Review: Ben Fountain. BillyLynn’s Long Halftime Walk. New York : Ecco, 2012.
Michael Sedano
It’s about time someone came up with a good satire of the Bush Iraq war years, something Ben Fountain accomplishes in his Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. It's a grand satire that should lead readers to ask what is the value of a soldier's life? Why are our troops not yet home?
Billy Lynn is an east Texas boy, one of those rangy cowboytypes with a keen mind and a Texas public school education. In other words,Billy’s not dumb, he’s just been raised that way. Trouble is, a keen mind keepsBilly looking at context and searching for something that looks normal to him. Here he is at nineteen years old touring the nation to strikeup enthusiasm for Bush’s Iraq war. Mired in a sea of people slapping his backor teary-eyed to meet the hero, people treat him like an object. The big shotswho come on to Billy’s heroism—“you’re the one with the medal”—don’t give amoco for Billy but they’re proud that it was one of their own, a Texas boy, on teevee,fighting off an attack, Billy the guy with a soldier dying in his lap. Suchheroism, sacrifice, killing, makes them proud that nina leven is getting some payback and pose for a picture on myiPhone.
The welter of stilted conversations, ritual greetings, andgushing admiration boils down in Billy’s experience to the question Fountainputs in his mind. “Why do you do this for us?” Billy, stunned in realizing thisowner’s suite hell is normal to these people, is shaken to the core with no answer.To his infant nephew he sends a message: ifI’m not around you tell him, I said don’t ever join the Army.
Billy’s Sergeant Dime has the best lines in the story. Dimeis a scion of the 1% who’s chosen a decent man’s life as a grunt. His life letsDime stand toe-to-toe with rich guys and even Norm himself. Dime does thethinking Bravo follows orders. Billydoesn’t have the words so it’s Dime's role to provide a rant when it’s calledfor, as when a pig of an oil man imagines how hard a combat soldier’s lifetreats him.
“That’s not it at all!We like violence, we like going lethal! I mean, isn’t that what you’re payingus for? . . . . I love every one ofthese mutts like a brother, I bet I love them more than their mommas even, butI’ll tell you frankly, and they know how I feel so I can say this right infront of them, but just for the record, this is the most murdering bunch ofpsychopaths you’ll ever see. I don’t know how they were before the Army gotthem, but you give them a weapons system and a couple of Ripped Fuels andthey’ll blast the hell out of anything that moves. Isn’t that right, Bravo? . .. . So if your family’s oil companywants to frack the living shit out of the Barnett Shale, that’s fine, sir,that’s absolutely your prerogative, but don’t be doing it on our account.You’ve got your business and we’ve got ours, so you just keep on drilling, sir,and we’ll keep on killing.” (66)
Fountain sets his plot in motion around a movie deal. Here’sanother side to Billy’s fundamental questions about this war, what is a soldierworth?
A producer has latched on to the Bravos, but he cannot closea deal. For the soldiers, there’s no money up front, but once a star and studioclimb aboard, the producer has the men thinking they are worth hundreds ofthousands of dollars each. For working class men, the sum has value as merefantasy, like hooking up with a Dallas cheerleader.
Each of the men of Bravo squad, except for SGT Dime, escapeda crappy life by picking up the recruiter’s inkpen. As excited at the prospectof movie money as getting a lapdance from Beyoncé, the Bravos occupy whatever momentis at hand. They depend on their Sergeant, and Billy, to see the deal through.Fatalistic, they’ll take whatever someone’s willing to pay.
That’s a good choice for Fountain. The author doesn’t haveto develop those characters beyond a gesture or a feel-good experience. Whenthe tour is over, Fountain and the Army are sending them back to Iraq, wheresuch questions--why and is it worth it--are absurd.
The title comes from the end of the novel. After a grotesquefreak show in Norm’s suite, the Bravos descend to another hell, the march intoa halftime spectacular where their duty calls on them to serve as mannequins inuniform to Destiny’s Child.
Chaos ensues and the Bravos have to fight their way out ofthis support the troops hell. Now Fountainplays his stroke of pure cruelty to the hilt. The Bravos survive another ambushin the parking lot then load into the white Hummer headed directly to the airportand the return flight to Iraq.
Billy Lynn’s LongHalftime Walk delivers the same flavor irony Charlie Trujillo flavors his Dogs From Illusion about VietnamVeterans. Trujillo’s infantrymen return home to their old jobs picking melonsand being cheated by their boss. Fountain really twists the pinch here, puttingthe Bravos through this crap then sending them back into it with the best offerfor their lives. In a delicious scene, Billy watches Dime unmask super-patriot Norm.To support the war, Norm’s willing to make a $30 million dollar movie and payeach Bravo $5500.
This is plain mean, Mr. Fountain, but a stiletto of a point.$5500 is less than half the value of a GI’s life insurance policy. Everysoldier has that insurance number engraved in active memory. This is how much I’m worth. A living Bravois worth half what a dead Bravo’s worth. Oh say can you see it now?
One mark of capable satire is its ability to lead readers toponder what makes authors and characters passionately angry? Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is nota war story about heroes and duty. These guys are soldiers so we know they willfollow orders.
Fountain wants to inquire into the reader’s duty.
What is it, in us, as United States Americans that we allowpeople like Bush, and Norm and his friends in the owner’s suite, to send outboys like Billy and Mango to kill and die in our name? When people say “I supportthe troops,” this is what that looks like in dollars and real world commonsense, fifty-five hundred dollars for you, millions for me.
So why do we ask them to do it, soldiers?
Much as I enjoy the novel, Fountain leaves me with an equivocalenthusiasm for the deserter ploy, and the constant distraction built into "Billy" as an allusion toBilly Pilgrim, and Vonnegut’s SlaughterhouseFive. Il miglior fabbro.
Fountain sets up a red herring using as support Billy’sasshole father, abused mother, children, and a sister’s plea that Billy desert.Had the author carried through this bit of cheap agon, it would have been theworst case of character assassination since the upcoming presidential electionagainst Obama. There is never a question that Billy or any Bravo would desert,but it sends up a smokescreen for readers who don’t see that nothappening. Billy is not going to desert, the Bravos are not going to quit.
It’s up to the nation’s Rubens to support the troops byvoting the Norm tipas tipos out of power and bring the troops home. Ruben’s the chicano food worker whoinvites Mango and Billy to share a joint on a private stadium overlook. The twosoldiers and the vato pass the number, offering a singular measure of Ruben’sadmiration for the troops. Here, Fountain’sstorytelling skills rise toward the sublime. When Ruben explodes outraged learningBilly and Mango are headed back to Iraq, the scene brings tears to a reader,realizing this is what “support the troops” looks like, helpless outrage.
The hallmark of satire is irony. And that’s irony.
Michael Sedano
Back in 1969, a month after the Army sent me to live atop aKorean mountaintop missile site, the Army sent Eraldo Lucero to Vietnam. There,the Eleven Bravo—Army code for a grunt—from New Mexico would earn the CombatInfantryman Badge and other medals during a year humping hills and jungles,eventually finishing his tour on a pair of remote mountaintops in the finalmajor battle of the Vietnam war.
Lucero’s memoir provides a fit counterpart to a reading of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
Whereviolence and warfare come with a literary glitz, the writer struggles not toglorify war, killing, and the death of friends. Fountain doesn’t make it, his story, and not having been a soldier, constrains his fingers, leading to a glorious accounting of the attack and rescue caught by Fox teevee news cameras and making Billy and the Bravos heroes.
In recent US war literature, Chicanaand Chicano writers are among the most effective, including Vietnam VeteransCharlie Trujillo, Dogs From Illusion;Alfredo Vea, Gods Go Begging; DanielCano Shifting Loyalties.
Echoes of a DistantPast reads like Lucero and you sitting down and telling each other’sstories. This is mine, he says, and tells it. The writer Lucero doesn’t injecthis memories with glitz or hyperbole.
Lucero’spages lead a reader chronologically from in-country orientation to his firsthostile fire, then from trail to ambush, battle to battle, night attacks andthe occasional pendejada. He speaks in quiet, matter-of-fact declaratives. Thisis what happened to me.
You may know vatos who fought the war in Vietnam, and likelythey don’t do a lot of talking about it. Maybe a friend gets up and quietly leavesthe room when someone starts talking about a book they read about the war. Maybe you have a friend who enjoys Ben Fountain’s fictive Billy but would not be OK with EraldoLucero’s memories of his friend Billy.
Except for those Veterans with good reason to shy away,reading Echoes of a Distant Past fills-in knowledge that is beginning to disappear from the body politic. Lucero wants this knowledgeto disappear or at least diminish for him. He says he writes to get this stuff out of his system. Inwhatever manner expression fulfills an exigency, memoirs like this deserve to be written, as well as have aplace alongside novels and short fiction.
Novels tell stories at a distance, in belletristic dramaticrelief. A memoir like this doesn’t draw characters, it remembers friends,events, details, like relentless grunt quotidiana of being the first soldier to walkinto a field of fire, losing friends, who was where when the sappers attacked:
At this point, Iremember hearing Roy Larison opening up with his M-60 machine gun. Hank Trickeywas in the same foxhole with Larison, just a little to the left of my foxholeand assisting him with the machine-gun fire. As soon as they began firing, Inoticed the satchel charges moving away from my position and now exploding ontheir position. To this day, I’ve felt that they saved my life that night. . .. at 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. as we came out of our foxholes, the situation within ourperimeter was extremely chaotic. Guys were still yelling for the medics fromall different directions within the perimeter.
Although Echoes of aDistant Past, as most self-published work, would benefit from detailedediting, there’s no missing the numbing authenticity of a soldier’s story, such as when an aging Veteran learns the details of a friend’s death.
Lucero and Billy, Billy Lucas, were tight. Billy is assignedto a new unit, where he is killed. Thirty five years later, Lucero meets a manwho’d been in that unit, and who tells Lucero about that time when “Kentucky” got hit in theforehead. That’s what it’s like to be a soldier, sometimes. Die without a name.
Billy Lucas, QEPD.
And QEPD the fifty-five names that close the memoir beginning onpage 125. KIA, Killed in Action, with the 2/502nd Infantry Battalionin Operation Texas Star, including Hills 714 and 882. Many of these men are¡Presente! in the pages of Echoes of aDistant Past. Read the names. Qepd.
News & Notes Update: Zócalo Poet Laureate Video
Banned Books Update
 |
| Freedom's flag in the dawn's early light |
A thought-eating bacterium appears to have spread from Arizona to Texas, where education policy makers don't want to challenge a student's fixed beliefs, so they want to ban teaching the kids to think for themselves.
On-Line Floricanto Day Three of Month Seven 2012
It’s the eve of the United States of America’s IndependenceDay from England. That’s the revolución that killed a bunch of Europeans andsome locals so thereafter all of us would be equal.
Call that one of history’s bigger ongoing ironies.
Caviling fools and pinheads fill the air withcomplaints that freedom is a limited commodity, especially in Arizona. If justice continues to prevail, the whines heard round the world from angry right wingers sounds their last gasp.
La Bloga's On-Line Floricanto on the eve of US Independence Day brings the voices of five poets sounding out loud confident defiant: Odilia Galván RodrÃguez, Jorge Alejandro Medina, Joe Navarro, Julie Corrales, Fernando Rodriguez.
“BecomingVisible” by Odilia Galván RodrÃguez
Becoming Visible
Odilia Galván RodrÃguez
no longer invisibleyou wish to banish usback in time
to our quiet placestooped in fieldsin your gardens
kitchens loudclattered and steam filledlaundry rooms
quietly nurturing you and yours like our ownchildren
lucky if left with familyless so if latchkeyed lonely and locked in
scared to make a soundlest neighbors callauthorities
living in fearof offending of being visible
time and strugglechanged that gamepeople learned their rights
to fight for what is justto come out into the light
c/s
Mi color es un crimen
Jorge Alejandro Medina
Mi color es un crimenDuermo con el miedo a mi ladoMientras veo venir el trenSe olvidan que todos fuimos lodo.
Arranco esperanza de la esperanzaTodo parece que somos un númeroMe quieren castigar por mi razaPero si Dios fue primero.
Los mÃos me acogen con sus brazosNada está perdido para la luz encendidaSe parecen a la furia de los ososPero no podrán con la caridad espléndida.
El fuego cae y sólo es ruidoMis entrañas se retuercenY pienso en lo que fue el nidoMis labios callados gritan a los que se enfurecen
Todo será tranquilad y vidaAlgún dÃa seguro que respiraré la pazSerá existencia real y a los demás dirigidaSólo pienso en el amor y en hacer eso capaz.
She Did All the Right Things
by Joe Navarro
She did all the right things...
Studied diligently, worked hard
Academically made great strides
Went throughout school impressing
Her teachers and imbued
Her padres with orgullo
She was the student everyone
Knew would succeed and the
Student every teacher bragged
About in the teachers' lounge
She did everything right...
She tearfully explained this
To the arresting officers who
Cuffed her, dragged her to
The jail, where she awaits
Being severed from the only
Home she's ever known for
As long as she can remember
But now faces the prospect
Of being abandoned in an
Unfamiliar place away from
Family and a lifetime of friends
She did all the right things...
And shined brightly, being a
Brilliant star...all the right things
To make her a productive member
Of this society...which does not
Matter in the court of
Ignorance and prejudice
Joe Navarro
© Copyright 2012
Hasta La Victoria
Julie Corrales
Stories untold, weighty on my shouldersI live the skeletons of history hid from meYou can lie to my face, but not to my conditionI don’t need banned books to knowof disenfranchisement, of my mother’s forced submissionKnelt over shinning porcelain latrines,Poetry in all her motions, pride in her calloused hands,Now you deny me her dignity,call her struggle towards prosperity, stealing of resourceand landcall me unpatriotic when I raise my closed fist to skydemanding what she died for,earth which should have been my birthrightchronicles burned through genocidestories and tragedies and triumphs you simply denyI don’t need your admission, the truth burns under myBronze skin and deep in my onyx eyesThe raging fire in my brick red heart, exposes your liesAnd we will continue to fightUntil cherry pickers, and babysitters,House cleaners are heroes memorializedTill our history is taught to our descendantsAnd our victory written in a red, white, and blue sky.
Letter to Arpaio
Fernando Rodriguez
Hello Mr. ArpaioFrom California the people salute youChicano style like in a soccer gameWhistles and boos is what you deserve
The man who thinks himself a legalThe man who wants to apprehend illegalsThe man who says he is the lawThe only sheriff breaking up laws
Hating immigrants in an immigrant countryEnjoying and hailing an American dinnerNo idea you have that an immigrant picked it
So proudly you brag and hail at a StateA state free of immigrants you wish to haveA bunch of dumb people follow you behind
Senseless and with no feelings you seem to beBreaking up families and breaking up dreamsAsking for papers from people around youNative Americans ask the same from you
Ironies of life the ones we live todayAttacking the dreams,Same dreams that brought you here
If an American you’re claiming to beWe are more American we were born here
The American continent is where I’m fromI’m sorry Arpaio I don’t expect you to know
Oh one last thing mister don’t call me more namesMy mom gave me one and was approved by god.
BIOS“BecomingVisible” by Odilia Galván RodrÃguez
Odilia Galván RodrÃguez, is a poet/activist and healer. She has been involved in social justice organizing and helping people find their creative and spiritual voice for over two decades. Odilia teaches creative writing workshops nationally, and is a moderator and one of the founding members of Poets Responding to SB 1070. She also co-hosts "Poetry Express" a weekly open mike with featured poets in Berkeley, CA
Hola mi nombre es Jorge Alejandro, el profesor Francisco X me dijo que querÃa publicar mi poema en la revista Bloga, con gusto acepto esta nominación y sólo me queda decir gracias, recién escribà en ingles un poco sobre mi, pero le comento que el inglés no es mi primer idioma aunque tengo un tiempo viviendo acá en U.S.A en si mi vida me la he llevado viviendo más tiempo en México que acá, le cuento un poco sobre mi, estudié filosofÃa en el Seminario Diocesano de Tijuana, me gradué apenas un año atrás, lo que me inspira escribir poemas es la realidad y la interpretación tan diferente que le podemos dar sin que pierda su esencia, los sufrimientos y los esfuerzo que las personas hacen para sobrevivir suele ser un algo muy cautivante y detonador, también escribo sobre polÃtica o el amor, etc. solo me queda decir muchas gracias.!!Hi, let me introduce myself, my name is Jorge Alejandro Medina, Francisco X Alarcon, told me about the nomination of my poem to be on The Bloga magazine, let me say little bit more about me, well I have a bachelor in Philosophy from Seminario Diocesano de Tijuana, I used to work as seminarist in some communities from Baja California, now I work in L.A., I would say that I found my passion about writing poems a few years ago, I really enjoy doing it, my inspirations come from watching our reality and how people suffers and struggles every day with it, also, I can write about love, politics and different stuff or themes.
Thanks for like my poems.
Alejandro Medina.
Joe Navarro is a literary vato loco, teacher, poet, creative writer, husband, father and grandfather. Joe integrates his poetic voice with life's experiences, and blends culture with politics. His poetic influences include the Beat Poets, The Last Poets, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Alurista, Gloria Anzaldua, Lalo Delgado and numerous others.
Julie Corrales is a first-generation American born to a Mexican mother and Costa Rican father. Raised in City Heights, the poorest and most predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of San Diego, California, Julie navigated a world of drugs, gangs, and poverty. A mother at 15, she dropped out of school and began working, determined to provide more opportunities for her son. After much growth and sacrifice, today Julie raises two sons, works, writes, studies, and remains politically active in San Diego. She draws on her experiences to advocate for and write about Chicano issues. Julie's essays have been published in the San Diego Union Tribune and local bi-lingual publication La Prensa San Diego. Her first-born son is an artist, musician, athlete, and straight-A student at James Madison High School.
My name is Fernando Rodriguez and I am a student at Merced college Los Banos Campus. Born in Mexicali B.C. Mexico and Raised in Salinas Ca. I grew up in a city with diverse ethnicity, it was then and there where I learned about Chicanismo. I had a struggle to find out who i was, therefore I released my emotions in a piece of paper, not knowing I was writing poetry. One day while in Summer in an English class, the teacher announces a poet will come to town and that we are all invited. After that, I got this passion for writing about everything I can, because I learned written word are as powerful as a weapon. Special thanks to my friend Mrs. Meg Withers for supporting and believing in me and everything i do, and to Mr. Javier X. Alarcon for giving me that boost and showing me real poetry that day.
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