Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

By Ben Fountain

(Ecco)

An embedded Fox News crew has filmed a bloody firefight between Bravo Squad, a 10-member unit of the American army, and Iraqi insurgents. Although suffering two casualties among its badly outnumbered unit, Bravo Squad prevails, thanks especially to the courage of Spc. Billy Lynn, a 19-year-old from a small Texas town.

The TV footage has gone viral in the United States, Bravo Squad has been hailed as heroes, and Billy has been awarded the Silver Star, one of the nation’s highest military honors. The Bush White House has brought Bravo home for a two-week “victory tour” of the country to pump up support for the war.

In 13 days Bravo has crisscrossed America, appearing at shopping malls and convention centers in cities from Cleveland to Tampa, from Richmond to Phoenix to have their hands shaken, their backs slapped, their pictures shot by thousands of cellphones. Bravo’s last stop, where it will spend its final hours before boarding a plane back to the war, is Thanksgiving Day at Texas Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys will play the Chicago Bears and Bravo Squad will appear during the halftime show with Beyonce and Destiny’s Child.

Ben Fountain’s novel, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” takes place on this single day. On one level it is simply a description of that extraordinary time as seen through the eyes and processed through the mind of the 19-year-old hero Billy Lynn. On other levels, the tens of thousands of fans in the aging Texas Stadium ― “cold, gritty, drafty, dirty ... possessed of all the charm of an industrial warehouse where people pee in the corners” ― become a microcosm of America in an age of almost suffocating phoniness, especially phony patriotism.

The Bravos, of course, are treated as VIPs. They’re given a stadium tour that includes even the Cowboys’ equipment storage area, where they see body armor superior to what they’re given in Iraq. They’re introduced to a few players, some of whom naively offer to go to Iraq and help out, but just for a little while.

In the Stadium Club and the owner’s suite, they rub elbows with and endure the mealy patriotic platitudes of the Dallas rich ― sleek, bragging executives, many of them Vietnam-era draft-dodgers but now fervent supporters of Bush’s war, and their blond trophy wives.

In the novel’s least-believable episode, Billy even manages a quickie love affair with a Cowboys cheerleader. Oh, and there’s also a film producer traveling with Bravo, constantly on his cell, even on Thanksgiving.

In the midst of this almost hallucinogenic sensory overload, Billy’s mind keeps returning to his real world: his dysfunctional parents who can no longer make their mortgage payments; his sister who is trying to persuade him to desert; his fantasies of future happiness with his just-met cheerleader. (MCT)