Going After Cacciato

Tim O'Brien

Okay, so maybe the book was a bit too built up before I read it. Not only did it win the National Book Award, but the cover sports blurbs like “Calling ‘Going After Cacciato' a novel about war is like calling ‘Moby Dick' a book about whales.” Since I despise Moby Dick to the core of my soul, perhaps I should have expected a letdown. Thankfully, it was not the letdown Moby Dick was, but the definitive novel about war (or even the definitive novel about the Vietnam War)? Hardly.

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.