sapeva chi stava combattendo e non sapeva come stava combattendo. I marines marciavano, sudavano, soffrivano le pene di un inferno verde, contavano i giorni per tornare, sognavano una fuga, morivano. E basta. Non c'era altro che il sopravvivere laggiù, è evidente che contro un avversario che era forse il più motivato che avessero incontrato nella loro storia non potevano vincere. Ed infatti non hanno vinto.

Fuggire, salvarsi. In ogni modo. Questo vuole fare il fante imprigionato nella guerra della giungla (e nella trincea? E nella steppa innevata?) fuggire anche attraverso il sogno, il delirio della droga. E credo che la storia di questo libro, che è la storia di un sogno dentro ad un sogno, la storia di un inseguimento che è anche una fuga, che è anche una redenzione, renda molto bene ciò che ha reso il Vietnam una guerra abbastanza diversa da tutte le altre. Un sogno dentro ad un sogno dal quale emerge, improvvisa e brutale come una pugnalata, la guerra vera. Quella disumana, sanguinaria, sconvolgente. Come essere svegliati da una frustata, o da un secchio di acqua bollente.

Grande idea, ottimi i dialoghi, buone alcune le descrizioni, un po'annacquata la storia. Scene e caratteri ripetitivi che si snodano per un libro troppo lungo, caratterizzazione dei personaggi abbastanza marginale. Se fosse stato un po' meno lungo, se ci fosse stata magari un po' più di guerra, a costo di vedere tradito in minima parte il senso di straniamento e di fuga del fante che è il vero tema del libro, alle quattro stelle ci arrivava. Così, ad arrivare all'ultima pagina ho fatto un po' fatica.