Review by New York Times Review
BEN fountain thinks that the election of Donald J. Trump has led to a crisis as calamitous as the Civil War and the Great Depression. This, of course, is a stretch. That's the point. Fountain's mission with his forceful new essay collection, "Beautiful Country Burn Again," is to pull readers out of their shortsighted social media stupor to consider the state of social and economic justice in America. Not that he tells you so easily. Fountain doesn't offer a neat, tidy story about the rise of Trump and the implications of his presidency. "Beautiful Country Burn Again" is a whirling journey centered on a knotty, academic equation that Fountain believes is both the cause of America's tensions and the impetus for constant reinvention: "Profit proportionate to freedom; plunder correlative to subjugation." If that seems hard to understand, it's because it is. At times, I wished Fountain would dumb it down a bit, but the man Malcolm Gladwell labeled a "genius" refuses. You get the feeling Fountain, a lawyer by training, is marshaling every bit of his intellect in an attempt to smarten everyone else up. For this work, the highly acclaimed novelist behind "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" and the story collection "Brief Encounters With Che Guevara" brandishes a full array of literary tools, including song, verse, historical anecdotes, piles of research and plenty of satisfying takedowns to keep you on his ride. All necessary because his central point can be hard to hold onto. In plain terms, the kind Fountain most certainly despises, "Beautiful Country Burn Again" is about white supremacy. As he sees it, a third major existential crisis, after the Civil War and the Great Depression, is upon us, a moment of structural impasse that will demand a "reinvention" for us to overcome (led, hopefully, by the likes of a Lincoln or a Roosevelt). Many will be tempted to dismiss "Beautiful Country" as another angry critique of Trump. They would be remiss. Just turn to the 1992 photo Fountain includes of then-Gov. Bill Clinton parading uniformed black inmates as props for a "tough on crime" presidential campaign speech at a prison in the Ku Klux Klan birthplace of Stone Mountain, Ga. There aren't any safe spaces for Democrats here. Remember, Fountain wants the country to burn. No one gets out of his book unscathed. He describes Trump as a "one-man special effects shop spewing the junky nonstop patter of a telethon host," Hillary Clinton as a "dreadnought presence," Ted Cruz as a man who "gargles twice a day with a cocktail of high-fructose corn syrup and holy-roller snake oil," Bernie Sanders as "the old white guy you see at every CVS you ever walked into badgering the poor pharmacist tech at the pickup counter." Those who savor such viciousness will be delighted. His brutal observations could easily be the main feature of his work, yet Fountain has more important things to say and more ingenious ways to say them. Nestled between the reported essays are interludes with the shared title "Book of Days," a "We Didn't Start the Fire" litany of woes that, through repetition, reinforce a grave point. Fountain is contrasting the (real) threats to freedom at home and abroad with the absurdities that politicians claim will safeguard those precious liberties. Recall how Trump campaigned to "Make America Great Again" while pushing his birtherism conspiracy. "Smart white men acting stupid will be the death of America," Fountain concludes. If only we could see it coming. Fountain is at his best in diagnosing what he calls the "Fantasy Industrial Complex." The rich and powerful, he says, peddle a mirage of the American dream for everyone else to lust after rather than doing anything to help them achieve it. As a result, Fountain says, "our most successful politicians have all become fantasy novelists." No wonder Fountain is sending such a flare shot. They're invading his turf. AMANDA carpenter is a former senior staff member to Senators Jim DeMint and Ted Cruz, a CNN contributor and the author of "Gaslighting America."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Who better than Fountain, the award-winning author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2012), for the Guardian to send out on the 2016 campaign trail? That novel's satiric take on politics and the military was apt training for what Fountain would encounter navigating the Democrat's internecine Bernie-versus-Hillary battles and the minefield of Republican candidates, from which the unlikely Trump emerged victorious. Month by month, Fountain recaps campaign absurdities and national and international tragedies. Interspersed are essays pinpointing relevant historic events that have influenced the current political climate. Marry the two, and the result is a chronicle of past existential threats to our democracy and a warning-cum-prediction of what most probably lies ahead. From dog-whistle racist rhetoric from the campaign and administration to fund-raising and judicial sleights of hand, there is shame and blame enough to go around. Pithy and profound, Fountain's political observations fly off the page in a torrent of mantra-worthy quotes, while his historical analyses stun with their depth of research and relevance. Along with Jon Meacham's The Soul of America (2018), Fountain's mix of salient lessons from the past and essential guideposts for the future is a must-have addition to the how did we get here canon of political scrutiny in and of the age of Trump.--Carol Haggas Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The craziness of the 2016 presidential campaign fed on deep currents in American history, according to these caustic essays. Novelist Fountain (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk), a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, recaps election highlights in several chapters of vivid reportage, including colorful profiles of the candidates in Iowa-a Hillary Clinton he sees as both competent and corrupt; an excessively religious, cynical Ted Cruz; a Bernie Sanders who comes across as a hectoring grandpa presiding over a hipster rave of a rally-and a panorama of the bullying politics and batty conspiracy theorizing at the Republican National Convention. Other essays explore the psychic allure of a Kentucky gun show; the history of racialized American policing from slave patrols to the Ferguson riots; the legacy of the New Deal and the decades-long Republican fight to undo it. Fountain's vivid prose shows the novelist's knack for revealing character through gesture and physicality-candidate Trump's overbearing speechifying, he writes, woos audiences with a "confiding stream-of-consciousness slurry like the boss's arm draped over your shoulder, trusting you above all others"-and offers a shrewd analysis of how Trump's supporters felt liberated by his assaults on political correctness. Whip-smart and searching in its indictment of cant and falsity, this is perhaps the best portrait yet of an astounding election. Photos. Agent: Heather Schroder, Compass Talent. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Truth is stranger than fiction in these linked reported essays about the 2016 presidential campaign.The book's title comes from a Robinson Jeffers poem, with the final word "Again" suggesting approximately 80-year cycles in which the United States reinvents itself through a cataclysmic event: the Civil War, the Great Depression, which spawned Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and the shocking election of Donald Trump. Some of the essays appeared in the Guardian, where Fountain (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, 2012, etc.)the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prizeis a columnist. The book opens, naturally, at the beginning of 2016, as the author chronicles his journeys among the presidential candidates as they participated in the Iowa primaries. Hillary Clinton ("with the years has come a kind of dreadnought presence, queen of the fleet, thick armor plating and heavy guns") appears first, followed by Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders. Fountain provides useful context beyond each candidate's campaign with relevant historical information and also by introducing each essay with a monthly "Book of Days" that summarizes global, national, and local news headlines. As the author covers events much like an especially woke journalist, he slides gradually into his Third Reinvention thesis by showing the mutation of traditional presidential campaigning, grounded in a Frankenstein-like scenario during which a monsterespecially Trump but also Sandersturns against its inventor, represented by traditional political parties. Throughout the narrative, as a victory for Trump seems increasingly possible, Fountain savages him in ways many journalists would not. The author portrays Trump as a congenital liar, so far beyond hypocrisy that the author struggles to find a new word to describe him.For most readers, Fountain will offer fresh insights. While some readers may not agree with all of his conclusions, the author's masterful original phrasings make the book worthwhile, urgent, and timely. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
