Ambush at Fort Bragg
Tom Wolfe
One of the most entertainingly provocative books to come down the pike lately isn't exactly a book at all. It's Ambush at Fort Bragg, Tom Wolfe's wicked new work of satire—and it's only available as an audiotape.
Ambush offers up a rip-snorting, laugh-out-loud good time, all the while managing to raise tough questions about the liberal media's support of gay rights. Originally planned to be part of a forthcoming novel [Later published as A Man In Full - J.G.] by Wolfe, best known for such pitch-perfect sign-of-the-times opuses as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Bonfire of the Vanities, Ambush became an orphan as the new novel changed directions.
Fortunately, Ambush has been adopted and adapted for this unique audio-only experiment. The three hour novella is read by Academy Award nominee Edward Norton with gusto, nuance and an impressive range of accents—from a New York Jewish honk to a nearly indecipherable Southern patois that one character refers to as rural Romanian.
Ambush follows Irv Durtscher, the egomaniacal yet neurotically insecure producer of a 60 Minutes type TV newsmagazine as he investigates the murder of a gay soldier by three of his troopmates, garishly homophobic rednecks named Flory, Jimmy Lo and Ziggifuss who pronounce gay rights like "gay rats" and stretch three disgusted syllables out of the word AIIEEEEEDS. Durtscher and his dim, bottleblond anchorwoman—Mary Carey Brokenburrow—trap the lowlifes into making a confession with the nubile assistance of a Thai-American go-go girl, the flagrantly stage named Lola Thong.
But Ambush at Fort Bragg becomes even more interesting after the culprits are nabbed. Tom Wolfe, as always, is a shrewd social critic—and Ambush proves to be more about how the media presents a story to the public than it is about the content of story itself.
As it turns out, the murdered serviceman was murdered in the middle of, well, service. He was stumbled upon by the white trash trio while giving a blow job through a partition in a public restroom. Irv Durtscher—the self proclaimed Goya of the electronic palette—prides himself on his lefty politics, but he's not quite comfortable with gloryholes. And he's certain that the public won't be comfortable with them either.
We get to listen in on Irv's careful editing process, which—without ever presenting a flat-out untruth—clips together quotes and footage and scripted lines until Mary Carrey Brokenburrow is able to look into the camera and suggest two men in an embrace with such gauzy romanticism that it brings to mind Hallmark cards, not bathroom stalls.
This is fascinating stuff. Would it have been more honest to televise a condemnation of gay bashing that zoomed in on the gritty details of this case? Or did soft-pedalling the sexual specifics serve the greater gay good? And of course, for many, the greater gay good is irrelevant: In a scene where network honchos watch the sensational footage, Wolfe makes it clear quite clear thay they're interested in ratings, not in rights.
Irv Durtscher is a bit like the creators of the recent hit movie In & Out. He thinks America's only ready for gays if they're perfectly sweet and sexless. Fortunately, unlike those toothless movie producers, weak-willed Irv Durtscher is a just fictional character. And his producer, Tom Wolfe, has plenty of bite.
