SOURCE: "Dreaming of War and Peace," in The Washington Post Book World, February 19, 1978, p. E4.

In the following review, Wilson favorably comments on O'Brien's realistic descriptions of war from a footsoldier's perspective in Going after Cacciato.

Fantasies must have fed the spirit of the American infantryman in Vietnam just as the canned peaches he carried in his knapsack nurtured his body. Hell means no escape; but in dreams the soldier can escape his fear and dread, and war can become, merely, a ghastly purgatory.

That is why Paul Berlin, an intelligent, sensitive foot soldier in Tim O'Brien's novel about Vietnam [Going after Cacciato], spends so much time fantasizing. On patrol, his eyes may be focused on the ground in front of him, as he looks for the enemy mine which could blow off his legs, but his thoughts are somewhere else: home, or places he might visit after...