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

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.

Much as I enjoyed it, I'm surprised it won the Pulitzer and I'm not sure it deserves it. I've not read her previous books, I think she almost certainly has a better book in her.

Wow, I'm really sorry if I've spoiled things for people. It's hard when you get into a debate about aspects of the book that get clarified later on, and I personally I don't find that my enjoyment of a book is much affected by knowing what happens (even with thrillers) which maybe makes me careless. I should have been more sensitive.

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Frankiemachine - I've deleted your most recent post, and I'll undelete it once the time period for reading the book has passed.

thanks for the apology frankiemachine - yeah i do find that the emotional impact of scenes can be heavily blunted if they've been spoilered.

fwiw since reading/discussion of the rest of the book is 'officially' scheduled to start sunday, i'd say it's all fair game from there on (and i would consciously avoid the thread from then until i'd finished myself). this might be a little unfair to slower readers but i think it's a reasonable compromise.

Thanks Matt, appreciated.

fwiw, ppl not reading the book, e.g. what the pinefox describes as 'orgiastic party' is 'some teenagers smoke dope and feel a little depressed about the fact that one of their number is sleeping with an older dude in the next room'; as always the single malt of the pinefox's often considerable insight is diluted by the tesco value cola of his sometimes plain baffling conceptual filters

or something like that, i didn't sleep very well

I want to read this book now. I will probably hate it in a way that holds my interest enough to make me continue.

PF, we are all of us living lives of mid-table mediocrity, but some of us are looking at an impending takeover by a consortium of anonymous businessmen from the Far East.

haah my gf's away at the moment + she took this w/ her + i just got a text saying 'that book is so bloody good isnt it!!'

I like it! And I just wrote something long, but realised I was including some second half stuff. Then I wanted to respond to a couple of pinefox's observations, but I've got work to do now. Also slightly wary of becoming backlash egan stan straw man fan. Well.

as always the single malt of the pinefox's often considerable insight is diluted by the tesco value cola of his sometimes plain baffling conceptual filters

I want to read this book now. I will probably hate it in a way that holds my interest enough to make me continue.

Also want to read it to see where the Armed Forces connection comes in, if any.

ch6: the business about 'it's all xs and os' and 'we are all made of information' seems a bit lame, actually - sub-Pynchon: not that this reads like Pynchon, but that this kind of talk feels like something that a Pynchon fan would say or want to write. I can't make out so far, across the novel, how far JE is pastiching things like this and how far she means it.

Bennie and Scotty meeting across the desk was OK - the Scotty voice has something; I like its fresh approach to reality. I think I can identify with this outcast and decrepit loser who is shunned by the world but still interested in it, more than I could with any other characters so far.

pp.117-8:
'His father had been an electrician; Bennie could light anything'.

Novelists seem to be keen on this kind of statement. The sentence seems to imply a causality that is meant to carry obviously and naturally from one side of the semi-colon to another. It looks tough and knowing. You wouldn't mess with this sentence.

Actually, guess what? People do not necessarily inherit the skills and knowledge that their relatives have. Any one of us could say 'my mother was X, but I can't do xyz things that her job required'.

OK, a character might pick up some electrical skills from an electrician - or he might not. Would being the son of an electrician (though not an electrician yourself, but a record company executive) mean you could 'light anything'? The causality would be contingent, the skill would be variable, sometimes non-existent; it wouldn't have the kind of natural status that I feel is implied by that semi-colon.

This is like (in the old lament of the 1980s) the way that when Tom Cruise played a barman, he had to be most talented barman in NYC; or when he played a racing driver, he had to be the most daring driver on the track - etc. It's bravado writing - it's a weak sentence in its assumption of strength. It's also like that bad sentence about Rolph and his father earlier - again the writer grasps at a patently misleading symmetry or clarity and it rings untrue.

there's no armed forces connection iirc

Wow, I'm really sorry if I've spoiled things for people.

Me too--I read it all in one day off work, which is a vote in its favour, and got carried away in my commenting. Sorry!

Can't agree with that reading pinefox. The causal relationship you read into this isn't necessarily there. An analagous sentence might be something like:

Bennie's father was a professional golfer; Bennie was a keen amateur who played off scratch.

The second half of the sentence tells us something about Bennie's interests and aptitudes; the first suggests how and why those interests and aptitudes may have developed. The sentence as a whole doesn't mean that Bennie's interests and aptitudes flow inevitably from his father's profession.

I'm reminded of the legal principle that if the wording of a statute can be read in two ways, and one of those ways produces an absurdity, then we ought to assume that the draughtsmen intended the meaning that is not absurd. Your reading of the sentence renders its meaning absurd, and since it is perfectly possible to read it in other ways that are not then I think we ought to give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume that the non-absurd meaning is the one she intended.

D'oh draftsmen.

I don't think I understand your disagreement.

It seems pretty clear that the sentence implies a causal relationship between its two halves.

It doesn't say 'was a keen amateur' or 'did at least know how to fix a lightbulb', but 'could light anything' - that's a big part of the problem, the overemphasis. It's like bad Hollywood logic, not real life logic.

The main issue here for me is not the detail that the character could or not be a good electrician, etc. It's something about authorial judgement - the way she lapses into the over-emphatic cos it sounds cooler than something less emphatic; the way she takes a path of least resistance into the over-emphatic option. I think the earlier sentence I quoted re father & son also showed a failure of judgement, so there may be a general problem here, from my POV; though the more general problem I really have is the one that others have noted, namely that the writing doesn't do anything very special.

Given the way this book is going, I can imagine that there may well be a chapter about how B. became an electrician, which would I suppose make the sentence look less lazy and more earned.

clarification: that is, there may well be a chapter about how B. followed his electrician father around from job to job and, through close observation, aquired the skills to LIGHT ANYTHING.

Meanwhile:

In person, Egan is slight, modest, at odds perhaps with the force of her prose, which is lit by a casual brilliance and so compacted as to be almost tangible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/may/07/jennifer-egan-life-goon-squad

In person, Egan is casual, tangible, brilliantly lit by the son of a local electrician, at odds perhaps with the slight modesty of her prose.

Thought about getting this from the library but all I got was 482 holds on first copy returned of 115 copies- dang, this thing is popular. Read the ebook sample and gotta say that I was having the same anthropologist from mars reaction as the pinefox. For instance, on the first page there is this: We live in a city where people will still the hair off your head if you give them half a chance. Oh really? Who are these people? What do they do with the hair? What is it worth on the street? Is there a hair-legging operation being run by some Williamsburg wig merchants? Maybe in Chapter 7 this will be revealed? Probably not, probably it's just an "inventive" way to say this is a tough town, watch your back.

You might say I am misreading, picking on the poor sentence, but despite all the reviews about the modern, luminous, diamond hard prose, and the 482 holds on the 115 copies, Nabokov it ain't.

aargh. will steal the hair off your head

But maybe it should be "still," which would lead to exciting revenuer chase scene hijinks in Chapter 9.

115 copies of a new novel? your local library must be Alexandria, if not Babel, or possibly Deptford.