Ben Fountain published Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk in 2012, which tells the story of a soldier on Thanksgiving Day at a Dallas Cowboys football game. The novel was adapted into a film directed by Ang Lee in 2016 that received mixed reviews due to its use of a higher frame rate than typical films. Fountain sets the novel during America's post-9/11 wars to explore the psychological impacts of war on soldiers through the eyes of Billy Lynn. Both the novel and film adaptation found commercial success, demonstrating the popular interest in stories addressing America's modern wars.

1. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime
Walk
By Ben Fountain

2. Popularity
 Ben Fountain published Billy Lynn in 2012, and by 2016 the
book has now been published in 14 different languages. For
comparison, The Color Purple has been translated into 25
languages since its initial1982 publication.
 Notably, in 2013 the novel won the National Book Critics’
Circle Award among many additional awards including the LA
Times Award for Fiction.
 Billy Lynn was a New York Times Bestseller, which means it
sold over 10,000 copies in its first week of publication

3. Film Adaptation
 Billy Lynn has been made into a movie by Director Ang Lee. The film was
released in 2016 with a good amount of Oscar buzz. The film received
extremely mixed reviews, with many citing the shooting style of the film.
Most films are shot at roughly 24 frames per second, but Billy Lynn was shot
at a significantly higher number of frames per second (120 frames per
second). The impact of an “extra high frame rate” gives the film a hyper-
realistic feeling that many viewers found uncomfortable and disruptive.
Check out the trailer for the film here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUULFJ_I048
 Remember, we are accustomed to 24 frames per second. What impacts
does this sort of framing have on a viewer’s sense of realism in a film that
explores the trauma and stresses of war on young men’s psyches?
 Remember that film adaptation also signals an aspect of the popular, the
interest of the populous in a particular text, and producer recognition of
demand by the populous for a particular story

4. Ben Fountain
 Fountain is a US fiction writer from
North Carolina (now living in Dallas)
 Interestingly, Fountain went to law school in
1983 (when The Color Purple was fresh off the
press), but quit practicing law 5 years later to become a full-time
fiction writer.
 His writing invests in dramatizing political interactions, or
perhaps more appropriately stated: his work dramatizes the
human experiences and repercussions of political actions

5. Billy Lynn The Color Purple
Context & Setting
I’ve asked you to think concurrently in this course about themes and explorations of love
and loving, and also what makes a text an example of popular literature:
 In the case of Billy Lynn, historical, social, and political
context is particularly important. The text is published in
2012, eleven years following the attacks on 9/11 and is set
during the wartime aftermath that followed 9/11 – thus the
setting and context in terms of time period are fairly close
together.
 How or to what extent do you think the novel’s actual
historical context and setting (which are not always the
same, but in this case are rather close), impacted its
development as a popular text? What role does the
nonfiction context of this work of fiction play in drawing
readers’ interest?
 As you’re reading, be sure to attend also to the use of a
Dallas Cowboys football game and Thanksgiving Day as
the primary components defining the setting of the novel.
Why set the novel on Thanksgiving Day and why at a
football game? Consider the challenges Billy and his peers
are grappling with in thinking through this question.
 Also, how does this context contribute to or add a particular
angle to the way you think the book addresses love?
 In the case of The Color Purple, the historical, social, and
political context of the novel’s publication (1980s) was not
identical with the time period that Walker set the novel in
(1910 – 1940)
 However, the text’s success has often been attributed to the
ability that Walker had in demonstrating how similar the
challenges continue to be for African American women in the
1980s as they were for her characters in the pre-Civil Rights
Era of her novel.
 The Color Purple’s setting has an aspect of the internal as
well. By focusing on the internal workings of an African
American family and community, Walker designed an inner
world for readers to enter, much as in Billy Lynn Fountain
designs an inner world through Billy’s narrative voice and the
setting in the football arena on Thanksgiving Day.
 As you read through Billy Lynn, think back also to your
reading of The Color Purple: how do these two texts’
publication contexts support their subject matter? What’s
happening in the United States in 2012 when Billy Lynn is
published? What’s happening in the United States in 1982
when The Color Purple is published?

6. Take a moment to think about
what the characterization and
dialogue were like in The Color
Purple
Take a moment to think about
what the characterization and
dialogue were like in Billy
Lynn’s Long Halftime walk
Characterization & Relationships
 Walker uses African American English particularly to
represent a sense of belonging or inclusion for her primary
intended audience (African American readers and
specifically her family) as well as to represent African
American life in the rural south; How would you define the
impact her specific dialogue has for you as a reader in
interpreting the narrative?
 She creates a distinct voice for Celie through the epistolary
(written in letters) style of the novel; how would you describe
Celie’s voice?
 Walker develops her characters to represent the stresses
and joys of African American heterosexual and same sex
relationships, both romantic and platonic; How do these
characters and their relationships ask you to reconsider how
you define love, who you determine to be generous in and
with love, and why?
 Walker also develops her characters to offer insight into the
way white dominant culture constrains and damages African
American relationships and communities and the ways that
Black cultural practices can also be restrictive to African
American relationships and communities; how does Walker’s
focus on love and loving play a part in revealing these
concerns?
 As different as I’m sure you’ve noted Fountain’s Billy Lynn is from
The Color Purple, interestingly, Fountain turns to similar literary
elements to develop the concerns we’re interested in:
 He, too, crafts his characters’ dialogue to engage his readers
in a particular way. Consider the way the members of the
Bravo unit speak to each other, their familiarity and their
gendered affiliations giving way to crass-ness, at times
childish humor, and other times vulnerability.
 Also consider the dialogue of the people in the Dallas football
arena who come to speak to Billy and other members of the
Bravo team throughout the novel: How does Fountain design
the way people speak? Come up with examples from the
text, and try to identify what Fountain leads readers to
imagine about these various characters.
 Fountain also develops his characters to represent the joys
and stresses of human interaction and relationships for these
young men who have experienced the violence and horror of
war. How many different loving relationships can you identify
between the Bravo team and especially between Billy and
various people who are a part of Bravo and also outside of it?
 Fountain also extends our thinking about love to ask us to
consider the role of love in patriotism; Where do you see this
taking place? Who, if anyone, seems genuinely patriotic, and
how does Fountain address those notions? (Does he do so
genuinely, or does he critique patriotism and love of one’s
country?)