Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien's masterpiece novel, The Things They Carried (reviewed here), is a riveting look at the psychological experience of the Vietnam War, and living with the memories of the conflict. Written in 1990, more than a decade and a half after American troops left Vietnam, it is a classic of war fiction and one of the best books I read last year.

During a brief visit to Augusta, Georgia, on the way to a vacation in Charleston, I was browsing through a local bookstore and noticed a nice hardcover copy of one of O'Brien's earlier works, Going After Cacciato. O'Brien's second novel was published in 1978, in closer proximity to the end of the war, and was awarded the National Book Award the following year. I bought Going After Cacciato in large part based on my admiration for The Things They Carried, but unfortunately the older book does not compare favorably.

Cacciato is a young Soldier in an American infantry squad stationed in the jungles of Vietnam in 1968-69. On the second page of the book, word reaches the platoon leader that Cacciato has decided not to stick around for the duration of his tour:

"Cacciato," Doc repeated. "The kid's let us. Split for parts unknown."

The lieutenant did not sit up. With one hand he cupped his belly, with the other he guarded a red glow. The srufaces of his eyes were moist.

"Gone to Paris," Doc said.

The platoon leader gathers together the remainder of Cacciato's squad, including Specialist Paul Berlin, and sets out to track Cacciato down. The first chapter ends with the squad apparently cornering Cacciato on a grassy hill, preparing to storm his makeshift camp. With the second chapter, the story shifts abruptly. Now we are with Paul Berlin in an observation post located near the sea in Quang Ngai. The search for Cacciato is in the past, as Berlin is thinking about the event, about Cacciato's plan to flee to Paris with his squadmates trailing behind:

Paul Berlin, whose only goal was to live long enough to establish goals worth living for still longer, stood high in the tower by the sea, the night soft all around him, and wondered, not for the first time, about the immense powers of his own imagination. A truly awesome notion. Not a dream, an idea. An idea to develop, to tinker with and build and sustain, to draw out as an artist draws out his visions.

It was not a dream. Nothing mystical or crazy, just an idea. Just a possibility. Feet turning hard like stone, legs stiffening, six and seven and eight thousand miles through unfolding country toward Paris. A truly splendid idea.

Though it is not completely apparent at first, this idea fills the bulk of Going After Cacciato, the imagined journey of Berlin and his squad following Cacciato from Vietnam to Paris. This fantastic tale alternates with chapters set in the "present" in the observation post, as well as chapters which detail Berlin's flashback memories of the numerous deaths of comrades preceding Cacciato's flight.

There are parts of the book that work; in particular, the chapters discussing the traumatic experiences of Berlin and his unit are often searing, and resemble the best aspects of The Things They Carried. I was also impressed by the chapter titled "Atrocities On the Road to Paris," which features a surreal interrogation of the squad, arrested as they traveled through Tehran, by an agent of SAVAK, the Shah's security service:

"Just a war," Doc said. "There's nothing new to tell."

Captain Fahyi Rhallon smiled. "Not to contradict, but I must disagree... Each soldier, he has a different war. Even if it is the same war it is a different war. Do you see this?"

"Perceptual set," Doc Peret said.

The captain nodded. He was leaning forward over the table. His eyes were brilliant black. "Perceptual set! Yes, that is it. 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 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 war is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers."

Unfortunately, these quality passages are the exception, and are insufficient to tie the book together. One can surely sympathize with Paul's desire to invent an escapist fantasy to inject a modicum of hope into the otherwise bleak situation he finds himself in, pulling night duty in a remote observation post in Vietnam, haunted by the deaths of his comrades. But unless the reader finds himself presently in such a situation, it is hard to see what purpose is served by this framework; from very early on, it is obvious the journey to Paris is wholly imagined. There is never any question or tension about its imaginary nature. And as a result, the events of the journey make little impact. Surrealism is just not interesting as a commentary on the consciously imagined.