Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

It culminates at the Thanksgiving Day NFL football game in Texas Stadium, whose half-time show promises a live performance by Destiny’s Child and its rising star, Beyoncé (a performance that actually took place in 2004 during the Thanksgiving Day Dallas Cowboys/Chicago Bears game). “Okay, so maybe they aren’t the greatest generation by anyone’s standards, but they are surely the best of the bottom third percentile of their own somewhat muddled and suspect generation.” The victory tour - which has been staged almost exclusively in cities in electoral swing states - clearly serves some purpose distinct from and independent of the men of Bravo Squad. Like others in the group, he appears an accidental combatant - devoid of any particular ideology, patriotism, or sense of duty, motivated primarily by the homosocial bonds of the group, “a grab-ass band of brothers,” Fountain writes. Early on in the narrative, one learns that Billy has enlisted in the army to avoid a jail sentence for an act of vandalism against his sister’s disloyal boyfriend. Shroom) and turned 19-year-old Texas virgin SPC Billy Lynn into a hero. Over the course of this day, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision, and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.A FINALIST FOR the National Book Award in 2012, Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk tells the story of Bravo Squad, a group of US soldiers at the end of a two-week victory tour in 2004, organized to celebrate their actions during a firefight in Iraq that killed their comrade Sergeant Breem (a.k.a.

Surrounded by patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and Support our Troops bumper stickers, he is thrust into the company of the Cowboys’ owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues a born-again Cowboys cheerleader a veteran Hollywood producer and supersized players eager for a vicarious taste of war. On this rainy Thanksgiving, the Bravos are guests of the Dallas Cowboy, slated to be part of the halftime show alongside Destiny’s Child.Īmong the Bravos is Specialist Billy Lynn. Now they’re on a media-intensive nationwide tour to reinvigorate support for the war. Three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare with Iraqi insurgents has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. Goodreads: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain