My favorite war

the long version

Thurgood Brinkman, a young 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 with friends via E-mail about success and selling out, Freud and the possibility of lasting love; he wastes his day at work writing brain-numbing trend stories about oat bran, karaoke clubs, and the ever-fluctuating popularity of boxer shorts. But everything changes when Thurgood meets Sojourner Truth Zapader, a charismatic, Afrocentric, fiercely intelligent columnist for The Washington Post, who challenges him to help her cover what could turn out to be, if they make it back, the story of their lives. Soon Thurgood leaves behind his personal battles for a larger war - the Gulf War - where he discovers truths about himself he never imagined and uncovers secrets about America he will never forget. While Farley focuses his searing wit on Brinkman's frustrations with consumer culture, corporatism, racism, and a debased media, My Favorite War is also a sensitive and probing investigation of the preoccupations of a generation, the foibles of a decade, and the perils of the modern world.