My Favorite War

Book excerpt: Thurgood Brinkman, a young, black, Ivy League-educated reporter for a comic-book-colored national newspaper, has a nagging feeling there's something missing -- from his job, his life, from the nineties in general. He spends his nights philosophizing via e-mail about success and selling out, Freud, and the possibility of lasting love, while he wastes his days writing brain-numbing trend stories about designer vegetables, karaoke dubs, and the fluctuating popularity of boxer shorts. Meanwhile, his sister is dating a homicidal whiteboy rapper, he's getting evicted, and his boss edits his copy into unrecognizable fluff. But everything changes when Thurgood has the opportunity to cover the Gulf War with Sojourner Truth Zapader, a charismatic, Afrocentric Washington Post columnist whose pointed editorials have long stirred his imagination. Together, they set out to cover what could be -- if they make it back -- the story of their lives. Thurgood discovers truths about himself he never imagined and secrets about America he will never forget. All in all, My Favorite War is a wild riff on consumer culture, corporatism, racism, and a debased media.