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

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?

Still waiting to hear the answer

So about the whole hair-stealing thing: it turns out that there ARE hair thieves. Only they don't steal it off the top of your head, they break into boutiques and steal it before it is made into extensions. The best hair is apparently from India, where it is shorn for religious reasons and therefore is in the best condition, although I forget exactly why this is so.

I haven't watched it yet, but I recorded it.

Just finished this. Generally I liked this a lot though like many here I found it surprisingly lightweight considering the awards it's won. I so often find that novelists succumb to sentimentality and moralising at the end that the last chapter didn't really disappoint - I was expecting those flaws and it still had emotional weight for me. I don't mind a bit of rockism per se - the conversation about selling out and the scary, unsentimental modernity of Lulu resonated with me, and punk rock seems like a natural vehicle for ideas about youthful ideals vs middle-aged disappointment and fear of the future - but Pinefox is OTM about the show:

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.

It reminds me not of Cloud Atlas or Underworld but The Imperfectionists, another novel of interconnected short stories, though it's stronger and more coherent than that. The patchwork format helps drive home the theme of time passing in an unpredictable way whereas The Imperfectionists doesn't really strike me as a novel at all.

Favourite chapters were the Sasha ones and the SF punk one. Most unconvincing was Dolly and the general. Jules's meta-interview was too Pitchfork Reviews Reviews for comfort, albeit more rapey.

I forgot to mention that as if to add further insult to insult after injury, GOON SQUAD is now available in the 2 for £7 offer in Sainsbury's, making it about £8 cheaper than when I bought it. Still, I knew it was shit* before the masses knew it was shit.

*Not really.

you can buy this in tesco too

£4.98

I liked a lot of this book, and really wanted to like it even more, but there's something about fake-text-speak and made-up near-future slang that make me want to curl up in a ball and die. I had to skim most of the last chapter and then when the concert, which had its own set of issues, started I almost couldn't finish.

I'm sure this was way better than Freedom or the Art of Fielding, neither of which I really have any desire to read, but I was still kind of disappointed. Old people shouldn't write about the future.

I really liked the SF punk chapter and the African safari. And most of the chapters about Sasha. The fake piece about the actress was as cringey as the last chapter.

I guess I'm basically saying the same thing as a lot of people on this thread already

i wish she hadn't written that last chapter

i am still a huge egan stan

i know, seeing you boost this book made me think better of it

you're sweet. i can't separate how i feel about egan's work from numerous chips on my shoulder so i think i can be a little single-minded about her.

i always enjoy pinefox's careful skewering of all the books i like, though, and i mean that sincerely

admittedly she's in a hard position, i mean im 25 years younger than she is and its kind of unlikely wed see eye-to-eye about aging and the passage of time and shifts in culture, though even given that she seemed to just not "get it"

i just found it frustrating cause i think shes a really talented stylist and she juggles the plot so deftly and grabs on to certain kinds of feelings and relationships with such accuracy... and then she completely botches "the future"

but anyway even with my disappointment im glad this beat freedom for the pulitzer prize, and i would be happy if this also beat the art of fielding for the pulitzer prize even though its not eligible

the futuristic elements in look at me are handled better, even though she loses her grip on the plot in that one. the egan novel i think you would have the greatest chance of enjoying fully is the keep.

not that you ever have to read an egan book again but if you ever wanted to one day.

*sob*

for you hs i would read any book

feeling ashamed now that i haven't finished warlock. i loved the first third so much that i haven't returned to it! but i will.

max, did you read Super Sad True Love Story, and if so what did you think of "the future" in that novel?

i have been avoiding for basically the same reason--i read the excerpt in the NYer and it was similarly embarrassing, though shteyngart is funnier than egan i think

i thought shteyngart's funniness made his future vision more palatable because it's more obviously satirical. tbh i don't remember the future stuff from goon squad at all.

yeah i prefer it, he knows what to avoid re: made-up pop culture and "not getting it" is also part of the joke.

i liked the the final few chapters a lot structurally, particularly the idea she has about how new scientific knowledge can be transmuted into the basis for shifts in 'cultural metaphors', that these kind of esoteric advances can easily become new prisms through which the world is understood/ordered. i guess in part i liked that she illuminated the whole of the novel that way, the conversation abt modes of thinking as metaphor for 'the novel' &c &c

its funny (i guess?) i was arguing in favor of this book vs. 'super sad...' w/ a bowtied 'literary figure' at a party recently by saying that even if her vision of technology/music was dopey the tone seemed right to me, it was less hectoring and 'you'll get yours' and so felt more honest and possible? idk

I just finished Look at me and really liked it.

:D that's my favorite one!

to return to the original post, no one i know has ever discussed this stuff at parties, even when i was in grad school. fwiw.

lol wrong thread

Ha that sounded like an xp to lamp!

I love all her stuff, too, but would rep for the keep as being her most 'successful' novel

i think 'the keep' breaks down worse than this one tbh but its a lot more fun

i still need to read that

xp

very last part of good squad was very much in the "why non-sf writers shouldn't do future projection" mold. (most of them shouldn't do it, either, tbh.) otoh i can't name too many sf books that punched me in the gut as hard as the best parts of this book.

very last part of good squad was very much in the "why non-sf writers shouldn't do future projection" mold

or MFAs.

i dont think egan is an mfa, actually

can we just say she is?

motherfuckin' author