Interview: Ben Fountain
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In Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the clock is ticking for the soldiers of Bravo Company. It’s Thanksgiving Day 2004, and after a long “victory tour” across the U.S. of A. — they’re all heroes, ever since an embedded Fox crew filmed them kicking ass in a firefight — The Bravos are being shipped back to Iraq.
“It is sort of weird,” young Billy observes. “Being honored for the worst day of your life.”
All the meet-and-greets and photo ops that come with being an accidental spokesperson for a war you don’t understand have left the men both jaded and hyper sensitive. They’re jittery. They’re drunk whenever they can be. They’re tired of being thanked.
Their last big public appearance, at a Cowboys game in Dallas Stadium, is a total shitshow: open bar after open bar, followed by a bit part in the loud, flashy, pyro-enhanced Destiny’s Child halftime show. All the while, the Bravos’ agent is working the cell phone, trying to lock up a deal to turn their story a into Hollywood blockbuster that’ll make them all rich. On top of all that, Billy has just fallen hard for a Dallas Cheerleader and suddenly going back to war seems like the worst idea ever.
Ben Fountain’s debut novel is a sometimes humorous, and often heartbreaking look at the disconnect between the young men who fight our wars and the people whose freedom they’re allegedly protecting. It’s also an important book, one that examines the Bush administration’s selling of the war(s) and our eagerness to buy in, tune out or move on.
In her recent book, Drift, Rachel Maddow, wrote about how Americans have found a way to sort of tune out the war. Unlike it was with Vietnam, people seem to be able to go about their daily lives. I was wondering if you agree or disagree with that.
I haven’t read her book but I do very much agree that…Vietnam touched everybody in one way or another. I was too young for Vietnam but I have an older sister, she’s six years older than me and so all of her guy friends, they were looking the draft right in the face. And so it becomes, war becomes much more real when it affects you or your family or could potentially affect someone in your family. And I think that’s really, with certain exceptions, that’s the only time it does become real and even with all the technology we have now, all the ways that war and conflicts come to us via computers and TV, there’s still this disconnect or distancing that makes it not real. No matter how graphic and vivid the images, there’s still a gap between our experience and what’s going on out there.
After reading your book, I realized the gap, it goes both ways. Like when the people talk to Billy, he kind of tunes them out because he knows they’re not speaking the same language. Those passages are really striking, almost minimalist. Billy only hears the buzzwords: 9/11, War on Terror, etc.
When people say things to the soldiers like, “Thank you for your service, you’re a hero, thank you for your sacrifice,” they really mean it when they’re saying it. They’re trying to express something genuine that they feel or feel like they should feel but you know, how much can their words mean when they really don’t know what they’re talking about? And the war has been…The war was sold in this country as this virtuous and just crusade to bring democracy to Iraq, but what Billy knows and what citizens don’t know or won’t even try to acknowledge is that war is necrophilia. War is about who can produce the most death. I mean, that’s the most extreme human situation you can conceive of. Their words of praise and appreciation can only go so far because they don’t know what they’re talking about.
The body count is especially the kind of thing we tend to tune out.
Well and it’s the civilian deaths…Even the most conservative estimates at this point, they’re what, 100,000, 200,000? You know, the enormity of that. We just can’t comprehend that.
Did you speak to soldiers when working on this book?
Yeah, I talked to a lot of soldiers.
What were some things that they said that sort of opened your eye to the things that you didn’t know?
Several things. They tended to view civilians with a mixture of pity and condescension. Because the soldiers, when you start talking about war, they are the insiders. And like insiders anywhere, it’s only natural for an insider to feel superior, you know? In everything from jazz musicians to athletes to chess nerds, you’re going to view the outsider with a certain amount of patronizing. And also, they seem to have a profound sensitivity to the disconnect between their experience and most Americans’ conception of the war and what the war involves.
This has not been a collective effort. This has been a very selective effort on the part of the country. World War II was complete mobilization of the country. Vietnam, even though LBJ tried to soft-sell the war, his strategy was, well we’re going to fight an all out war but we’re going to sell it to the public as we aren’t really fighting an all out conflict. And yet there was the draft and…therefore it penetrated the public, the collective consciousness a great deal more. In this war, it’s a relatively small segment of the population that’s fought the war and been directly affected by the war, and so I got the sense that there’s a profound sense of alienation on the part of the soldiers towards mainstream society.
Everything is way more complicated than stand and shoot and follow orders.
My feeling is there’s no such thing as a simple human being. We all have complex inner lives. You know, it depends on the individual, some are more aware of these various levels of interiority than others and some are more able to articulate the complexity of their inner lives than others, but in one way or another I think we’re all registering everything that goes on in human experience. In any one experience there’s going to be levels of past and present and awareness and unconsciousness and drift and motive and desire and fear and so I think these soldiers, they’re as human and alive as anyone, and maybe more so. You know, the experience of combat, especially in Billy’s case, has made him…extremely alert and attentive to the world around him. He’s trying to figure things out.
And he’s so young.
Yeah, he’s 19 but his experiences of the past year, they’ve woken him up and he’s actively trying to figure out what’s going on and why things are the way they are.
One thing you think about is how, when Billy was still sort of a young punk, I bet being a war hero and getting with a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader would have seemed like perfect simple dreams, and all he’d need in the world. But now everything is fraught with complication.
Oh, yeah. And that’s the nature of experience. Romance novels — that’s when everything is pure and uncomplicated. I’m talking about the romance novels for women where, you know, the bodice-rippers. And I’m also talking about the kinds of romance novels that, say, Tom Clancy writes for men where they’re heroes and the bad guys are clear cut and there’s a clear course of action and you know what you’re supposed to do.
So you went on a publicity tour for the book, right, recently?
Yeah.
Did you feel any of what Billy felt on his “victory tour?”
No. Writers bitch and moan about book tours, “they’re so tough.” They aren’t work. I define work as digging ditches or putting in plumbing, but on book tours you get to go around and meet book people and talk about books. …And no, the level of attention I got, I’m just a little writer and it nowhere near approached the level that’s depicted with Billy and his comrades.
I guess I was thinking along the lines of everyone who came up to Billy thought they were saying the right thing but readers are bound to have their own interpretations. And you just have to nod and say, “Okay, that’s your opinion,” you know?
Yeah, that cuts both ways. Sometimes people will make a striking insight that reveals the book in a way that I’ve never thought of before. But yeah, people are going to make of it what they will and when you put a book out there, that’s just going to happen. But what really struck me, what’s really struck me through the whole reaction to the book is a lot of people feel like I exaggerated things, and I suppose I can see why they would feel that way. But to me it’s straight realism. All the excess, all the over the top stuff that goes on in the book, all you have to do is turn on the TV and it’s there.
There’s a blurb on the front that compares Billy Lynn to Catch-22 and I get the comparison because putting a war in a very sort of distinct light that makes people really think about all sides of it. But along the same lines, that was a satire and that was cartoonish and while your book’s a lot more subtle…
Heller was depicting the uncertainty of war by going at the bureaucracy of it, which I think is an absolutely valid way to approach it. And I was more interested, once I started writing the book, I realized what I was interested in was exploring the marketing of the war. You know, the corporatization of the war and how it becomes part of the media marketing vortex that all the rest of America has been sucked into.
Beyoncé makes an appearance in the halftime show, and becomes a symbol of American frivolity excess.
Well, she must have something going on, to do the things those kinds of things people do and to maintain — they must have pretty strong wills and must be pretty smart people. And so it’s not nothing what they do, and when Billy actually encounters her up close, even though it’s fleeting, he thinks well, she’s one of the top human beings on the planet. To do what she’s doing, carry the show in front of 40 million people, it’s not nothing. So I do have respect for those people.
Has Jay-Z had words with you yet?
I’m sure the book is on his bedside table, he just hasn’t gotten to it yet.
You grew up in North Carolina. And now you live in Texas. Are there like sort of 50 shades of red state?
I think in Texas, and especially in Dallas, you get the purist strain of certain aspects of you know, American culture. And here in Dallas, and especially in North Dallas where I live, the free market is, like, that’s the religion. Free market evangelism. That’s the answer to everything and you know, people really do believe in the rhetoric. Democracy, freedom, capitalism, the American way. I believe in all those things too [ he laughs] but I maybe approach those words with a bit more skepticism and wariness. …When somebody starts talking about these things I don’t accept them at face value, I always wonder, what is the agenda behind it? I just feel like in some ways Dallas is the most American city in terms of dedication and belief in certain mainstream aspects of American culture.
And how is it different than North Carolina?
Well, it’s a difference of degree, I feel like. I’ve been away from North Carolina for 29 years and it’s gotten more conservative over the years. But…in Dallas you just get a purer strain of it. It’s not so much that people believe in the stereotypical American way, it’s that there’s very little awareness that there could be a different way.
I’ve wondered, especially in recent years, what’s George Bush’s legacy in Texas? Are they defenders of Bush still?
Yeah, his house is less than a mile from mine.
Oh, wow.
And early 2009 when he was finishing up his time in Washington all these yard signs appeared in this part of town. They were like campaign yard signs except they said, “Welcome back, Mr. President and Laura.” And I think you know, he’s a much respected, much beloved figure in this immediate area. My wife was at a restaurant with some of her friends one night and he and Laura came in and people stood up and gave them a standing ovation.
Huh.
So I think he has a lot of good will in this area.
Seems like Dallas is an ideal place to set this book then.
When I first came here I thought it would be very similar to the place where I grew up. You know, kind of Southern, kind of conservative, but with progressive elements. And I started to realize pretty quickly that no, it’s a lot different. One example was when I got here people would ask me, “Who’s the richest man in North Carolina?” And it never occurred to me to wonder, number one, and number two, in those days anyway the richest man in North Carolina made damn sure to keep it a secret, whereas here it’s a point of pride and it’s uppermost in people’s minds, wealth, consumption, material status.
Billy and the rest of the Bravo Company want to get paid, they want their story to become movie deal.
My expectation, even though the book doesn’t go into this, is that that was the furthest thing from their minds when they embarked on their military service. And it wasn’t until it started being dangled in front of them that it even occurred to them that they could get a windfall from this. And who wouldn’t want a free $100,000? But Billy does approach the whole notion with a good deal of skepticism. You know, karmically, he thinks that $100,000 might be bad luck for one thing, and for another thing he is really skeptical about whether it’s going to happen.
And it just keeps changing. One cell phone call and a whole different picture can emerge and that’s just crazy to have like a fortune sort of hanging in the balance.
Yeah, well you know, it’s $100,000 which in one way is a lot of money but in our society in terms of what it takes to be actually rich it’s chump change.
That’s true. Have you had much experience with sort of the Hollywood machine?
A little bit [laughs]. Enough to really wonder about the mentality out there. Although we do have a movie deal for this book, and I have to say I was very lucky. I’ve fallen in with a group of, they seem like very solid, very fine people and they get the book and they’re serious about making the movie. So I always figured there were good people in the movie business and it just took me a while to find them.
When they read your book were they like, “We’re not like that”? Were they offended?
No, they weren’t offended. I think my sense was that they felt like it was an accurate depiction of the movie industry.
What about people from Dallas? What’s the reaction bee like there?
There’s been a thundering silence.
Oh yeah? Interesting.
I mean, the Dallas Morning News gave it a really fine, really positive review and they did a nice feature. And D Magazine, which is the city magazine, they gave it favorable coverage. And Texas Monthly. And Texas Observer. …Obviously there’s a segment of Texas that welcomes this kind of examination. [But] the group in Texas or the groups in Texas who wouldn’t welcome or appreciate this kind of examination, they just ignore it.
I would say the book is not mean-spirited towards Texas but it is frank about things.
I appreciate that. I didn’t want it to be a mean book or a cynical book, you know? I was hoping that there would be a soul in there, that it wouldn’t be taking cheap shots. …I do take shots, but hopefully they aren’t cheap.
