By Mark Alpert
I just finished an amazing novel that was published last year, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. It’s set in the not-too-distant past of the Bush era, when the war in Iraq was raging and the airwaves in America were full of over-the-top patriotic extravaganzas. The U.S. Army has organized a Victory Tour for a squad of infantrymen whose combat heroics were caught on video and broadcast on the evening news, making instant celebrities out of the young, rowdy soldiers. Billy Lynn is the baby of the squad, a 19-year-old who won the Silver Star for his valor during the firefight but can barely remember what happened. He’s overwhelmed and exhausted by all the fawning attention he gets from armchair warriors during the Victory Tour, which culminates in a farcical halftime show at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium on Thanksgiving Day. And he even toys with the idea of deserting, because the Army is planning to send him and his fellow grunts right back to Iraq as soon as the football game is over.
Billy went to Stovall, to the three-bedroom, two-bath brick ranch house on Cisco Street with sturdy access ramps front and back for his father’s wheelchair, a dark purple motorized job with fat whitewalls and an American flag decal stuck to the back. “The Beast,” Billy’s sister Kathryn called it, a flanged and humpbacked ride with all the grace of a tar cooker or giant dung beetle. “Damn thing gives me the willies,” she confessed to Billy, and Ray’s aggressive style of driving did in fact seem to strive for maximum creep effect. Whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr, he buzzed to the kitchen for his morning coffee, then whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr into the den for the day’s first hit of nicotine and Fox News, then whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr back to the kitchen for his breakfast, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrrto the bathroom, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrrto the den and the blathering TV, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr, he jammed the joystick so hard around its vulcanized socket that the motor keened like a tattoo drill, the piercing eeeeeeennnnnhhhhhh contrapuntaling off the baseline whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr to capture in sound, in stereophonic chorus no less, the very essence of the man’s personality. “He’s an asshole,” Kathryn said.
The novel is also brilliantly structured. It starts with the limo ride to the Cowboys stadium a couple of hours before kickoff and ends with the same limo picking up the soldiers after the game. In between we get to see the football players suiting up in the locker room, the team owner’s luxurious suite, the equipment room, the drunken fans, and of course the fabulous Cowboys cheerleaders. There are some flashbacks, but not too many. The only really extended one is the description of Billy’s depressing homecoming. I was expecting the author to eventually describe the heroic deeds of the infantrymen in the firefight in Iraq, but that expected flashback never arrives. We just get a few bits and pieces of it: Billy’s despair as one of his comrades dies in his lap, his sergeant’s pride in Billy’s heroism (expressed, jarringly, as a painful kiss after the battle). The omission is disappointing in a way — we want to know what happened there! — but it fits with the theme of the novel. The soldiers themselves don’t want to think about what happened. And when the fawning armchair warriors bombard them with thoughtless questions, asking them what they felt during the firefight, the grunts can’t respond. If you weren’t there, you can never really understand.
“Oh, ma’am, don’t worry about him,” Crack assures her. “We’re infantry, that’s kind of like being a dog or a mule, we’re too dumb to mind the weather. He’s fine, believe me, he don’t feel a thing.”
“No ma’am,” Mango chimes in. “We punch him every once in a while to keep his blood moving. See, like this.” He delivers a sharp whack to Lodis’s bicep. Lodis snarls and throws out his arms, but his eyes never open.
In short, I urge you to read this novel. There’s no better way to learn how to write fiction.
I guess someone forgot to mention to you that the whole ‘ban this’ thing stopped being funny months ago. Now it’s just a sign you can’t think up anything intelligent to add to the conversation.
My thoughts exactly… you’d think people who either own or plan to ride in a limo would like to know that information!
Your advice to read great books and study them is how I learned to write a novel, aside from the book “Structuring Your Novel” that I’d bought. I outlined a number of books in the genre to which I aspired to write and this helped me glean the structure. It’s especially useful for learning how to write whodunits.
I’m always amazed to run across authors who say that they don’t read other authors in their genre. There are many excuses, but I don’t buy any of them. Being an avid reader morphed into my wanting to write way back when, but I’m still an avid reader. In fact, when my muses challenged me to write YA and mystery (I generally write sci-fi and thrillers), I went to other authors to find out how to do it–learn by example, they call it.
Maybe when you’re famous you can afford to ignore other authors, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think it’s a good way to become stale and formulaic.
r/Steve
Reading a great novel is a love/hate thing for me. On one hand, I love discovering, dissecting, admiring good work. On the other hand, it can fill me with self-doubt. Re Steven’s comment above about reading within the genre: I’ve read almost everyone worth reading in crime fiction and have learned much. Lately, however, I’ve been reading outside our genre and it’s been like a hard good jolt to my imagination. I wonder if we crime writers get in stylistic ruts because we are attuned to paying homage to our own gods? Lately, I find myself relying in a too-spare style in my writing (just finished “Tenth of December” and probably have a Saunders hangover!). Now I’ve been finding inspiration in lusher fiction, like Jess Walter’s “Beautiful Ruins.” They say you can learn from reading bad novels…well, maybe at one time. But life is too short and there are too many really good books out there.
PJ your post reminds me of what my girlfriend and co-author and I are going through right now. She and I are only at the beginning and are hungry students of the craft. But the more we learn, and read, we are finding that we have started this endeavor not understanding anything about the craft or genres. And especially about our selves. It has been a wonderful self discovery journey for the both of us. Now to our dilemma. I asked her to take on the project with me because she is the most talent, gifted writer I know. Not sure why she agreed but she did. We are 60 pages or so into our WIP and we are noticing that she and I have very different writing styles. She uses a lot more flair in her writing and I am more of a blunt writer. She reminds me of more a literary style author. Her favorite books are books like Queen by Alex Haley and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Her influence’s are very literary in style while I read more JK Rowlings, Steven King, and things of that sort. Is it possible for us to really accomplish this, when we potentially have very different influences and writing styles?
I just read your bio and have just learned you are actually two!! Lol. How ironic I would post the proceeding response to you!! Lol. You’ve offered me a renewed hope for our WIP, in your bio. Thank you. 🙂
Mark–
I don’t think I’m overstating it to say that this is one of the most compressed and useful postings at TKZ that’s been published. Certainly it holds true for me and my reading of the site. After all is said and done, the most important skill every writer must develop is learning how to read as a writer, not as a “civilian” consumer of fiction. I’ve learned things from how-to books, but usually the lessons came in the form of well-chosen quotes. Thanks for this.
I have several books I feel this way about. “Kinflicks” by Lisa Alther is painfully funny and touching at the same time. Some of the snark in my MC’s attitude (and my own for that matter) come from this book.
If you WIP needs some awkward, unbelievably funny, unsexy sex scenes, let Ms. Alther show you the way. Opening paragraph:
My family has always been into death. My father, the Major, used to insist on having an ice pick next to his placemat at meals so he could perform an emergency tracheotomy when one of us strangled on a piece of meat. Even now, when running my index fingers along my collarbones to the indentation where the bones join, I can locate the optimal site for a tracheal puncture with the same deftness as a junkie a vein.
^^ that ^^
Terri
Terri–
Yes, I would say the tone and choice of details here perfectly capture the speaker’s childhood with her profoundly screwy father.