Going After Cacciato
Book description
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 andā¦
Why read it?
4 authors picked Going After Cacciato as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
How does one capture and transmit what the mixture of boredom and abject terror that is often a soldierās life does to the psyche most effectively?
I had read a number of fictionalized reportages and Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut, which added science fiction. Still, it wasnāt until I powered through this book that I felt I could know how difficult it is for young men to try and make sense of it. The book was a puzzle with pieces that were hard to place next to each other into a coherent picture, and that felt to me like what Vietnam didā¦
From Henry's list on novels that describe what war does to young men.
A 1979 National Book Award winner for fiction, OāBrienās first Vietnam War novel is, for me, his best piece of writing, and OāBrien in our 2014 interview concurred. Yes, itās a timeless but freshly told war story about one soldierās struggle to overcome fear and act courageously on the battlefield. The bookās attraction for me, however, is the complex, engaging, lyrical manner in which the story is toldāmultiple time sequences and narrative strands, realism mixed with magical realism, and the central characterās interplay of memory and imagination in recalling and creating events. The book is also a how-to manual onā¦
From Tobey's list on Vietnam War literature by authors I've interviewed.
āTo call Going After Cacciato a novel about war is like calling Moby Dick a novel about whalesā. So wrote The New York Times about Tim OāBrienās acclaimed anti-war tale of a soldier going AWOL during the Vietnam War. Haunting and psychedelic ā the protagonist falls into a tunnel and winds up in Paris ā Going After Cacciato is easily one of my favorite works of modern fiction. I tried to work a Tim OāBrien quote into my own book ā I think the line, āthe thing about remembering is that you donāt forgetā - but securing the rights provedā¦
From John's list on to fall down a rabbit hole.
If you love Going After Cacciato...
I didnāt love this book at first, but itās grown on me as a deceptively inventive anti-war novel. One day, frustrated GI Paul Berlin resolves to walk away from the Vietnam Warāby walking in a straight line. His journey takes him from the jungles of Southeast Asia to India to the streets of Paris. Itās a sometimes puzzling ride and about so much more than going AWOL that it has to be experienced. Tim OāBrien gets away with tricking the reader, but by the time you realize it, you probably donāt care as itās the ultimate desperate escape.
From Steve's list on underdogs on a doomed mission.
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