Dreamlike story of a quest and an escape from war, of a soldier in Vietnam who decides he's had enough and begins hiking to Paris, and of the soldiers tasked with bringing him back. The horror and absurdity and sheer unreality of war are on full display in this moving novel.

Having already read The Things They Carried, I was a little skeptical going into this book. I sort of figured that I’d already been exposed to Tim O’Brien’s best regarding his experience with the Vietnam War and that this would most likely be a less refined draft of that selfsame perspective. Because of this, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Going After Cacciato is not only a fantastic offering in its own right, but, perhaps more importantly, an incredibly different one.

While The Things They Carried is an attempt to translate how those who have escaped the war try to live with it, Going After Cacciato seeks to convey how those who are living the war try to escape it. At the absurdist level, this takes physical form: the protagonist Paul Berlin and his squad chasing a deserter named “Cacciato” clean across the face of the Old World as he tries to reach the glittering city of Paris. At a more literal level, this is a mental effort: a boy keeping his demons at bay and getting through another fearful, lonely night by telling stories about a ridiculous mission that somehow makes more sense than the one he is living.

“Verisimilitude” is a description that seems to follow The Things They Carried around – and for good reason. For Going After Cacciato the equivalent is “magical realism.” To me, this work represents the technique at its best: metaphysical elements that add emotional depth without cluttering the narrative with disconnected, arbitrary curios. Everything about the book reflects this tempered mastery of storytelling. The tragedies and traumas to which Paul Berlin has borne witness are unfurled gradually, patiently as we delve deeper into his psyche. His foes are almost never seen, but always felt. O’Brien has a knack for communicating complex feelings and ideas with the simplest language.

Chapter 39, entitled “The Things They Didn’t Know,” is up there with my favorite pieces of writing in recent memory. In it we are forced to confront the sheer insanity of conflict, the confusion and uncertainty and humanity of those swallowed by its gluttonous maw – those who let themselves go to war not out of strong convictions, but because they don’t know. This is what Going After Cacciato seems to be at its core: the frantic fantasies of an innocent kid caught between his desire to run away from the source of all his guilt, terror, and dread, and his desire to make his father, make his country proud. Things have gotten so twisted that the only solution Paul Berlin can envision is some madcap, impossible fantasy that marries duty to flight.

Four stars. Cacciato runs. We chase.

“Money was never a problem, passports were never required. There were always new places to dance.”



I know Tim O'Brien's go-to Vietnam war novel is The Things They Carried (which is really good); however for me, I think it will always be Going After Cacciato. The mythical quest of going after fellow soldier, Cacciato, who is reportedly leaving the war and walking to Paris, has a dream-like quality to it. This imaginative journey takes Paul Berlin and his platoon to nearly unimaginable places, but it never lets them escape the horrors of war. Beautifully written. It was great to meet the author of this wonderful novel a few years ago after he gave the keynote of a conference I was attending. I've readGoing After Cacciato at least four times, and it always resonates with me.

“You have taken many risks. You have been brave beyond your wildest expectations. And now it is time for a final act of courage. I urge you: March proudly into your own dream.”

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.

Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien is challenging to describe. It was the first time I read a novel about the Vietnam War. The story is not as straightforward as one might guess; I consider it one of my most challenging books, and I don't believe it to be the right place to start with O'Brien's work.

It is a fantastic read if you enjoy magical realism. Some bits and pieces will make you scratch your head, but it is part of the novel's charm to be as complicated and dreamy as possible—even journeying a series of countries to return a soldier who has gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave*). Paul Berlin takes it literally that the squad will travel to Paris to retrieve Cacciato.

I wanted to know more about the Vietnam War because I was not educated about the subject before reading this book. Sadly, I am still ignorant about the conflict, but I am now more interested in learning about this proxy war. If you have any recommendations, please write me a message. Even Paul Berlin struggles to understand the purpose of such a conflict in this book, so you will experience his morality and lack of purpose in fighting.

The bonds between soldiers were an enjoyable aspect of the novel. It's a breath of fresh air to have a whole squad looking out for each other one minute and having conflicts the next. There are even morality questions about SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures*) and squad leaders. There's not even a scene where the squad faces off against Vietcong. There are also sections where Berlin remembers how some of the squad soldiers died. This is an essential element of the book as O'Brien gives a macabre vision of battle and how soldiers can die while fighting.

I initially gave this book a three, but I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I rated it a four. I love how the realistic segments are meshed into the dream sequences. It felt like an Alice in Wonderland novel.

* That's a note to self.

(Mild spoiler that reveals no details)

I don't think I'll ever get over this book. I did not see this book's resolution coming. I had no idea what I was getting into.

The very mention that this book has a twist, I believe, is a spoiler in itself. Hence the spoiler warning.

Twist is an unsuitable word for what Cacciato does. A twist calls to mind a last second reveal of the true antagonist, or some such detail for shock value at the very end of a story. This book does something so much mightier.

Cacciato upends your world.

The twist ranks among the most emotive narrative ploys I've ever read, perhaps better even than Life of Pi. The book's story, indeed the whole art of storytelling and literature and human imagination, is given new understanding. It simultaneously magnifies and diminishes you.

More thoughts to come.

کتاب خوبی بود و داستان افراد داخل جنگ رو خوب به تصویر کشیده بود. جزئیاتش مناسب بود، خشونتش بیش از حد نبود و پیام های اخلاقی خوبی در راستای جنگ داشت. اینکه چطور زندگی های مردم این میان بدون دلیل خاصی نابود شد. نثرش ساده بود و خواندنش هم سریع بود، داستان اونقدر گیرا بود که موقع خواندن مرز بین این دنیا و کتاب رو گم میکردی. سیستم روایتش بیشتر شیفت زمانی بود و عقب، جلو میرفت. با کارکترها به راحتی میشد همدردی و همزادپنداری کرد. پایان خوب و مناسبی هم داشت.

“In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is not a photographic machine. He is not a camera. He registers, so to speak, only those few items that he is predisposed to register and not a single thing more. Do you understand this? So I am saying to you that after a battle each soldier will have different stories to tell, vastly different stories, and that when a was is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers.”

This was my second time reading a work by Tim O'Brien, the first time being a few years ago when I read The Things They Carried. I loved that book (I mean, I still love it). It was assigned reading for my junior-year English class, and I thought I would hate it because I'd never been a fan of war literature. However, I was soon to learn that Tim O'Brien is not the typical war-lit writer. In fact, The New York Times said of Going After Cacciato, "To call Going After Cacciato a novel about war is like calling Moby-Dick a novel about whales." And I think this quote could easily apply to The Things They Carried as well. It was a book that took place during war, but the story is really is more about humanity. More than that, it also changed the way I think about storytelling.

That said, I thought Going After Cacciato was a great book, but it didn't move me the same way The Things They Carried did.

Anyway, let's explain the story a bit. Going After Cacciato is about a young soldier in the Vietnam war, who decides to get up and leave in the middle of the war and walk all the way to Paris. As the title of the novel implies, a group of his fellow soldiers decide to go after him. Of course, what follows is a crazy journey.

The best part of this book is Tim O'Brien's writing. I just can't get over how well he writes. It's just so powerful, so simple and yet so complex, so full of emotion and imagery. He really puts you right into the story, and he makes you see things in a different light.

On top of that, I love how surreal this story is. There's a certain, almost dreamlike quality to it, where at times it's not quite clear what's real and what isn't.

However, as I've said, this book ultimately wasn't as meaningful to me as The Things They Carried was. I'm not sure what it was about this book ... I think maybe what I liked more about The Things They Carried was that it was made up of shorter stories that all connected in some way, and each of those stories was concise and had a strong impact. And even though there are different little stories throughout Going After Cacciato, it does still follow a more conventional storyline. And it's not like that's a bad thing, but I felt that it wasn't quite as compatible with O'Brien's style. I don't know, maybe that's just me.

Basically, I thought the focus of this book wandered a bit and there were parts where I was a little bored. However, O'Brien never fails to captivate me with his writing and with the strong imagery he creates.

AWARDS:
Winner of the National Book Award, 1979.

"To call Going After Cacciato a novel about war is like calling Moby-Dick a novel about whales," - New York Times.

I have a hard time reading war stories or watching war movies and not feeling angry or upset afterward. There are a couple exceptions. Like Terrence Malick's, 'The Thin Red Line.' Or Tim O'Brien's stories. War stories that are about death and horrific violence, but also about life, about falling in love, and fucking, and relationships, and the people that came before you, and the people that will come after you, and things that we are ashamed of, and things that are vulgar, and things that you understand spiritually.... One monstrous, medly. Terrible and beautiful.

An excerpt from, 'Going After Cacciato.' [CONTEXT: It's 1968, the thick of the U.S.-Vietnam Conflict. The protagonist, PFC Paul Berlin, and a group of new recruits have just arrived in Vietnam to begin their tour of duty.]:

"In the morning the fifty new men were marched to a wooden set of bleachers facing the sea. A small, sad-faced corporal in a black cadre helmet waited until they settled down, looking at the recruits as if searching for a lost friend in a crowd. Then the corporal sat down in the sand. He turned away and gazed out to sea. He did not speak. Time passed slowly, ten minutes, twenty, but still the sad-faced corporal did not turn or nod or speak. He simply gazed out at the blue sea. Everything was clean. The sea was clean, and the sand and the wind.
They sat in the bleachers for a full hour.

Then at last the corporal sighed and stood up. He checked his wristwatch. And again he searched the rows of new faces.

'All right,' he said softly. 'That completes your first lecture on how to survive this shit. I hope you paid attention.'

During the days they simulated search and destroy missions in a friendly little village just outside [Chu Lai].... PFC Paul Berlin, who wanted to live, took the exercises seriously.
'You VC?' he demanded of a little girl with braids. 'You dirty VC?' The girl smiled. 'Shit, man,' she said gently. 'You shittin me?'"

The book that I read was called Going After Cacciato, this book took place in the Vietnam war. What this book was about was a group of soldiers that were going after their teammate named Cacciato. They are going after him because he decided to set his gun down and walk away from the Vietnam war and go to Paris because he didn’t want to be in the war any more, he was possibly mentally challenged and that is why he did it, the story didn’t say that he was but it hinted to it.

The more that I read this book the better and more interesting it got. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a quick read about a different view on the Vietnam war. The only gripe that I have about this book is that in the earlier chapters it is a little bit harder to follow what is going on because it switches between looking for Cacciato and doing a night watch on the bay of the Vietnam ocean without hinting or saying anything like it was a dream. Otherwise this book was a good war adventure type book.

Even if you are not a reader you will find yourself being pulled into this book because you will want to know what will happen next and if they are going to get Cacciato this time or are they going to turn around and go back to the war. Like I said earlier I would highly recommend this book

This book, like most of the novels from Tim O'Brien, feels like a fever dream. I attempted to read this book while I was in high school and was just not mature enough nor did I have the patience to wade through the intricate nature of the writing style. I can only describe this novel as a visceral look into the psyche of anyone that was a part of the Vietnam War. I'm glad I stuck it out this time around and I'm sure I only gleaned half of what this book has to offer.

One of the best novels I’ve ever read. It’s about a guy named Paul who goes to war.