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

My gf passed me this earlier this year. Egan is a little older than we are but the SF parts were eerie in their versimilitude.

A theme for punks everywhere of course, but I'm talking about a much later nostalgia for that the punk period itself (and earlier) compared with the more recent past. I think it's absolutely fine to have a middle-aged music producer think music has gone to the dogs - most of them probably do - but it's Egan's job as an intelligent observer to have some perspective on why his judgement might be suspect. I'm wary of spoilers for folk still in the early stages of the book, but this all feeds through into Scott's concert, easily the silliest thing in the novel.

Alfred, Egan made it very clear in a tv interview that she agreed with Bennie's views about music being less "real" now. Although I think it's clear there in the book as well.

i think i dislike the use of "cause (x)" in fiction because it feels like a fictional account of human consciousness, for me it doesn't reflect the reality of our interactions with other people
― bell hops (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 4 May 2011

I cheerfully and wholeheartedly agree with your implicit call for an art or fiction which is realistic in giving us a depiction of the subtlety, contingency and fascination of real people and real life. I have made this call for years and years, not that I have ever expected anyone to answer it.

I think your critique of 'cause x' is something of a straw target shoot, as it ought to be possible to imagine kinds of determination and causality that are not crude or reductive. (It must be, because real life is presumably dominated by all kinds of determination.)

Unlike you, perhaps, I am not sure that I found quite this subtle, realistic depiction of real life, etc, in the first chapter of the novel.

On the next theme, re music and sound, I also noticed this Benny or Bennie character saying that everything had been ruined by being too digitally precise. I found this line asinine, if that's the right word. As someone who has tried, and failed, to record things, a bit of precision would not come amiss. I am not that surprised to hear that Egan perhaps agrees with him, though of course he is only a fictional character. Of course, I should admit that 'recording techniques are worse' and 'modern music is worse' are two somewhat different claims.

but it's Egan's job as an intelligent observer to have some perspective on why his judgement might be suspect.

No it's not! Could a lecherous, middle-aged man in the music industry have plausibly said something along those lines at the time and a teenage girl believe him or at least defer to his better judgment? Absolutely! I was going to concerts at the Mabuhay, the On Broadway and the Farm and whatnot in the early 80's and it reads quite true to me.

>>> a bit of precision would not come amiss <<<

I'm afraid I was accidentally conflating two different things here:

1. the chance to record anything successfully without things going wrong would not come amiss -- a feeling specific to me, not really relevant to the novel; after all the recording artists probably don't have such problems and have people to make things OK for them

2. precision is good, full stop, in recording -- this is the real point that is relevant to the novel and makes B's thought seem vapid to me, if I am not misremembering it.

ch 2 I thought not great, but not terrible. It reminded me a bit of The Sopranos, a programme I do not like, but without the criminal dimension that is the reason I don't like it.

I wonder slightly if this is a novel where characters have their gimmicks: the kleptomaniac, the bloke who has lost his lust. But, I should admit that the Bennie character is a bit more fully drawn than that. JE seems to want to take this character very seriously.

ch 3 seems to be about people's cool youth. Here I have a standard problem, which is roughly, envy and exclusion, because people in fictional narratives always seem able to have cool youths in a way that was never offered to me. This makes me resentful and / or sad. But then, also, I don't generally much like punk rock, so I wouldn't really want to stand around hearing it like these cool youths do.

So far I agree with Stevie's view that the novel is not especially distinguished at the level of prose. Very little writing as such has impressed me so far. This is a bit surprising given the novel's reputation, if I can say that it has one already. But, I understand that there are other ways for a story to be good. Maybe the relative plainness is delberate or will stop.

I think the pop references are more cringeworthy than the pop references in Freedom, or at least they make you feel sad, because you are old now, whereas in Freedom you are believably bratty and young.

I think JE does female hopeful sad dissolution best.

Egan actually created a soundtrack with a song for each chapter:

http://knopf.knopfdoubleday.com/2010/07/08/soundtrack-to-a-visit-from-the-goon-squad/

(If you're a music snob, you might not want to check it out.)

I just finished the book. Now I'm going to crawl back into my hole.

More thoughts later, but a few notes, having just finished it:

Really enjoyed it, but slightly surprised at the sheer scale of the love for it.

Blurb was totally misleading, making me think it would be all about Sasha and Bennie, so it took me a while to realise that the chapters about other people were not interludes (not Egan's fault, obviously)

Powerpoint bit worked well, despite my reservations about gimmicky nature of same

Every review I've read made it seem as though it was about the music industry, which it really wasn't

Changing Earth's orbit for global warming reasons? There's no fucking way this could be done, what the fuck, that's a mad idea, so out of place, argh

Alfred, Egan made it very clear in a tv interview that she agreed with Bennie's views about music being less "real" now.

Not surprised, but I wipe the floor with authorial intention.

ch 3 seems to be about people's cool youth. Here I have a standard problem, which is roughly, envy and exclusion,

I get sort of the opposite feeling--as someone with a deeply uncool youth, I'm deeply envious when I read pieces like this chapter (though sometimes relieved at what I escaped), and the only way I'll ever experience things like that is fictionally, so bring it on, as long as it convinces, which this chapter really did

The final Scotty concert really didn't work, though, in that world-altering musical events like this never seem to convince in fiction. And how do these "pointers" work, anyway? If babies are downloading stuff, presumably their parents are paying for it, otherwise where's the money coming from that fuels the market that the producers are so keen to get into? Why are they choosing to pay for stuff on the basis of semi-random reflexive movements?

Has Jennifer Egan's writing changed much since The Invisible Circus? Because I thought that book was a more literary Sweet Valley High. In a bad way.

her writing has matured, but you probably still wouldn't like her. can i just say that that kind of dismissal of egan really irks me?

ugh i read some review of AVftGS squad on av club or somewhere, and the reviewer referred to her earlier work as 'chick lit'. and also recommended that it would be a good idea to publish her non-chick lit stuff under a pseudonym so ppl aren't put off reading it.

Blimey. I no way does what I've read of her (this and some stories) make me think "chick-lit".

it was actually a review of the keep: http://www.avclub.com/articles/jennifer-egan-the-keep,3817/

"Jennifer Egan should adopt a nom de plume—"J. Egan" would do quite well. An unfortunate side effect of the popularity of chick lit and poetic, memoir-ish "women's novels" is that a woman's name on the cover creates a certain expectation about what's inside. "

ugh i read some review of AVftGS squad on av club or somewhere, and the reviewer referred to her earlier work as 'chick lit'. and also recommended that it would be a good idea to publish her non-chick lit stuff under a pseudonym so ppl aren't put off reading it.

― just1n3, Wednesday, May 4, 2011 11:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is basically what i'm getting at. i have read "chick lit" and i'm not trying to get into a whole thing about the ghettoization of that genre but i can only figure egan's work as chick lit if writing about women automatically means chick lit, which pisses me off.

xp i guess it's not just writing about women but also being a woman. god. look at me is also about a model, which i guess is a double-strike against it.

you know what that review is about, too: The Keep was her first novel where most of it is told from a man's pov.

after 'visit' 'look @ me' is the one i like best. its... not really chick-lit.

i love look at me. i have gotten in so many arguments where i recommend that book to people and tell them what it's about, and they're like "so, it's about a model? ..."

yeah i have absolutely no problem with chick-lit either and read tons of the stuff - i hate that it is used to refer to works that reviewers want to pan bc of content but can't bc they're actually good and well-written. and also: i def didn't feel that look at me or invisible circus or emerald city fell into the 'chick-lit' category by those standards.

just1n3 otm

" An unfortunate side effect of the popularity of chick lit and poetic, memoir-ish "women's novels" is that a woman's name on the cover creates a certain expectation about what's inside. "

! what is wrong w/ this person

i hate to be all thread police, but can we not have spoilers for bits we're not required to have read yet?

Finished this last night. Will hold off saying anything particularly spoilery until next week, but offhand I can't recall a more disappointing final chapter to a novel.

Also finally read the LRB review - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n07/pankaj-mishra/modernitys-undoing I had been saving up until now. And that is even more disappointing than the book! The kind of generic postmod novel criticism 101 undergrads were writing back in my American Lit classes over 20 years ago!

Uh-oh !!!

Was this the kind of thing that was encouraged by the dim-witted Christopher Bigsby?

whenever i see that kind of criticism of criticism, stevie t, i wonder: gosh, did undergraduates really get that much more stupid in the intervening fifty years? that much less able to turn out a sentence?

ffhand I can't recall a more disappointing final chapter to a novel.

I'm not thrilled with it either.

I liked the marketing and technology-related bits of the final chapter, the part with the concert was a dud, it seemed designed to appeal to beardy Bon Iver fans or something.

Really? I can't really stand it when novels start including CRZY YNG PPL TXTMSGSPK - found Supersad True Love Story unreadable for pretty much this reason. Also the horror of street teaming as cultural apocalypse seemed a little overwrought. There seemed an awful lot of editorialising in this last chapter. I was willing to give Egan the benefit of the doubt re rockism as being just Bennie's pov, but she seemed to be ranting away pretty directly here.

I don't think "street teaming as cultural apocalypse" was really the point, although I don't think I can elaborate without spoilering. Certainly being seen as a trusted source on the internet would have had increasing cultural importance in that situation.

Yes, I meant to say it is more cringeworthy because there is less distance.

ch 3: punk rock, teenage drug taking, orgiastic party, illicit sex - no. Not for me.

More broadly, the structure so far - marginal character in chapter A turns out to be central in chapter B, kind of connection - reminds me of something else which might be Mitchell's Ghostwritten. I realize that there must be many other relevant comparisons; and that this novel has a long way to go and is likely to change more.

So far I don't find this novel especially good. It seems to be treading water; and again, none of the writing has seemed distinguished. But, it could change. And one kind of change that can happen, which is hard to admit when things are not great, is that the sheer duration of the novel somehow drags it up in quality and the stuff that seemed not great later comes to seem part of something great. Maybe that will happen with this novel?

ch 4, safari in Africa ... feels like a Mitchell sort of idea, where can we go now? - but without the quality of prose and density of observation (which I think DM has; some don't like him I'm sure). Or maybe all this talk about Mitchell is too elevated - maybe it's more like Julian Barnes' *history of the world* 'upstream!' chapter.

the 'structural affection' etc schtick in italics here (pp 64-5) strikes me as quite lame: a predictive self-exculpation for writing clichéd relations between people.

the bit where the girl and the driver (from Minehead, for goodness' sake - an ATP touch?) are heavily breathing at each other and don't realize an old lady is in the same jeep (p 69) is daft. and for goodness' sake, why is the hot chick into the bloke from Minehead ... oh, I remember, it's 'structural desire' (65). what a load of BS that seems.

paras of massive foreshadowing - '35 years later this tribesman will own a loft in Tribeca' - I'm afraid I don't like at all, though I can see some kind of ambition at work in the attempt to jump around in time. (but again, I have to say, Mitchell would never do it so clumsily - though he can be a bit clumsy too in his way, esp in Black Swan Green.) (Actually, a bit more like eg White Teeth here - '40 years ago, Archie Jones was a corporal in Germany, but that's another story' etc?)

how about this?

'At eleven years old, Rolph knows two clear things about himself: He belongs to his father. And his father belongs to him' (p.63).

That strikes me as bad writing full stop - mainly because the thought it conveys is so imprecise and phoney; it doesn't stand up to many moments' thought about whether such a resounding, exclusive, simplistic, sentimental sentiment could actually feel true, to an 11-year-old or anyone else.

i can't believe you think the writing is undistinguished! crazy talk!

the 'structural affection' etc schtick in italics here (pp 64-5) strikes me as quite lame: a predictive self-exculpation for writing clichéd relations between people.

this is just a joke at grad students' expense! how can anyone not enjoy that?

as always happens when you dislike a writer i like, i like the lines you quote about Rolph. i guess there's no real way to argue that stuff. i am pretty sentimental, i guess.

I have insisted on noting that I'm only talking about the early parts of the novel, and that maybe the writing gets better. But in the first 4 or 5 chapters, I haven't seen much that I thought was good writing.

I used to be a graduate student and I'm not sure I see how that would work as a joke against the person I was, when I was one. I admit that the phrases do seem to be located in Mindy's thoughts.

are you from the USA, horseshoe?

Meanwhile: in ch 4, more of that foreshadowing stuff. I don't think it's well done or effective - BUT I do feel that JE is trying to do something different here, breaking with suspense, the unknown future of a sequential narrative, etc; making some kind of new move. What precursors for it there might be, many could probably say.

ch 5 I actually thought an improvement! Mainly because it talks not much about that cool punk rubbish but about loss, sadness and age. I found a couple of lines that I thought quite good: 'a bad day, a day when the sun feels like teeth' (87) - OK, maybe; and the smiling mother: 'exhaustion has carved up her face' (88): yes, this is getting nearer to something real.

ch 6 so far is narrated in a clownish eccentric way and again I think it's better than earlier chapters, has the courage of a schtick. The lines about 'not thinking about somebody' (92) for instance are OK. Here I think JE is getting a bit closer to whatever good thing she might have taken from Amis (whom she named as an influence): his bold way with an extreme voice; not so extreme here, more Flight of the Conchords, but still a bit better than a lot of pages before it.

mindy's a sociology grad student, right? or some social science? and she's enamored of analyzing everything personal structurally? including sex and romance? that rings pretty true to me, meaning that i recognize myself.

i am from + in the USA. i lent my copy of this book to a friend right after i read it, otherwise i'd be hunting up lines i liked from the very beginning. i love the way she writes!

i will admit that i thought the end was a bit of a letdown. but that is my only admission!

i am enjoying your commentary btw, pinefox!

Enjoying p-fox commentary way more than I'd probably enjoy the actual book

oh shit! I forgot I finished this book two days ago.

And?

Library fees?

guess i really should have stopped reading this thread till i'd finished the book ;_;

seriously, wtf.

Surprised the Pinefox feels in some way excluded by the punk rock kids chapter when that chapter is specifically about being excluded from the punk rock kids (or hanging out with them and feeling excluded). It doesn't strike me as particularly nostalgic either, there's too much mess and violence and sordidness.

paras of massive foreshadowing - '35 years later this tribesman will own a loft in Tribeca' - I'm afraid I don't like at all, though I can see some kind of ambition at work in the attempt to jump around in time. (but again, I have to say, Mitchell would never do it so clumsily - though he can be a bit clumsy too in his way, esp in Black Swan Green.)

It's not really foreshadowing (these elements don't really go anywhere) and definitely not a Mitchell-esque thing to do. Whenever she uses that trick it's for a very minor character, the sort of character that writers don't usually bother filling in at all, I like that she bothers to give them a resolution, that she cares about what happens to some African waiter or whoever, and that we as readers might care too. It's actually one of my favourite aspects of the book.