Ink, paper, tea, fizzy water, yard work… Ben Fountain talks about writing “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”

My thanks to Ben Fountain for spending time to chat about Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk for this Q&A at Amazon’s books blog, Omnivoracious.com. (Here)

Ben’s debut novel – my favorite of the year so far - was an Amazon #1 Best Book of the Month for May. I had previously asked him about the book’s opening line (pictured below): “I wanted to drop you right into the middle things. I didn’t want to start with back story,” he told me by phone. “It just came to me and it felt right so I started from there.”

• First line: The men of Bravo are not cold.
• Last line: He sits back, closes his eyes, and tries to think about nothing as the limo takes them away.
• And, for kicks, smack-dab in the middle: “This is crazy,” she whispers when they come up for air.

As I wrote in my review for Amazon, the author “manages a sly feat: giving us a maddening and believable cast of characters who make us feel what it must be like to go to war–and return. Veering from euphoria to dread to hope, Billy Lynn is a propulsive story that feels real and true. With fierce and fearless writing, Fountain is a writer worth every accolade about to come his way.”

Here’s a 2008 New Yorker story by Malcolm Gladwell about Fountain – and late bloomers.