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

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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.

Ha.

>>> surely the point is that despite the local details they look the same

I don't think this is quite the sense that I get from it, Fizzles ... it first says they all look the same, then goes on to make them sound outlandishly specific. I think the thought of the sentence is less coherent than you're giving it credit for. I suppose I think Egan had one thought, then another, and didn't notice that they don't really go together.

Amis's phrase jars for me because being a student certainly didn't put me off eating. And it's kind of meaningless really as a description (I think we agree?).

I like the idea of being watched, as a reader, by a chimp.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2281/5799661836_383400c935.jpg

I have been on the bottle a bit recently, admittedly. Very good picture of me last Thursday morning iirc.

(Oh and the Amis thing was about himself rather than being a general application, that was me who did that - I can still remember only a total of three or four things I ate at university.)

I sometimes wonder what on earth I ate at university.

Students don't look the same everywhere, at least not from country to country. Apart from perhaps they all look like idle perishers.

If that chimp were to be given pencil and paper he would draw the bars chicken wire of his own cage.

If that chimp were given pen and paper, he would write a better version of A Visit from the Goon Squad.

>:[ i thought you liked it, alfred!

Search: Bob Newhart, "An Infinite Number of Monkeys."

I thought I said I didn't!

i guess it was wishful ilxing on my part

You seemed to like it whilst reading it and then afterward said that it left no lasting impression and was 'vaporous.'

You got it.

I didn't eat very well at university. Like PJM I feel distant now from whatever I ate then. I was very ignorant and could not cook well. But I was young enough not to be damaged by it, then.

That is a good bunch of comments about the chimp.

I went up the road to my local pub and reached p.320 or so. The powerpoint chapter is indeed good for motoring through lots of pages. I thought that the technique worked quite well, but I didn't understand, or have much sympathy with, the mother's account of why pauses in rock songs are fascinating. Maybe she was just being indulgent towards her child. But, the theme of rock pauses seemed quite Freaky Trigger. I started to picture Peter Baran writing an article about them.

Oddly, the current chapter which is quite SF is quite interesting. At this rate, I might finish the book, in the future.

The pauses in rock thing gives the whole enterprise a sheen of Geezaesthetics. Every time I hear a Pause in Rock now I think of that book. I think this may be its only lasting effect.

In retrospect, the PowerPoint chapter seems sadder than the rest.

In retrospect I think she should have done each chapter in the style of a programme from the Microsoft Office "Suite". With the final chapter from the perspective of Clippy the Microsoft Office Assistant.