Tom's Goals & Recent Readings

Howdy,

I'm planning on taking my PhD qualification exams in August. I have my three lists approved. My major is 19th Century American and I have minors in 20th Century American and Film Studies.

I'm in pretty good shape with my 19th list but I need to read quite a bit in the 20th list. I try to mix it up a bit and read from different lists each week. I'm putting off my film list, though, because, frankly, the dissertation committee probably won't grill me very hard on it (they aren't film scholars) and I already have a very good foundation in film with my Master's degree.

I just finished Tim O'Brien's Going After Caccciato today. It's considered one of the best books about the Vietnam War. Think of it as sort of a very perverse version of Saving Private Ryan. "Cacciato" is Italian for "chase" and after Private Cacciato goes AWOL his platoon is sent after him. They soon realize that Cacciato's destination is Paris, France, and after they follow him into Laos, the question haunts them the rest of the trip as to whether or not they are deserters as well.

Strong allusion to Lewis Carrol with the platoon falling down the rabbit hole and then back out of it. Strong allusions to Herman Melville's Moby Dick (Cacciato serving as the whale).

The protagonist is another young man, Paul Berlin, an Iowa farm boy who almost completed college (studies in History & English) but dropped out just in time to get drafted. Paul sometimes thinks back to a moment when he was in Indian Guides and got lost in the woods...parallel to being "lost" in his present role as soldier.

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...it turns out that the entire adventure is playing out in Berlin's mind as he is doing guard duty...

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If anyone wants to discuss Cacciato, I'm up for it. Otherwise, I'm moving on to read William Dean Howell's The Rise of Silas Lapham.

~ Tom