‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,’ by Ben Fountain

The Billy Lynn of the title is a member of the Army’s Bravo Company, eight of whom come out physically unscathed from the battle of Al-Ansakar Canal, a fierce firefight in Iraq. Caught on film, the skirmish is shown on Fox News and turns the men — branded “Bravo squad” — into heroes overnight.

The Iraq war has been covered to such high literary effect by reporters like David Finkel and Dexter Filkins that news of an imminent war novel is likely to be greeted with a shrug. Who needs it — even if it is, as the Vietnam vet turned novelist Karl Marlantes claims in a blurb, “the ‘Catch-22’ of the Iraq war”? (A version of Joseph Heller’s proverbial paradox crops up in the book: investors won’t commit to a film of Bravo’s exploits until a star comes on board, and no star will commit until investors do.) Fountain gets around this problem by bringing the war home, setting his novel in “the sheltering womb of all things American — football, Thanksgiving, television, about eight different kinds of police and security personnel, plus 300 million well-wishing fellow citizens.” Like the flag raisers of Iwo Jima, the men of Bravo have been whisked back to the United States for a two-week victory tour, climaxing, on the day of the novel, with an appearance at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium.

We first meet 19-year-old Billy and the rest of the squad en route from their hotel, “where overcaffeinated tag teams of grateful citizens trampolined right down the middle of his hangover.” The language in these early pages seems over­caffeinated and underperforming, amping itself up to little purpose. There are also distracting typographical effects: odd words — “terrRist,” “nina leven,” “currj” — scattered on otherwise blank pages to mime Billy’s dispersed attention. The other members of the squad gradually make themselves seen and heard (Fountain has the synesthetic knack of making us see by hearing), but it is the absent Shroom, killed at Al-Ansakar, who is ever-­present in Billy’s consciousness. Also along for the ride is Albert, who, like Lawrence Schiller in “The Executioner’s Song,” has obtained the rights to Bravo’s story and is trying to piece together a Hollywood deal before they ship back to Iraq.

Within 50 pages things are coming nicely into focus, from “the woody grain of the turkey” served up as part of a gigantic buffet, to the shifting choreography of the squad’s dealings with their adoring public. Concerned about the violence they’ve been exposed to, an amiable old man is slightly taken aback by their sergeant’s assurance that they “like violence,” are “the most murdering bunch of psychopaths you’ll ever see.” Maybe this low-grade band of brothers isn’t “the greatest generation,” one character observes, “but they are surely the best of the bottom third percentile of their own somewhat muddled and suspect generation.”

“Brief Encounters” was brightened by flamboyant and fizzing similes — vividly symbolized by the tropical birds that “streaked about like meteor showers” through the jungle in the opening story — and here, too, the shell casings of fired-off metaphors are soon cascading around our feet. Once the initial resistance wears off we feel sufficiently secure in the linguistic firepower at Fountain’s disposal to share Billy’s delight at seeing his buddies A-bort and Crack “approach, grinning like cheetahs with bits of flesh and bone stuck between their teeth.”

Any thoughts of quitting the book have evaporated by the time it flips back a few days to Billy’s quick visit to his hometown in Texas. He spends an afternoon swilling beer and lying in the sun with his sister, horribly conscious of his pleasure in her bikini-clad proximity — “a small gold cross lay on the swell of one of her breasts, a tiny mountaineer going for the top” — and of something still more taboo that she urges him to consider: the possibility of quitting, of not returning to Iraq.

Back in the stadium, Bravo is introduced to the fictional owner of the Cowboys, Norman Oglesby, a “king of self-­esteem” whose megawatt charm is betrayed by “a faint arthritic creak in every smile and gesture.” Norm and his Bush-adoring cronies make quite an impression on Bravo, but it’s the cheerleaders’ sculptured tummies and supple thighs that really get their blood racing. Billy thinks he might have made some special eye contact with one of them. He’s deluding himself, surely, but then she smiles again, “silently laughs and crinkles her eyes at him,” and he dares to hope.

This is brilliantly done; by now, in fact, everything is brilliantly done. Within the tight schedule of Bravo’s three or four remaining hours of liberty, and without leaving the gigantic confines of the stadium, Fountain keeps the reader’s plate piled high. It all happens in tandem; by the time Billy falls for his cheerleader we are in love with the book, and that love finds expression in more and wilder laughter. In an episode of devastating comedy — and mutual incomprehension — the squad is introduced to a weird strain of “industrial-sized humans” otherwise known as football players. Aghast at the sheer amount of food they consume, Billy gains new insight into America’s economic might: “Any other country would go broke trying to feed these mammoths.”

Billy is a decent, thoroughly uneducated kid, but his responsiveness to the America thrust in his face is as highly developed as Rabbit Angstrom’s. An obvious satirical impulse — the Cowboys’ relentless merchandising operation leads Billy to wonder at what point “America became a giant mall with a country attached” — does not detract from the close-up drama of the day. Will Billy get to see his cheerleader again? Will he respond to his sister’s texts encouraging him to jump ship? What will happen to the film deal if Norm agrees to put up some dough?

All this unfolds amid the constant attention of the public. Left to themselves, the Bravos act like a bunch of street-­corner pervs who snap into politeness when required. Events are complicated by the halftime fireworks, which risk setting off P.T.S.D. flashbacks among the soldiers, who, if provoked, are primed to respond as a pack. After an inevitable altercation they take their seats again in a by now freezing afternoon. One of their number has been hit in the mouth, and when a “nice boojee lady” sees him passed out under the falling sleet, a chunk of his smashed lip “dangling like a squashed bug,” she covers him with a Snuggie (“one of those personal lounging blankets with built-in sleeves as advertised on late-night dumb-dumb TV”). His buddies assure her that such kindness is unnecessary, especially when she gets up to leave without taking the blanket. “He grew up in a ditch, he don’t know from being cold!” “It’s like giving a pig a Rolex, ma’am, he’s got no appreciation for the finer things in life.” The lady, the reader’s embedded conscience and representative, “laughs and waves them off.” It’s a touching and hilarious scene, but by now the book seems like nothing else so much as a single wonderful scene — with a brief intermission at Billy’s home — from which all traces of initial uncertainty have been removed. If at the end there’s a hint of contrivance as we hurtle toward the denouement, this doesn’t detract from Fountain’s achievement — grand, intimate and joyous.