I’ve been writing a book, and sometimes when people ask me what it’s about I say “a young black single mother navigating corporate America.” There’s a gawk, then a slow smile, then a good laugh. I’m a 32-year-old, childless white guy.
So when Ben Fountain, who never served in the military, wrote Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, a book about a squad of infantry soldiers coming back from Iraq to Texas to be paraded at a Cowboys football game, I was surprised more people hadn’t called him out on his hubris. I’m not saying all authors have to do the things they write about. But if someone’s going to write for a group on their behalf there ought to be asterisk in the reader’s mind.
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