War at home: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Continuing to go with the flow and enjoy Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, which, as noted in yesterday's post, is an atypical war (or anti-war, as the case may be) novel: now about 1/4 through the novel and we know very little about the war. What we do know is that we are in the company of Lynn and 7 of his buddies from Bravo Company as they complete a celebratory tour around the U.S.; they are war heroes for some event in the Iraq war, defending against a perhaps much larger enemy troop at a canal. Two company members died in the battle, including Lynn's close friend, Shroom. The battle may have been televised, possibly live. All this from Lynn's momentary flashbacks; the present scene of the novel, so far, is entirely en route to or at the Dallas Cowboys stadium; game has not yet started, but the Bravo guys are drinking and smoking heavily and eating on their queasy stomachs. Much of the discussion, and the humor, involves a Hollywood producer traveling with the group and trying to package a film rights deal. The guys are very pleasant and polite to the many sycophants and blow-hard patriots who come up to congratulate them; they are very rowdy and at times crude and vulgar - lots of jokes about whether someone's gay or not, talk about drinking and farting and about the girls they spent time with at a strip club - but for all that they're really just kids, just innocents: they don't have any particular patriotic flair or love of combat, they know they're going back to finish their tour and are blase about that - certainly not gung ho. But some of them counsel a young man against enlistment - the war is a bitch. Unlike many - most - war novels or dramas, there is no apparent rift in the company - they like one another and admire their leader - and no deep cynicism about the military bureaucracy (as in same Catch-22) or about the pointless sacrifices of war (as in the other recent Iraq novel The Yellow Birds) - so appealing as this novel is through the first 75 pages, I'm getting a little edgy and wondering what exactly is the conflict? What is it about? I am starting to think the novel is operating on an allegorical level - not just by chance that what seems to be a war novel is set in a football stadium - and that it's about not so much the war as about American attitudes toward violence, competition, combat - and celebrity status (one of the objectives of the guys in Bravo is to meet the Dallas Cheerleaders or, better, the half-time performers, Destiny's Child).