"Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain

I just finished reading Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain last night.   I heard Fountain read a section of this at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference a few weeks ago.  I liked what he read, and bought the book.  John read it before I did, and he raced through it.  I loved it.

At the risk of sounding like a 4th grader giving a book report, I'll tell you about it.  Billy Lynn is a nineteen year old Army grunt who has returned to the U.S. in 2004 for a two week victory tour before returning to Iraq.  His troop, Bravo, did something super heroic and were touring the "swing states."  The story takes place in Texas Stadium during a Dallas Cowboy's football game on Thanksgiving Day.

I've never cared as much for a character as I did for Billy.  I like Elizabeth Bennett and Mister Darcy, Scout and Atticus Finch, but I love Billy Lynn.  John thinks I am maternal in my affection for the boy, but John liked the kid, too.  He is young and uneducated and insightful and wise.  He is decent, sweet boy who loves his momma, sisters and fellow soldiers.

Here are a few passages I liked.  These aren't necessarily about Billy, but I like them all the same.

"But they are different, these Americans.  The are the ballers.  They dress well, they practice the most advanced hygienes, they are conversant in the world of complex investments and fairly hum with the pleasures of good living--gourmet meals, fine wines, skills at games and sports, a working knowledge of the capitals of Europe.  If they aren't quite as flawlessly handsome as models or movie actors, they certainly possess the vitality and style of, say, the people in a Viagra advertisement.  Special time with Bravo is just one of the multitudes of pleasures available to them, and thinking about it makes Billy somewhat bitter.  It's not that he's jealous as much as profoundly terrified.  Dread of returning to Iraq equals the direst poverty, and that's how he feels right now, poor, like a shabby homeless kids thrust into the company of millionaires.  Mortal fear is the ghetto of the human soul, to be free of it something like the psychic equivalent of inheriting a hundred million dollars.  This is what he truly envies of these people, the luxury of terror as a talking point, and at this moment he feels so sorry for himself that he could break right down and cry.
        I'm a good soldier, he tells himself, aren't I a good soldier?  So what does it mean when a good soldier feels this bad?" (p. 114)

Egads.  This just makes me want to cry.  I feel a little too close to those middle aged folks talking to Bravo.

"And it is was just this, Billy thinks, just the rude mindless headbanging game of it, then football would be an excellent sport and not the bloated, sanctified, self-important beast it became once culture got its clammy hands on it.  Rules.  There are hundreds, and every year they make more, an insidious and particularly gross distortion of the concept of 'play,' and then there are the meat-brain coaches with their sadistic drills and team prayers and dyslexia-inducing diagrams, the control-freak refs running around like little Hitlers, the time-outs, the deadening pauses for incompletes, the pontifical ceremony of instant-replay reviews, plus huddles, playbooks, pads, audibles, and all other manner of stupefactive device when the truth of the matter is that boys just want to run around and knock the shit out of each other."  (p. 164)

This passage reminds of me of the Boy.  Yes, we need rules, but sometimes rules get in the way of the point of the game in the first place.

"Billy has these visions sometimes, these brief sidelines into America as a nightmare of superabundance, but Army life in general and the war in particular have rendered him acutely sensitive to quantity.  Not that it's rocket science.  None of the higher mathematics is involved, for war is the pure and ultimate realm of dumb quantity.  Who can manufacture the most death?  It's not calculus, yo, what we're dealing with here is plain old idiot arithmetic, remedial rounds of pounds-per-minute, assets degraded, Excel spreadsheets of dead and wounded.  By such measures, the United  State military is the most beautiful fighting force in the history of the world.  The first time he saw this demonstrated up close and personal sent him into a kind of shock, or maybe what they meant by awe."  (p. 221)

Given my fondness for Excel spreadsheets, this passage his a chord with me.  I count lots and lots of things.  I never thought of math and war put together.  Interesting juxtaposition.