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

£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

haha

can we just say she is?

no, that would be lying

i think if we want to make up something about how all mfas are bad at the very least we should be talking about people who are actually mfas

like i mentioned on the "what are you reading" thread that i recently plowed through the three william gibson '90s books and while he got a lot "wrong" and a lot of the rest was obviously blown out of proportion for satirical/narrative effect, his "now" feels a lot more like our actual now than i think egan's future is gonna actually look/feel like when we get there. but gibson's characters are mostly ciphers/plot-drivers, whereas i was actually relieved to see in good squad that rhea (despite a lot of obvious bumps) was doing okay as an adult. all of which just means i guess that i think egan's real gift is for character and sometimes that got away from her with all the hoop-jumping and special effects, though in the abstract i think she should be applauded for trying to bring that gift to all the metafictional hoohah.

all of which makes it sound like i enjoyed this book a lot less than i did, but i actually really, really enjoyed it.

i think egan's real gift is for character

definitely

i think why i was so dazzled by goon squad immediately after i read it, even though on reflection i like look at me and the keep more, is that it's virtuosic in its tour of characters and it seems like egan sympathizes with them all.

Lamp said something about this upthread i think; he was otm

i think the best part of the novel is how compassionate it is, & how much she seemed to want to give all her characters the benefit of the doubt, to do them justice. & that made me eager to spend time in their company, to know them & to empathize w/ them.

― Lamp, Sunday, May 8, 2011 5:29 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

I didn't enjoy it much but it was too vaporous to despise. My favorite section remains the one set in Italy; its tone is subtler than the rest of the novel.

i'll kill u

lol

tbh i was kinda afraid of voicing any reservations about this book in front of horseshoe

haha i'm sorry! the days of the ilx book club on this book were hard for me but it was good experience to try to respond to pinefox's criticisms in my head. really welcome what all the smart people have to say about how they hate my beloved book.

hahaha never read this thread, pinefox is hilarious

pinefox on some definite anthropologist-from-mars steez in this thread

― thomp, Tuesday, May 3, 2011

"this thread"

j/k pinefox i luv u boo