Stephen Mcewen

Ben Fountain interview: Lies are an affront to writers because lying is the corruption of language

Ben Fountain’s debut short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, was published in America eighteen years after he left his job at a Dallas real estate law firm to become a writer. It would appear that it was well worth the wait, as it immediately met with praise, awarded both the PEN/Hemingway and Whiting Award. This success continued when his first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, was published five years later. In the last six months alone, it has won two awards in America, including the prestigious National Book Critics Circle award, and nominated for a further two here in the UK.

His short story collection explores America’s perennial mission to rectify global strife, scrutinising corruption, fiscal greed and the Realpolitik of diplomacy through the figure of ‘the American abroad’. Amongst the eight stories, there is a graduate student who is taken hostage by guerrilla rebels in Columbia, an observer from the Organization of American who plays chess in Haiti and an aid-worker who establishes a co-operative in Sierra Leone. All question the ideals and actions of America abroad today.

The novel has a slightly more domestic setting, Dallas, where the North Carolina native Fountain now resides. Eponymous nineteen year old Billy is one of eight soldiers who make up Bravo company, heroes of a vicious fire fight with the ‘haajjis’ in Iraq. The entire battle was momentously captured by Fox News and subsequently became an internet sensation. This results in the company being rewarded leave and paraded on a Bush-sponsored media tour, feting their celebrity with a final appearance at the Dallas Cowboys’ Thanksgiving Day half-time show. The story takes place on this last day before their return to Iraq, as both media interest and Fountain’s critique of the recent past of the Bush administration reach their climax.

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