It's hard not to be of two more or less uneasy minds about this
ambitious book. O'Brien (If I Die In A War Zone, Northern Lights)
has come directly to his subject - Vietnam - with great formal care
and deep knowledge, and yet at least half the time it feels as if
he's traveling in someone else's boots. In a fugue of fantasy
chapters interspersed with astringently realistic flashbacks,
Specialist Fourth Class Paul Berlin endures the life of a
foot-soldier in Quang Ngai province; when a grunt named Cacciato -
"dumb as a bullet" - one day picks up and sets off through the
jungle, destination Paris, Berlin's patrol is sent after him.
Fantasy takes over as, through Laos, India, Iran, Greece, and
finally Paris, a dream of "possibility" and peace develops that
could not be in greater contrast to the hell (in flashbacks) of
normal war: the fragging of a by-the-book lieutenant, a medic
feeding a dying soldier M&Ms and calling them "pills,"
desperate basketball games in the jungle. The revulsion, pity, and
sheer documentary vividness O'Brien can draw from his real-Vietnam
material is truly remarkable. But the fantasy journey and the
Cacciato metaphor lack parallel strength: "The real issue was the
power of the will to defeat fear. . . . Somehow working his way
into that secret chamber of the human heart, where, in tangles, lay
the circuitry for all that was possible, the full range of what a
man might be." Such fustian/imitation-Hemingway tendencies rub up
against balloony characters like a young Vietnamese refugee girl
who accompanies the Quixote-like patrol on its mission to Paris and
who seems more like an obligation to story than a deeply felt
personality. "Where was the fulcrum? Where did it tilt from fact to
imagination? How far had Cacciato led them?" Paul Berlin wonders -
and so do we as we follow O'Brien through what's too often a large
shell that unfairly shadows writing and intelligence of the highest
order and honesty. (Kirkus Reviews)
Winner of the National Book Award, 'Going After Cacciato' captures
the peculiar mixture of horror and hallucination that marked the
Vietnam War, this strangest of wars. In a blend of reality and
fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day
lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the
jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris. In its memorable
evocation of men both fleeing from and meeting the demands of
battle, 'Going After Cacciato' stands as much more than just a
great war novel. Ultimately it's about the forces of fear and
heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all.
General
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