I have not read as much about the Vietnam War as I should have, but that has changed in the past month. I've read three books by Vietnam veteran Tim O'Brien, a wonderful writer and author of "Going After Cacciato," the 1979 National Book Award winner.
Cacciato, an Italian word pronounced "catch-ee-otto" which means "hunted"/"caught" in Italian. Two pages into the book you read this sentence, speaking of a soldier named Cacciato:
"In October, near the end of the month, Cacciato left the war."
His platoon mates chase him. In a way, they chase him all the way from Southeast Asia to Paris, which is where he vowed he'd go if he ever went AWOL. He figured it to be slightly more than 8,000 miles, walking.... "It could be done," the book's lead character figures.
Here's how "Going After Cacciato" begins...
"It was a bad time. Billy Boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie Tucker. Billy Boy had died of fright, scared to death on the field of battle, and Frenchie Tucker had been shot thru the nose. Bernie Lynn and Lieutenant Sidney Martin had died in the tunnels. Pederson was dead and Rudy Chassler was dead. Buff was dead. Ready Mix was dead. They were all among the dead. .... When it was not raining, a low mist moved across the paddies, blinding the elements into a single gray element, and the war was cold and pasty and rotten..."
Boy's talented...
This weekend I read O'Brien's novel "In the Lake of the Woods," about the trauma faced by a vet and married state senator when secrets from the war surface. (It will not ruin the book for me to say I think he killed her, but ...) Memory ... love ... deception ... I'm going to have to read more stuff on My Lai now, maybe...When you read this book, keep in mind that some chapters are titled "Hypothesis." Just sayin...
If you've never read much about Vietnam, Tim O'Brien might be a good place to start...
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