A BIG ENOUGH LIE, by Eric Bennett.

Wow! Where to begin? Because Eric Bennett's fiction debut is a novel that is bursting with big ideas, dense with details and rich in plot and character. But I'll begin with Stephen Crane, because A BIG ENOUGH LIE owes a lot to that literary icon who died over a hundred years ago. First of all, as the blurred cover image suggests, this is a novel about war, the Iraq war specifically, and it is filled with all of the horrific details of that ill-conceived conflict, which may never be over and has come back to haunt us in the past few years. And like Stephen Crane, who wrote so vividly of our own Civil War in his classic novel, Bennett has never been in uniform and has never seen combat. Yet - and again, like Crane - he has managed to give us an utterly convincing portrait of men at war.

When I was a graduate student in English, for one of my seminar assignments, I compiled an annotated bibliography of Stephen Crane and all the critical papers and books that had been written about the man and his work. This was over forty years ago and I think my paper ran over twenty-five pages. I still remember bits and pieces of all that Crane research I read back then and they came back to me this week as I read Bennett's novel. Let's talk names. First of all, the protagonist, the son of a minister in the Florida Panhandle, is named John Patrick Townley, and his alter ego in the 'story-within-a-story' is named Henry Fleming. Stephen Crane's father was named Jonathan Townley Crane. He was a Methodist Episcopal minister. Henry Fleming was, of course, the youthful protagonist of THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE. Later in the story, John Townley assumes the name Patrick Crane. Later still he passes himself off as Henry Fleming, an Iraq War casualty to whom he bears a striking resemblance. The real Lieutenant Henry Fleming, when asked by an Iraqi archaeologist what he is reading, replies, "I have been reading Russian novels here." Crane once said, "Tolstoi is the writer I admire most of all." In other words, Stephen Crane's influence is implicitly obvious throughout both narratives in this fascinatingly complex novel.

But to say that A BIG ENOUGH LIE is simply a modern knock-off of Stephen Crane would be doing it a grave injustice. Because this is an ambitious novel of so many ideas that it literally made my head spin at times. It is an indictment of the war in Iraq, and Bush II and Rumsfeld do not come off well. It pokes some fun at Oprah and her infamous showdown with 'memoirist' James Frey, whose book she made a bestseller. FOX news is lavishly lampooned in Bennett's fictional news anchors and personalities from TEX television. Creative Writing and MFA programs get their share of mixed reviews with Bennett's portrayal of the fictional Midland Writing Program in Indiana, where famous names like Updike, Roth, Mailer and Joyce get bandied about, often in unfavorable terms, by wannabee writers who have mastered the workshop jargon and manners - or lack of them. Literature in general lurks continually in the background - and sometimes the foreground - of both narratives, from THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH to THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, with throwaway mentions of Emerson, Thoreau, Hardy, Pound, Nabokov, Kundera and more. It's almost as if Bennett is trying to include at least a little of everything he has every learned. (A graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, Bennett also holds a Ph.D. from Harvard and currently teaches at Providence College.)

But the characters and plot are actually the best parts of Bennett's novel. I won't soon forget the principals here, all fully realized and utterly human types, from John Townley and Marshall Stang (and their alter egos, Henry Fleming and Antoine Greep) to Heather Kloppenberg and Emily White, not to mention many of the lesser cast memebers like Fleming's platoon members Schwartz and Eccles (which name brought to mind Updike's minister from RABBIT, RUN, but no real correlation that I could see). And especially the poor dumb sweet Duckworth, who evoked memories of Steinbeck's Lenny from OF MICE AND MEN (which, no surprise, also gets a mention here).

Other reviewers and blurbs have duly noted that this is a novel about lies, more lies and unforgivable deceptions, on both personal and national, even international, levels. Which is certainly true. But what these lies end up revealing are universal truths about what it means to be human. There is a kind of genius here, both in the scope of ideas, and in the manner in which they are presented. Not since Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya's 2012 novel, THE WATCH have I read such a vividly authentic depiction of the current and ongoing wars and the men that fight them by a non-combatant. Eric Bennett is an author to watch. My very highest recommendation. ( )

A lot of people seem to love this book, but I think the novel is simply too ambitious... or it was over my head. It's a story about the horrible aspects of war -- in this case, the Iraq War -- as well as the role of media, society, and ownership of stories and people. To me, it was a hot-mess and I found myself skimming pages to get to the parts of the story that truly engaged me. ( )