Week 8.2: Soldiers on the Fault Line

Ben Fountain is the author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2012). Today we will be reading a speech he gave about his novel to an audience of students at the U. S. Air Force Academy. This reading should give you a preview of many of the novel's themes and after we read the novel will be the basis of our first in-class exam. Read the text carefully. Some of you will have this text in your edition of Billy Lynn. Others of you will not. The PDF on the speech can be found on our website.

Reading:
Ben Fountain, "Soldiers on the Fault Line: War, Rhetoric, and Reality" (PDF on the website)

Study Questions:
1. What is the Fantasy Industrial Complex (FIC) and what does it do? What is its relationship to the military?


2. How can we cut through the FIC numbing sensation according to Fountain?

Week 12.1: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Homework:
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, 266-complete
Invention Exercises
Current Event
Reading Quiz 

Study Questions:
1. On page 306, Billy has a moment of relative humility. Over the course of the novel, Billy has believed that his version of reality has been the truth; however, now he comes to realize that it is subservient to the “homeland dream” of the “saps” and “innocents” in charge. What are we to make of this half-hearted reversal? What is Fountain trying to tell us?

Week 11.2: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Homework:
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, 226-65
Reading Quiz  
 
Study Questions:
1. What are we to make of Kathryn’s idea that Billy not return to the war because he is too good
for the United States? Is this the right choice? Does the novel agree with it? How do we know?

2. The last paragraph on page 249 would seem to distill many of the themes of the novel—an
interest in the real, the religious (“a mystery”) as well as technological mediation. How do these
themes interact in this paragraph? Closely attend to the words on the page and discuss how
these thematic issues converge in this passage. 

Week 11.1: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Our discussion of Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is well underway at this point. This week, I want you to read with the paper in mind. After all, your draft is due next week and by now many of the novel's themes and patterns should be more than apparent. Begin to organize your annotations so that you can work on your compare and contrast essay. Even though pointing out differences is key to a compare and contrast paper, what makes a paper really compelling is when these distinctions become complicated. Telling me the difference between white and black is one thing, showing me where things become a little grayer is way more interesting.

Homework: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, 187-225
Reading Quiz  
Double Entry Reflection Journal (Note: The double entry reflection must be typed) 
Current Event 

Week 10.2: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Homework: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, 139-87
Reading Quiz  
Double Entry Reflection Journal (Note: The double entry reflection must be typed)

Week 10.1: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

This week we continue our reading of Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. It's important for you to make sure that you are keeping up with the reading. Not only will doing this allow you to better participate in class, but you will not be able to write an effective paper if you have not read the novel. Think of doing the reading as the first step to doing your pre-writing for the paper. Today we will introduce the third paper topic, although you are free to look at it before then on our website.

Make sure that you are also keeping up with the current events assignment. Keeping up with this will also be necessary for both our final writing assignment and your final exam.

Homework:
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, 108-38
Current Event Due
Reading Quiz  

HW:
Current Event Write Up
Double Entry Reflection Journal (Note: The double entry reflection must be typed)

Week 9.2: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Reading:
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, 50-107


Study Questions:
1. The novel is concerned with authenticity and it contrasts this to what one character describes as bullshit. What constitutes authentic experience in the novel? What constitutes the inauthentic?

2. Both Kathryn, Billy’s younger sister, and Albert express doubts about the war. What are these
doubts? Does the novel endorse these views?

Week 9.1: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

This week we will begin reading Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. The men of Bravo Squad are certified media heroes after winning a battle against Iraqi insurgents. Billy Lynn, our titular hero, is perhaps the most celebrated among them. Sent on statewide tour to drum up support for the Iraq War, the men now find themselves on their final day as guest of the Dallas Cowboys where they will perform during the halftime show. Surrounded by patriots who witlessly mouth slogans, Billy tries to make sense of his experience, the war, and how both have been presented in the media.

This is the first substantial reading assignment that you have had in this class, possibly ever in college. If you attempt to do all of the reading in just a few hours before class or the night before you will be unsuccessful. This will lead you to fall behind in the class and you will be unprepared to write our third paper, which is worth twenty percent of your grade. You can work toward your own success by breaking up the daily reading into smaller, more manageable chunks over the course of days. In addition to our daily homework, I will hold you accountable for doing the reading by having brief reading quizzes at the beginning of the class.

This week we will also be using double entry reading journals. The general directions are attached to the document. Read these. In addition, I ask that your entries be fairly distributed throughout the reading. Thus, your entries will not come from the first ten pages of the book.

Homework:
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, 1-49
Double Entry Reflection Journal (Note: The double entry reflection must be typed)
Current Event Due
Reading Quiz  
Paper 2 Due:

•   Final Draft
• Working Draft
• Peer Review
• Revision Assingments
• Editing Log
• Writer's Memo