Reviews

• アン・リーが映画化

  「ライフ オブ パイ」などの映画監督のアンリーが映画化しました。それで読み始めましたがとても良かったです。映画版は私は見ていませんが批評家からは微妙な反応が多いですが。原作はとても良かったです。今アメリカはタイムリーですし（笑） アメリカの象徴でもあるアメリカンフットボールのスーパーボールの試合のハーフタイムの演出に呼ばれた兵士たちのお話です。ヒーローと演出されるが当然実際の戦場を経験してきた兵士たちとのＧＡＰは深いです。「押しつけがましさ」もあまり感じらずに最後まで読めれます。余韻が残る小説です。映画も見てみようかと。

• イラク戦争時代のアメリカを見事に描いた風刺小説

  イラクで敵からの攻撃に応戦したところをフォックスニュースが偶然映像にとらえて放映したため、陸軍歩兵隊のBravo隊のメンバーは母国で一躍有名になる。 ブッシュ政権のイラク戦争のプロパガンダが目的らしい一時帰国をしたBravoのメンバーたちは、ホワイトハウスを訪問したり、次の選挙で重要な地域を訪問する。 そのツアーに加わったのが、この事件の映画化を考えついたハリウッドのベテランプロデューサーAlbertであった。彼はBravo隊のカリスマ的な軍曹Dimeと交渉し、映画化が決まったら生き残りのメンバー8人それぞれに10万ドルを払うことを約束していた。 18歳のBilly Lynnは、大好きな姉を悲しませた元婚約者の車を破壊して懲役の代わりに陸軍に入隊したのだった。闘いが好きで加わったわけではないので、部隊で最も親しくしていたShroomが殺されたときの自動的なリアクションでSilver Star章を受けとり、ヒーローとして扱われ、映画化されたら主役扱いになるという現状にとまどっている。 アメリカ合衆国では、感謝祭の日に必ず大きなアメリカンフットボールの試合があり、Bravo隊はダラス・カウボーイのオーナーから「ヒーロー」として試合に招待される。「イラク戦争」のテーマは政治的に取り扱いが難しいのでハリウッドの映画産業はなかなか手を出さず、Albertは最後の手段としてダラス・カウボーイのオーナーに働きかける。この日、Billyはアメリカそのものの皮肉なカラクリを実感する。 同時テロ以降のアメリカ合衆国の愚かさが、皮肉な笑いを含めて巧妙に語られている非常に優れた風刺小説。スラングが多く、文脈からニュアンスを読み取る必要があるので、読みこなすのは難しいかもしれない。

• When a firefight became the leading story on every news channel in America, Bravo Company are sent back to the US for a whirlwind tour. Two days before going back to Iraq, they are Guests of Honor at a Dallas Cowboys NFL game. Bravo Co. are trotted out to a fawning adoring public, as dutiful soldiers who believe in their mission. Ben Fountain's fictional story of Billy Lynn's attempt to reconcile the reality of War, with the hype of one NFL game. Excellent read remembering a 19 year old is the narrator

• An exceptionally good read - quite the most enjoyable book I've read for several months. That said, it seems only sensible to point out that this is a Marmite book. If you're unfamiliar with or irritated by American colloquialisms, if you dislike bad language and swearing, if you think the war in Iraq was a good thing and if you dislike or know nothing at all about American football, this book may not be for you. However, the language and swearing isn't that bad and it's never gratuitous. And it's possible you could enjoy the book without knowing anything about American football and its traditions. On the other hand, if you know and like America, if you have contempt for George W Bush and the political thugs who embroiled the US in an unwinnable war for highly dubious reasons, if you enjoy watching the Super Bowl and if you enjoyed Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full", there's every chance you will love Ben Fountain's book about Billy Lynn and Bravo squad as much as I did. This is a satire and it's clever and very funny. Seldom laugh-out-loud funny, but you'll find yourself grinning most of the time. The dialogue is as good as any I've encountered in a book. Never a false note, crystal clear and true. And it's the dialogue that produces most of the humour. Sometimes satire becomes tedious, when the author starts preaching or laying it on too thick. In this book, the satire is subtle and gentle and Fountain never (in my opinion) loses his sense of proportion. At times the humour and style reminded me of Tom Wolfe, but this is every bit as good as his stuff and one third of the length. It's beautifully written, too. If you decide to read it, I hope you get as much fun and pleasure from it as I did.

• Gute satirische Darstellung der Gesellschaft der USA. Alles,was der Autor dem Land vorwirft, ist im Schauspiel des Footballspiels zusammengefasst. Auch der Leser, der total anderer Anschauung ist, bekommt ein Bild von den Auseinandersetzungen in den USA. Der Krieg spielt im Buch nur eine Nebenrolle; er scheint fast normal im Vergleich zu den Zuständen in der Heimat. Die Truppe des Billy Lynn ist typisch für alle Soldatenbilder der USA. Sie halten zusammen wie Pech und Schwefel. Die Gruppensoldarität lässt Billy trotz der Versuchung durch Antikriegsgruppen, die ihm bei Fahnenflucht Schutz und Rechtsbeistand geben würden, mit seinen Kameraden, die er nicht im Stich lassen kann, zurück in den Krieg, in den Irak gehen.

• Libro pieno di inventiva, da leggere se possibile in lingua originale. Un testo originale per tema trattato e come viene trattato.

• A biting and quite funny satire that delivers a punch made more powerful because there is an utter believability to most of the story — you can just see a lot of events depicted happening “for real” — Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain is one of the best novels I read this year, or ever for that matter. I liberally used the highlight function on my Kindle, bookmarking dozens of passages for later recall. It’s a pity that a certain segment of the American population won’t bother to read this book, which shines an uncomfortably bright spotlight on issues of class, politics, economics, patriotism and religion. After taking part in a dramatic firefight in Iraq that was filmed by an embedded crew from Fox News, nineteen-year-old Specialist Billy Lynn and the seven other surviving members of his Army squad are on the final day of a whirlwind two week “Victory Tour” of the US. Finishing up at Texas Stadium as guests of the Dallas Cowboys for the annual Thanksgiving Day game, Billy and his mates will report to Fort Hood immediately after the game before returning to Iraq to finish out the year left on their tour. The soldiers of Bravo Squad are hung over and reeling from the frenetic pace of Victory Tour, but they’re also still trying to deal with the death and injury of friends in the battle, during which Billy displayed great courage and coolness under fire. Tagging along is Albert, a Hollywood producer trying to put together a movie deal to make the Bravos rich and even more famous, and the battle-scarred, mysterious and dangerously deaf Major Mac, their Army-assigned chaperone. In the time it takes to play a football game, Billy and the Bravos will have to make it through countless speeches, bask in the adulation of a many, survive assaults on their minds and bodies by friends and foes, try to strike it rich, strive to meet halftime headliners Destiny’s Child … and did I mention meeting the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders? Although called by some reviewers Catch-22 for the Iraq War, I think Mr. Fountain’s debut novel differs from Joseph Heller’s classic in a couple important ways. First and foremost is, as mentioned above, the realism. Granted, it has been years since I read and enjoyed Catch-22, but I recall much of it to be so wildly improbable as to be considered a farce — I’m not knocking it, just saying. In contrast, most of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk rings with a truthfulness that ratchets up the reader’s emotions. “Billy and Mango stand there eating scalding hot pizza and know that their fame is not their own. Mainly it’s another thing to laugh about, this huge floating hologram of context and cue that leads everyone around by the nose, Bravo included, but Bravo can laugh and feel somewhat superior because they know they’re being used. Of course they do, manipulation is their air and element, for what is a soldier’s job but to be the pawn of higher? Wear this, say that, go there, shoot them, then of course there’s the final and ultimate, be killed. Every Bravo is a PhD in the art and science of duress.” — Fountain, Ben (2012-05-01). Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel (pp. 28-29). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. One negative reviewer I read complained that Billy and the other Bravo soldiers have “nothing in common” with soldiers they knew, but I disagree wholeheartedly. Some are sketched lighter than others, but I recognized plenty from my days as a division officer and department head in the Navy. Need a more “Army-centric” comparison? Try watching the excellent Sebastian Junger-Tim Hetherington documentary Restrepo, something I did again after reading this book to confirm my initial impressions. A second departure from Catch-22 is — despite what some negative reviewers say — the U.S. Army, indeed the military in general, comes across in a positive light. The Army was at best complicit, and likely wholly responsible for, the myth-creation surrounding Private Jessica Lynch and former-NFL player Pat Tillman, but here the events leading to the Bravo’s Victory Tour are fully documented and indeed available for anyone to see on YouTube. For sure, shots are taken at politicians responsible for the Iraq War and the hollowness and hypocrisy of those for whom “support the troops” has become a reflex that doesn’t extend to allowing any sacrifice that will actually affect the spouter of said platitudes, but the soldiers who are actually conducting the dirty business of war in a foreign nation are treated with respect. Many of the positive attributes of military service that I recall and indeed experienced are highlighted. Billy and the Bravos are more mature and focused than their peers — just nineteen, Billy is thought at one point to be many years older — and have exercised responsibilities the breadth and depth of which few civilians will experience. That isn’t to say Billy and the Bravos are saints or even grown-ups; they’re a rough-around-the-edges bunch, smart but not schooled, trained to be deadly but not socially graceful, and bonded to each other as combat soldiers. And very few of them come from money. “What cards these Bravos are, what a grab-ass band of brothers. Okay, so maybe they aren’t the greatest generation by anyone’s standard, but they are surely the best of the bottom third percentile of their own somewhat muddled and suspect generation.” — Fountain, Ben (2012-05-01). Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel (p. 166). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. As noted above, it is a pity that some won’t bother to read this fine novel. But clear positions are expressed on so many topics that run counter to the expressed beliefs of many political conservatives and those in our polarized society willing to openly cross party lines seem to be an endangered species. Some of sharpest passages address the disparity between the haves and have-nots — both politically and economically — in America. The Iraq War’s legitimacy is addressed, as is the integrity of the country’s leaders who started that conflict. As Hollywood producer Albert, who admits to avoiding his own military service, puts it: “All the big warmongers these days who took a pass on Vietnam, look, I’d be the last person on earth to start casting blame. Bush, Cheney, Rove, all those guys, they just did what everybody else was doing and I was right there with ’em, chicken as anybody. My problem now is how tough and gung-ho they are, all that bring-it-on crap, I mean, Jesus, show a little humility, people. They ought to be just as careful of your young lives as they were with their own.” — Fountain, Ben (2012-05-01). Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel (p. 55). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. I could go on and on, but you get the point. Read this book and I hope you enjoy it and find as much to ponder as I did. When you’re done, read or re-read Catch-22 (I’m going to) and watch Restrepo.

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