Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain
Being one in a probably never-to-be-completed series on the Morning News Tournament of Books, scheduled to start in March
A squad of American soldiers deployed in Iraq find themselves national heroes, circa 2004. They were the victors of a brief, glorious firefight on the streets of Iraq that FoxNewsed them all to superstardom at a time when the national psyche could use a lift. So they return home on a 'victory tour' that includes adoring crowds, an over-promising agent offering a movie deal, and a semi-secret re-deployment to Iraq. Over the course of a single Thanksgiving Day, this novel unfolds in and around the confines of one of America's great secular cathedrals - old Texas stadium, during a football game between the Cowboys and the Bears.
From that brief run-down you can probably figure out that this book is a perfect storm of male jock culture, military life, and a satire of American war-frenzy disguised as patriotism. It's a long, crazy trip with a dozen balls in the air, and Ben Fountain masterfully guides us through the whole thing. I'm kind of speechless at his accomplishment, really.
Last June, when I read this book, it easily held the coveted spot of Grebmar's Book of the Year for about two weeks. At that point I'd read some underwhelming things, and this one came across as heartfelt, richly imagined and executed, and amazing all at the same time. It's still in my top two or three, of course. But:
By the next week, a few flaws began to tarnish the award: 1) The cheerleader, Faison, is a typical male-genre fantasy woman, under-developed in character, existing mainly, to validate Billy's manhood and to offer herself as sexual salvation. 2) the owner of the Cowboys, a strange alternate of the real-life owner, is smarmily one-dimensional, as are, come to think of it, any characters not named Billy Lynn. 3) The end is actually quite good, though a single weird random act of cinematic wtf violence seemed completely unnecessary.
As I said, this was one of my favorite books of the year. Now, in the Tournament of Books, it faces a single elimination against two other Middle-East War on Terror books (neither of which I've read), and just from eyeballing, Billy Lynn faces an uphill battle to move on.
