A National Book Award finalist, this book grabbed me right from the first page, as Bravo company, a small group of young war heroes from Iraq, continue their Army sponsored Victory tour of the United States, the Bush government's attempt to ramp up the fading enthusiasm for the war. Billy Lynn, the nineteen year hero of the conflagration and main character, is thrust, along with his buddies, into the world of big business, contractors, and entrepreneurs, as they honored at the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day football game. Good old American extravagance, kitsch, capitalism, circuses, greed, and patriotism confront the realities of the Iraqi war, symbolized by these boys, trained and hardened by Iraq to be killers (or be killed). Uncomfortable almost anywhere but with each other, the young men are paraded, in this case, in front of eighty thousand rabid Dallas Cowboy fans and a national television audience.
We see the group's mindset through the eyes of Billy and a third person narrator. The contrast between the ridiculous pomp and extravagance of an NFL game, the obvious symbol of American vulgarity and excess, is too much for these young men, especially Billy. They are glad handed, feted, honored at halftime, but ultimately realize they are just a diversion for the Cowboys, for the fans, for the Nation, a brief attempt to make everyone feel good about themselves, by thanking and honoring, but ultimately forgetting that these young men are risking their lives each day for something no one is sure of, least of all Bravo company.
The major action revolves around the promise, to the boys, to enrich them by making a film about their heroism. Producers, big money, litter the special day, as negotiations continue between the boys' agent and Norm, the owner of the Cowboys. Eventually it becomes clear that Norm, though he 'loves these boys,' offers them a pittance for their story. Profit triumphs honor and the boys refuse to be bought cheap, and leave the stadium, defeated and embarrassed, by the glitz, the abundance, the inauthenticity of it all, including their own sense of being 'heroes', a role they know is not true.
Ultimately, they realize they only have each other, and they head back to base, to fly back to Iraq and duty the next day. In between all of this, Billy improbably falls in love with a Dallas cowboy cheerleader, who requites his affections, and he briefly contemplates listening to his sister's pleas to go AWOL, and save his life. He considers it but knows that his real home is Bravo company, that the cheerleader loves him for being a part of Bravo company, not Billy Lynn. An eye opener and as clear a picture of a soldier and his feelings as I have read in a long time. It's troubling to see what the military has done to these misfits, all in the army to escape life (Billy joins to avoid a jail sentence). They are both sacred and profane, human and vulgar, courteous around their elders, scatological, sexist, and racist among each other, schizophrenic as a necessity.
A troubling book about the United States, its values, its notion of 'exceptionalism,' its place in the world, and its young, especially young soldiers.
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