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

what is life

Just read the book, then this thread. I love ILX so much -- so much otm on this thread, w/r/t my mixed responses. The rockism, and the awkwardness with rock at once. (Which is why it reminded me also of Underworld, and Rushdie's attempts to write about rock).

Reading this, I thought about a line from Amis' The Information, I think, about how one shouldn't be able to say what a book is about, because it's about precisely every word in the book, not a slogan for a bumper sticker. Goon Squad, on the other hand, is a book which you can say what it's about -- maybe not on a bumper sticker, but close. I could feel the seams and joins, second-guess the decisions, and generally see the conceptual skeleton for each chapter. And between the skeleton and the chapter itself, I didn't think a great deal was added. The characters also felt underdeveloped -- a collection of tics and roles, but not really having a rich interior life, no real places where they struggle between what they wanted to express and what they were able to, etc. And the movement was very linear.

I figured the book could redeem itself from just being short-cuts style loosely linked short stories by tying everything up neatly with the last chapter. But instead the last chapter, which tried for exactly that, got sort of high-handed and really gave the game away. And the closing image was really juvenile and painful.

I should also say that I enjoy Egan as a writer though, on a micro-level. No real bravura turns of phrase or whatever, but solid and compelling prose.

But the real issue I have with it is moral. So it felt like a rockist, boomer fairy tale. And the most fairy tale element was that even though some people went very bad, for the most part, people didn't. They lived dangerously and did stupid things to their brains for prolonged periods, and then ended up essentially middle class. So the reassuring myth is that all that youthful dicking about and frying brain cells ends up with some meaning and purpose, as opposed to for the most part creating hopeless burnouts and detritus.

For aesthetic and truthful reasons, but also reasons of basic social responsibility, I think it's bad to glamorize idiocy. And even though there's this "oh, they'll grow out of it" element, there's also a sort of endorsement of self-indulgent self-destructiveness that conceals a great deal. So throughout, I kept comparing Goon Squad, to Richard Hell's Go Now, which is one of the few music novels I really enjoy, and finding it lacking in comparison.

Also, from some article linked above: "very postmodern in that 19th-century way". Really? It bothers me when people describe anything veering from a certain very narrowly realist novel that very few novels ever really were as "postmodern." This jumped out at me on one of the blurbs of my copy of Goon Squad, and I'm not surprised, though disappointed, that Egan would herself describe things the same sort of way.

what makes a 19th century novel "postmodern"?

I suppose Goon Squad is postmodern in the way that Dracula is postmodern.

Postmodern like How I Met Your Mother...

http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/6685358-L.jpg

I like Mr Clover's post!

I am terribly nostalgic for the time when I was reading this book, not admiring it, and imagining that my life was not going very well. I had no idea.

You mean things are worse now? I am sorry if so.

I haf downloaded some more Egan books. I might give one a try. THE KEEP, I think.

Oh, they're much, much worse now. The decline has been almost unimaginable, at least to me with my limited imagination.

One thing this has shown me is that I was largely mistaken to think that they were bad then.

re: Bennie and his electrician dad, I see no logical issue with that passage.
I work in construction because my father did. There is zero chance I would be doing so otherwise.

Not all sons and daughters of contractors become contractors themselves, but trades and skills being passed via family is hardly an unknown concept.

Typing on my phone is a pain, but I thought the last chapter was an enormous misstep in an otherwise very good book. Baby iPods and oh those wacky prim post-Millenials &c., the entire chapter felt out of place and unnecessary.

I am sorry to hear that (one month late), The Pinefox.

I hope things have improved.

Thanks for your thoughts, PJM.

Things have improved in the sense of stabilized a bit and allowed me to function more normally, but I do not really imagine that they will ever get back to how they were when I daftly thought they were not very good when we started this thread.

I am looking forward to the Pines' US tour, though.

Yes, that tour is going to ROCK.

I have deleted my Facebook account, so I am a bit out of the loop.

Perhaps I should start another one.

I am rereading this novel.

It feels somewhat better second time around. For one thing I am reading it more quickly. For another the hype was blown away by the first time. For a third, the relations between the sections strike me as slightly interesting (and the chronology is not entirely clear in my mind). It seems not offensive, not badly written, just a bit flat and not as interesting or exciting as one would want it to be.

I am only on p.140.

What on earth prompted you to read it again!

Professional reasons.

Ah. *touches nose*

a couple of chapters seem better: 2 + 10. The descriptions of NYC on p.203 are really OK, and I always quite liked the 1993 period flavour of that chapter, and the prediction of the www / social networks on p.199.

fake pinefox

the Naples chapter remains good too -I always thought it a highlight. But I still have a problem with motivation here - everyone is so fascinated by the Sasha character but there is no coherent sense of why she does what does, what she wants, at least prior to the powerpoint bit. Which is the problem I started out with c. April 2011.

There is a rather simple thing that seems clearer about the book this time round - that it is a novel by a middle-aged woman about middle age, about time inexorably passing, about getting older, about grieving for the loss of youth that will never return, but which can be ironized, revisited or rethought by this temporal-cut-up narrative.

Which seems a valid enough, indeed poignant and real, sort of subject - yet not especially what I ever thought anyone (the media or whoever) was saying the book was primarily about or primarily interesting for. Perhaps people here were saying it, I don't know.

Perhaps everyone everywhere was saying it, and I didn't notice amid the sense that this was meant to be a hip / youthful / rock & roll sort of book.

i thought the time passing theme was reasonably clear from the title and the few allusions to it dropped along the way - "time's a goon", and a few less subtle "where are the snowdens of yesteryear?" moments - but i don't think it was tackled with any kind of panache or insight.

A book about middle-aged aestheticization of youth would be interesting. But that would a be a book about this book, not this book itself.

I'm not sure who Rusty Egan is, but it would make a good title for whatever you're writing about this, PF.

Ha, Visage, etc:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Egan

Also I have just realised that The Pines will be involved in some kind of duelling banjos scenario with STEVIE JACKSON.

True!

i'm about 100 pages into this and i'm not really sold. everything that happens is too important, if that makes any sense. every person is constantly being arrested by a memory that they can't shake or a sudden flash of intense emotion that they have to hide or the sudden realization that this is the moment where everything is going to be different forever etc etc. it feels very soapy to me. maybe there's something stylistic about young people (and those that wish to be them) that i'm missing, idk.

the interconnections and the time-shifting are keeping me going tho.

PJM, I didn't really get to duel banjos but I did sing harmonies during his set till he said I should come up on stage.

Then another night we were backstage and I said he should play 'black and white unite' and he started working it out on his acoustic, which was good to hear, and saying of one bit 'It's all Buffalo Springfield, simple as that'.

it is kind of soapy, tbh

The book was written as if for people skeptical of the possibilities of the novel ("See? You can write about Africa, Italy, and rock!").

Good stuff, PF.

i think this is pretty bad tbh.

the punk teenagers segments kind of had me going, and i wanted to follow bennie himself, but none of the rest of this is ringing true or insightful to me at all. the pop-cultural stuff just feels off: "the conduits"? "kitty jackson"? the melting lamp celebrity disaster? the characters are both "too interesting" by occupation and circumstance but not interesting in themselves. escapist and kind of trite. people's crazy lives!! they're so sad!!

right now i'm mired in the piece of celebrity meta-journalism and basically hating it. are we meant to understand that this guy's DFW act is irritating? i wanted to soldier through to the powerpoint chapter to see wtf that's about but eh

yes I hated this book

I thought it was ok at the time and now -- naaah

that said on a micro level egan is all right. the novel about the disfigured model sounds intersting

written as if for people skeptical of the possibilities of the novel is pretty accurate as to why i liked and didn't love this, i think

egan makes pseuds corner this week w/ this:

"I've always been interested in terrorism, for the same reason that I've always been interested in modelling. I mean, they're so much alike."

They're definitely not alike.

This isn't much dafter than DeLillo's comparison of terrorism and novel-writing in / around Mao II - which a lot of people seem to have taken fairly seriously.

i would like to see the context, because that reads like a joke more than anything

delillo's line was more nuanced but unfortunately did not appear to be a joke

don't have my private eye to hand, but think the quote comes from a recent telegraph interview

I mean, they're so much alike.

They're about making statements usually in some graphic fashion.

the novel about the disfigured model sounds intersting

It's pretty good and quite funny at times.

The book was written as if for people skeptical of the possibilities of the novel

this one of the books better qualities

Maybe it's a generational thing (she's a few years older than me) but I have generally enjoyed her novels.