ILX Book Club - Jennifer Egan: A Visit from the Goon Squad

I did like the PowerPoint best, and silence/pauses in pop is a topic I would like to read more about (in some way). But then I was reading Susan Sontag's Aesthetics of Silence last week too, and while it concerns silence as an avant garde strategy and didn't include its uses as pop it was a nice coincidence.

As Ward says, hard to buy..

Well, I went and listened to the Garbage song and it was quite good and bizarre.

quick show of hands, of those of you who have read this and don delillo's underworld, how many think

a. they were both totally bullshit
b. they were both bullshit to a degree but this was more bullshit
c. they were both somewhat bullshit, but delillo more so
d. neither of these books could be described as 'bullshit'
e. i don't understand what you mean by 'bullshit'

b

Haven't quite finished, but (d) and don't understand what Underworld's got to do with anything, except the passing Truman Capote thing.

d!

d

Bullshit (also bullcrap, bullplop, bullbutter) is a common English expletive which may be shortened to the euphemism bull or the initialism B.S. In British English, "bollocks" is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is commonly used in British English. As with many expletives, it can be used as an interjection or as many other parts of speech, and can carry a wide variety of meanings. It can be used either as a noun or as a verb. Used as an interjection, it protests the use of misleading, disingenuous, or false language. While the word is generally used in a deprecating sense, it may imply a measure of respect for language skills, or frivolity, among various other benign usages. In philosophy, Harry Frankfurt, among others, analyzed the concept of bullshit as related to but distinct from lying.

i don't think underworld has aged that well; maybe that will be true of goon squad for me, too, but i have a similar devotion to both these writers tbh, i don't think i'd describe anything i've read by them as bullshit.

Libra was bullshit -- maybe batshit -- in the best sense.

Libra is excellent and one of the best-constructed novels I can remember reading. Underworld (opening section aside) is overwrought, overlong and cliche-ridden. Goon Squad is fun and cute and kinda lightweight. It's not actually like Underworld at all.

ik/matt: what underworld has to do with things is the piece that stevie t linked, and endorsed, which contains an argument i've seen somewhere else, but i forget where, that this is a 'lightweight' version of underworld

i don't think the comparison is that far-fetched, in that both books take personal-level relations of a wide cast of american peeps over a long period of time, but deal the passing of that period of time in a way that i am going to call 'ellipsistic', even though i am about two-thirds sure that that is not a word; both books, too, can be seen to advance some sort of thesis about historical progress as they go along

unrelated: i saw in an interview, perhaps one linked here, that egan agreed with me about the powerpoint chapter making her recognise a powerpointishness about the novel of the whole. i liked that.

the novel as a whole, rather

Okay, thanks, I didn't spot the link - will finish book tonight, then will read. I do see the temporal skipping parallel, but deLillo dealing largely with the past-past where Egan is all past-present, plus the sheer bloody scale of the thing, means it'll have to be one convincing piece!

aha it's a cast-off line at the end of a review, i shouldn't put too much weight on it

Done! Liked it a lot. The powerpoint thing was very moving - though I don't see why that format was required, it would've been moving anyway.

d

Never really got on with Underworld, tho 'bullshit' seems a little harsh - I just found it slightly tiresome. Disappointed that a lot of didn't really get on with Goon Squad, because it's nice when people like something that you've enjoyed. My first reaction was that it was a contemporary novel that felt fresh and unaffected, with sympathetic and thoughtful characters. Its easy assimilation of music

I liked that it was a community of characters and a community of characters across time, so I saw it as anti-Romantic in a way. That statement probably needs glossing I realise - I'd just read Wells Tower, and felt that his post-Romantic world, where man and nature are reflective of each other, was rather at the end of its shelf-date. Goon Squad felt fresh in this respect.

I didn't see it as being like David Mitchell at all in its use of time, apart from moving backwards and forwards. Certainly didn't think it was all supposed to tie in together, as I said upthread, loosely yoked short stories felt like how it was working to me - a non-narrative network of a novel, which term I guess may make people suck in their cheeks as if eating a lemon, but I think it's a fair description. It's not, I don't think, like Mitchell's nested narratives.

I suppose the main problem for the reader is to work out the question Scotty poses: how do you get from A-B, and what is the difference in the parts? Well the obvious answer is that you go from A-B by getting older, becoming a victim of the goon. But the parts of the book work against this, at least for me. My reading was that the first section was about people isolated from those around them and from the world in general by a central psychological aspect - whether it's kleptomania or anthropology or shame, or Scotty's mental state. B was about how people reconnect and remember each other, whether it's through the fruit the general's agent sends, the mutual aid the washed-up journo and washed-up musician give each other.

There is quite a big problem here, which is that I feel the whole book implies that Benny's statement about music being less than it used to be because of the medium is false. It is that communities continually form themselves around art, for whom it has the same value art always has, regardless of its specific features - the excitement remains the same. So the girl seen going up to the first woman's flat at the end is indicative of new stories starting all the time. This feeling of recurrence is why I guess I didn't really mind the final chapters, all the talk about calcified morality, cultural relativism, that the journalist can't really accept or keep up with, and the massive concert where people are brought together in new ways by new mediums and technology - that all feels right in the terms of the book. But then I didn't really mind the text speak either, although it didn't seem at all likely or natural. But it felt ok as a distancing effect.

The reason all this is a problem is of course because both the Proustian epigraph and clearly Egan herself in interview (from what people have been saying) seem to be saying something closer to Benny's pov about the degradation of art over time. Agree with A, Lord Soto that authorial intention shouldn't dictate one's view of a book, certainly because a book is not always what an author intends, and good ones shd probably be more than they intend. Nevertheless it can make you suspect that you've misread things somewhat.

I really can't be arsed to go back into it again tho, but as I say, without any weight of expectation I liked it thoroughly and felt in some small ways to be innovative and skilful, and its ease to be part of its skill.

That's a nice analysis, I liked that.

Thanks Ismael, it would help if I wrote in proper sentences and finished them from time to time of course, but I plead being persistently interrupted at work while I wrote.

fwiw - 'Its easy assimilation of music as part of the fabric of people's lives and the novel itself felt pleasingly different from something like Hornby, where its used as fetishising music, something special, weird, rather than everyday.'

Playlist of gappy songs from PowerPoint chapter:

http://open.spotify.com/user/pjm230568/playlist/3NCddROLVtZmIHvTk2AMoG

I am waiting for the PF final solution on this book.

I might get another book today.

read this on sunday afternoon, very fast, thinking all the way through oh-i-should-go-back-and-check-who-this-one-is. should probably reread, slowly. i got it a few days ago and read the first chapter, put it aside because I found her attitude to her kleptomania too real and painful. none of the following chapters really lived up to that feeling, though the ppt chapter was delightful.

the thing it actually reminds me of more than anything is some of the recentish graphic novels by chris ware and especially dan clowes, in particular 'ice haven' by clowes - ie a story told in different fragments, by different narrators, in different styles, with a feeling of middle-aged regret and melancholy.

it's funny, though i don't read a lot of graphic novels i really felt the graphic-novel-ness of it.

i wonder if the graphicnovelishness of it is the same thing as the powerpointishness of it

It has not been easy to motivate myself to go back to the Goon Squad book, after the very disappointing first half.

But I have begun.

ch9 seems to me the closest so far to a DFW pastiche. It also has a slight echo of Paul Morley, which reminds us that PM likes DFW anyway. I don't sympathize with the narrator as he tried to rape and kill someone.

ch10 is full of people taking drugs. This is another experience alien to me, but the chapter seems a bit better written than some earlier ones. In using the second person it reminds me of something - not Lorrie Moore the obvious comparison but probably just the way that the first part of The Fortress of Solitude does this occasionally.

I don't sympathize with the narrator as he tried to rape and kill someone.

haha PF, you have such high standards.

I read this over a year ago, so I can't participate too much, but I remember liking the book progressively less as it went along, culminating in that horrible Powerpoint thing. I liked Bennie Salazar's character a lot--I would have been happier if the book focused more intensely on him.

It has not been easy to motivate myself to go back to the Goon Squad book, after the very disappointing first half.

But I have begun.

I'm astounded and impressed by your persistence! If I'd disliked as much as you have I'd've thrown into a corner long ago and confined myself to lurking on the thread with a raised eyebrow.

I worry that I'm going to see the last remnants of the book dismembered in front of me, as I mutter to myself 'I can't believe I ever enjoyed this wretched thing'.

Thank you for your kind words, Fizzles.

I do not for a moment imagine that my view, if expressed, will change your view.

Having bought the book new and read half of it, I don't really feel that not finishing it is an option.

But clearly my idea of acceptably 'finishing it' is spread out over a much vaster time scale than those of other people here.

The last bit I read was about a bloke predicting the internet. I quite liked where this was going though perhaps my response was naive.

I do not for a moment imagine that my view, if expressed, will change your view.

Oh not at all, in fact I'm thoroughly enjoying your pinefauxian literary midrash.

Funny thing is, I can't remember any of the things people are referring to here - rape? Internet? All I can remember is PowerPoint.

This morning I bought The Wind-up Girl, so it had better win.

Funny thing is, I can't remember any of the things people are referring to here - rape? Internet?

ha i had the exact same thought!

It's not a good sign, is it? Glad I'm not the only one.

This just in

--

Call for Papers

43nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) March 15-18, 2012 Rochester, New York – Hyatt Rochester Host Institution: St. John Fisher College Keynote speaker: Jennifer Egan, 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Threads like this remind me how baffled I can be by the Pinefox's approach - I wonder how I'd be able to read anything if I were put off by writing about experiences alien to me, or without being able to suspend moral judgement about fictional criminals committing fictional crimes.

The bloke predicting the internet (p.199) turned out not to be doing it tht explicitly, more in a mystical way; but I'm pretty sure we are still supposed to think that's what he's doing.

I don't understand the plot line in ch10 of the Sasha character telling the Rob protagonist that he had to pose as her bf because she was being watched by a detective. eg:
1. he wouldn't believe it
2. even if it were true, it would make just as much sense for her to be seen NOT having a bf

- in all the whole thing seems preposterous. Probably it will be explained further in some way, but I don't think that such an explanation is likely to make it more plausible, as experienced in ch10.

But the Rob guy's unrequited affection seems plausible.

though ch10 wasn't great, it was probably one of the best chapters so far.

ch11 opens in Italy. someone way upthread said this was the highlight so perhaps I can hope for something good.

Oh, I assumed the point was she was just saying that so she cd get a snog out of him. The thing being that he didn't realise that she liked him as well as him liking her. Which is what makes his death tragic, and causes at least part of her life to be dedicated to him. Again, the second-half's obsession how we are connected through what we give in remembrance.

I didn't know he had died.

I certainly didn't get the point that you got about their relationship.

That might be because you have read the rest of the book.

assuming that what you say is correct, Fizzles - it is still preposterous that someone (she) would concoct that detective story and conduct a relationship on that basis.

But again, I'm still reading the book. It seems that I have much to discover.

Oh. I wouldn't be sure I'm correct. I just vaguely remember a bunch of people doing stuff. That would be my synopsis of an awful lot of books if you asked me, which you'd be sensible not to.

The paragraph about sports on pp.208-9 is possibly my favourite in the book thus far. The exclamation marks ('not a sport!' - this genuinely gently amuses even this Goon Squad sceptic) point up the fact that this (chapter or start of chapter) is the closest the book's trail of modes has come to Lorrie Moore.

I don't remember any of those bits either.

It's like I haven't read the book at all.

You may have been too busy reading ROCKABILLY.

Postage-free ordering with 22% discount (currently) from here: http://www.bookdepository.com/Open-City-Teju-Cole/9781400068098

Fucks, sorry, wrong thread AND it looks like spam. That's for the US edition of the next selection, Open City by Teju Cole.

I just finished this.

More of a collection of short stories than a novel, but I enjoyed almost all of them. The final, SF chapter was the only one I didn't like. (It's set in around 2030 and they're already changing the earth's orbit! I balk at this.)

Seemingly misjudged sentence on p.218:

'thronged with what had to be college students (strange how they looked the same everywhere)': now, this initially struck me as a somewhat tired, lame truism, a would-be-interesting observation that might be written off as Ted's.

The odd thing, though, is that the sentence immediately specifies
'boys and girls in black leather jackets riding on Vespas, lounging on Vespas, perching and even standing on Vespas'.

This (certainly the Vespas, probably the jackets, not to mention the fact that they're all Italian) surely belies exactly what the sentence has already gone out of its way to say in that ill-fated parenthesis.

In the end, having said positive things about it previously, I couldn't make much sense of that chapter (11): the characters' feelings, motivations relations stayed opaque to me.

Now on p.261.

Not a great paranthesis admittedly, but surely the point is that despite the local details they look the same. The paranthesis is lazy I guess because it doesn't explain why despite the local details they look the same. For some reason Martin Amis' description of his 'thin, breakfastless face' as a student, springs to mind.

This is like watching a brave marathon runner stagger to the finish line btw.

You people still reading this?

No, I'm watching the pinefox read it. I can't read anything else until he finishes it. The suspense is killing me.