Scan barcode
A review by tominaz
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
4.0
I think some of the other reviewers of Cacciato have forgotten or ignored the enormous challenges that confronted O'Brien in writing a war novel in general and a semi-autobiographical "Vietnam" novel in particular. First there would have been the tremendous difficulty in seamlessly including the autobiographical material to accomplish the necessary verisimilitude. There also would have been the difficulty of coming at the themes of war both obliquely and directly - in a way that honors the tremendous complexity of why war exists and its diffuse meanings viewed through the lens of culture and social expectation yet one that also yawps furiously and unflinchingly at its human costs as well as the immediate and real personal tragedy the Vietnam war inflicted on the author (distilled incredibly in his story "On the Rainy River" from [book: The Things They Carried]). O'Brien overcomes these challenges with admirable and readable finesse as well as with great feeling and compassion.
It is difficult for me to imagine how generic, structural, or stylistic changes to the novel might have resulted in a more artful or polished work without simultaneously forfeiting either the book's acid truths or deeply perceptive thematic nuance. I believe Cacciato to be as readable, moving, and important a soldier's testament to war as either [author: Joseph Heller]'s [book: Catch-22] or [author: Kurt Vonnegut]'s [book: Slaughterhouse Five] and infinitely more satisfying than the perhaps more polished and artful Vietnam novel [book: Dog Soldiers] by [author: Robert Stone].
It is difficult for me to imagine how generic, structural, or stylistic changes to the novel might have resulted in a more artful or polished work without simultaneously forfeiting either the book's acid truths or deeply perceptive thematic nuance. I believe Cacciato to be as readable, moving, and important a soldier's testament to war as either [author: Joseph Heller]'s [book: Catch-22] or [author: Kurt Vonnegut]'s [book: Slaughterhouse Five] and infinitely more satisfying than the perhaps more polished and artful Vietnam novel [book: Dog Soldiers] by [author: Robert Stone].