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

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.

'It looks like you're trying to write a book'.

"Like"

and also

"LOL"

and also

"lightbulb on"

I get that except for the lightbulb.

(Also I think the only Office Suite thing I am familiar with is Word - or is Power Point part of it also?)

I'm looking forward to the Excel spreadsheet chapter.

Gantt charts people!

The Evening Standard today reviews this book.

Says it should have won the Orange Prize, is the best new novel of the year and everyone is recommending it to everyone else.

It describes the plot, or the sequence of chapters.

I recognized the description but I could not feel much in sympathy with the favourable things that the review said about the book.

i just finished reading this book yesterday night! and i'm not even in yr book club! i guess i just wanted to say hi and wow this book is awesome and made me feel like writing more things that i really enjoy writing.
it had a DFW kind of charm but with a more heartrending, optimistic sense of humour about lyfe

pinefox, I'm glad that your indifferent reaction to this uberpopular book has not seemed to make you feel like you have been outcast from life's feast.

welcome, rrrobyn!

nice to see rrrobyns positivity!

after reading this book my gf has gone on an egan reading spree

'this (pulitzer-winning) book should have won the orange fiction prize' is such a peculiar statement

that marathon runner should have won the egg and spoon race at my nephew's creche (woman's division)

But Orange is much more money & a far bigger deal in British medialand - I thought Pulitzer was just a journalism prize till a few years ago. It is a weird thing to say, but it feels more like 'this emmy-winning sitcom should have got a bafta'

you'd never read or seen a book with a PULITZER WINNING thing on the jacket?? tbh it never occurred to me there were people who took the orange prize seriously, though i suppose there must be

fun fact: in 2007 it was renamed 'the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.' in 2009 it was renamed again, back to its original name.

Not that I can think of, but I've never really followed contemporary american fiction. If I have seen it, I would have blanked it, I guess. I don't take prizes as a helpful indicator of anything, though I notice when the British prizes are handed out - I enjoy the broadsheets/PRs attempts to wring a story out of them.

I think publishing/books-pages world takes the Orange Prize relatively seriously. It's solidly part of the machine, makes the main section of most papers.

All this talk of egg-and-spoon races and oranges makes me want to read some P.G. Wodehouse. And hum a little song about oranges, something something oranges, can't remember how it goes.

The Orange Prize is a big deal because of the exposure it gives to female authors who might otherwise be overlooked, but the Pulitzer has existed since the 40s and some wonderful books have won it so it's hardly a flash in the pan.

the pulitzer for fiction/novel has existed since 1918 but i do not respect them much -- so many mediocre books have won.

The "pause in rock" thing was really good--I had forgotten about that.

I'm tempted to read this book again, this time with the benefit of the collective wisdom here.

Are you guys going to do "Open City" next?

I think so, at the end of the month iirc to give unamericans a chance to order it

I'm not certain about 'collective wisdom'.

On a sunny afternoon, out on the grass, with a pot of tea, I just finished the Goon Squad book.

This may be of a little interest or entertainment value to Fizzles the Chimp.

I may have to withdraw what I said about the last chapter being good. The SF side of it is pretty fine - the vision of people interacting with computers, and language changing: all this is quite plausible and well conceived, but I feel sure that 10,000 SF writers have done that equally well already.

The rock music side of it I didn't like. The description of the concert was quite remarkably lame. I dare say that JE *does* know a lot about rock music - but here she writes like someone who doesn't, like Salman Rushdie or something; stagey and gushing.

The long climactic para on 331-2 strikes me as remarkably bad, given the weight it seems to carry. The line about 'a man who had never had a page or a profile' or something is like 10th rate Pynchon. The line 'Doesn't a myth belong to everyone?' is horribly cutesy and deceptive. The issue it arises from, remember, is 'people said they were at the gig who weren't'. If you think of Dylan at the Albert Hall or the Pistols in Manchester, say, then you can see how phoney this is. You would NOT respect someone for claiming to be there when they weren't there - you wouldn't say: 'hey, those gigs are myth - they belong to everyone'. You know intuitively that the distinction between fact and fiction in this matter still stands, alongside the legendary and important status of the event. The idea that the gigs are 'mythic' is not really relevant to the question of a truthful account. I think this is part of why JE's fictional version rings so very false. Also, the sentence itself, the rhetorical question, is horrible - I don't know how else to describe the tonal problem than how I already have.

Like I say, it feels like music writing for people who don't really like music -- and this is strange cos I think JE *does* like music, probably more than most novelists.

The very very end, when they go looking for Sasha's old apartment - this rang truer. This moment made a bit more sense to me, I think.

But I didn't end with much sense of coherence, or sense that characters had come together or been developed and realized. I felt like the characters remained pretty cardboard. Or, if you prefer, that they were simply underdeveloped from not having been on stage long enough; all the cutting stopped JE getting momentum on any of them, or anything else substantial.

I don't dislike the idea of a work that is internally multiplicitous. Some of my very favourite works are like that. I think this book sounds like quite a good idea in the abstract, but I am not too sure that the idea has ultimately been well executed.

Are you guys going to do "Open City" next?

― Virginia Plain, Friday, 10 June 2011 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think so, at the end of the month iirc to give unamericans a chance to order it

― Ismael Klata, Friday, 10 June 2011 Bookmark

Ismael its w/c 27th June - I have ordered this through the library but doubt I'll get it before then.

Can you make up a thread or do a chapter breakdown on the existing one at the time if that's ok? Let me know..

Yeah, okay. I'll just use the existing thread. Goon Squad was two weeks, which worked well and I liked, but I'm thinking Open City seems a bit denser and might need a little more time. On the other hand, after the success of this episode I'd rather leave too little time than too much.

Any views?

And will starting the 27th leave enough time for the pinefox to finish Goon Squad?

So its 270 pages. I'd say two weeks again just on that (although not exactly 50/50 split?) but I'll defer to your judgement.

On a sunny afternoon, out on the grass, with a pot of tea, I just finished the Goon Squad book.

I have done you a disservice

As the cameraman said to Terence Stamp at the preview of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Was really enjoying reading about the pinefox reading this book and am sad that it has come to an end

Open City's in two parts, with the break at page 147. That seems like natural way to do it, so over two weeks it is.

Thank you, mr Blecchs, or Goldwax, etc; that is nice of you to say, or I hope it is.

Is Fizzles the Chimp now liberated to read anew?

I've been flying through a cataract of hitherto pent-up books, thanks pinefox. Words everywhere. Total mess. Babel.

Like JR&tBs have thoroughly enjoyed watching you reading from behind the chicken wire, even tho, and partly because, it differed from my reading, and differs from my reading more generally, which although at times I find perplexingly individual, instructs my own reading by contrast, and is entertaining and interesting for the particular insights it brings in itself.

I might read Goon Squad again now. Might be good to spend the rest of my life grappling with it.

For the record, I downloaded a pirated epub of Open City, but I haven't had a look to see if it's OK or not. In terms of layout and stuff, not in terms of morality. I know it's not OK morally.

As if to add insult to injury, Goon Squad is now available in a slightly smaller £7.99 edition!

GOON SQUAD will be discussed on More 4 Book Club this evening. Presumably by Dave Spikey and Ade Edmondson...

7.30

did they like it?