Ben Fountain messes with Texas

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:49:00 +0000

Of the two most widely noted novels about the Iraq War published this year (both making the shortlist for the National Book Award), Kevin Powers' "The Yellow Birds" was the more celebrated. But Ben Fountain's profane, shrewd, absurd, intelligent and hard-headed "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" is surely the one that will last. If you're mulling over audiobooks that will help you catch up on 2012's best fiction, Oliver Wyman's narration of this, Fountain's first novel, is not to be missed.

The action mostly takes place stateside, with the title character and his fellow members of the so-called "Bravo squad" making a victory lap through several U.S. cities sometime in the mid-2000s. The soldiers have executed a heroic action in the vicinity of Fox News cameras, and they've been embraced as "real-life American heroes" by the nation. It's Thanksgiving by the time their tour delivers them to a football game in Dallas, the throbbing epicenter of red-blooded, know-nothing, gimcrack patriotism, and 19-year-old Billy has already learned to zone out when people start shaking his hand and talking about "our freedoms." Like the rest of the Bravos, he just wants to meet a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, or better yet, Destiny's Child, who will also be performing on the field at halftime.

Salon.com > Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Ben Fountain messes with Texas