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.
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 18:15 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 26 September 2011 18:16 (twelve years ago) link
i'll kill u
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 18:17 (twelve years ago) link
lol
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, 26 September 2011 18:18 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 18:20 (twelve years ago) link
hahaha never read this thread, pinefox is hilarious
― Mr. Que, Monday, 26 September 2011 18:22 (twelve years ago) link
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
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, 26 September 2011 18:26 (twelve years ago) link
I'd like to go to a party with horseshoe and change her experience - and mine - of what people talk about at parties.
I don't see what grounds Max has for saying Egan is a talented stylist. I think 'stylist' etc was already discussed in this long fractious thread. I think some of us think she seems stylistically pretty flat.
Max is very lucky to be 25 years younger than Egan. Let's hope he makes the most of that incredible boon! (I'm serious - there is nothing much more valuable than youth.)
I don't know Warlock but I can confirm that I have never finished THE WARLOCK OF FIRETOP MOUNTAIN.
― the pinefox, Monday, 26 September 2011 18:55 (twelve years ago) link
I'm actually only 23 years younger than Egan.
― max, Monday, 26 September 2011 19:05 (twelve years ago) link
Oh no !!!
― the pinefox, Monday, 26 September 2011 19:35 (twelve years ago) link
Now that REALLY shouldn't have posted twice.
hey horseshoe, have you listened to this?
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw061221jennifer_egan
<3 for "stephen king's salem's lot...a book that i love"
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:18 (twelve years ago) link
listening right now, thanks strongo! everything she's ever said about fiction is totally <3 ime
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:28 (twelve years ago) link
not fair for her to be so talented and so pretty btw
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:29 (twelve years ago) link
when i went to look up her age i figured she was gonna be like 30something, not 50
― max, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:30 (twelve years ago) link
she lives near me btw
I don't like her as a writer
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 26 September 2011 22:33 (twelve years ago) link
never read anything she wrote though
i don't like YOU as a writer
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:34 (twelve years ago) link
that's untrue tbh
she's just one of those contemporary writers who has won a prize so I lump her in w/ people like franzen or zadie smith or whatever, whose work I'm familiar w/ and think will not last in any meaningful way, probably shouldn't though
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 26 September 2011 22:35 (twelve years ago) link
it's so weird that that happened btw...i guess she was on the fast track (i get the sense she's literarily *connected* maybe) but when i was first reading look at me it felt like this undiscovered gem that if any literary tastemakers ran across it they would probably dismiss as chicklit.
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:37 (twelve years ago) link
of course she was getting published in the new yorker so i was wrong, i guess
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:38 (twelve years ago) link
now that I am talking about books on a thread big ups to aero for recc'ing the rodoreda
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 26 September 2011 22:39 (twelve years ago) link
I am actually a really easy reader once I actually read something though and like p much everything so when I read this I probably won't hate her
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 26 September 2011 22:41 (twelve years ago) link
also, a lot of other good interviews on that show, hs, if yr not familiar. especially the robert stone ones.
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:50 (twelve years ago) link
jokes.
my hatred of robert stone is so kneejerk and reflects very poorly on me. it's basically the same as if someone dismissed egan as chicklit.
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:53 (twelve years ago) link
well he is very dudelit
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:55 (twelve years ago) link
marlboro man lit
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:56 (twelve years ago) link
god i know, right? i imagine he has a whiskey-roughened voice.
― horseshoe, Monday, 26 September 2011 22:59 (twelve years ago) link
haha he actually kinda sounds like a kindly grandpa
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, 26 September 2011 23:01 (twelve years ago) link
but one thing i've learned listening to bookworm over the years is that insufferable writers tend to sound exactly like you'd think they would
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, 26 September 2011 23:04 (twelve years ago) link
for example franzen sounds like a total cock
If only! He sounds like a mare.
― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 26 September 2011 23:07 (twelve years ago) link
actually i should probably rephrase that to "writers have the exact kind of speaking voices you'd expect from their books." for example, franzen sounds like a total cock. dennis cooper sounds like a slightly bewildered teenager with a lot of ums and ahs. bill vollmann sounds like a mildly creepy loner who's unused to leaving his own head. and et cetera.
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, 26 September 2011 23:07 (twelve years ago) link
Since so many of these writers teach, I wish they learned how to create a character. Speak with more authority, as if an audience of hundreds were in front of you. The alternative, of course, is worse: the bumbling pseudo-nebbish injecting "kinda" and "sort of" into every glistening pearl of a sentence as a character itself.
― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 26 September 2011 23:09 (twelve years ago) link
she is something like fifteen years older than i would have thought. huh.
― thomp, Monday, 26 September 2011 23:23 (twelve years ago) link
Waterstones seem to have her old books in stock in nice matching reissues.
I read an old interview with her (in something called BELIEVER) and she certainly seemed OK in that.
― PJ Miller, Tuesday, 27 September 2011 11:31 (twelve years ago) link
Another term for "stylistically flat" might be "conversational", which is, I think, what she is going for. There might be a bit too much conversational around, post-Franzen, but that's another debate.
― Matt DC, Tuesday, 27 September 2011 11:46 (twelve years ago) link
Franzen isn't just conversational - he also writes striking, elegant, ambitious or lyrical descriptive prose, at times; quite a lot of times in The Corrections.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 27 September 2011 11:58 (twelve years ago) link
my gf has the book with her right now but as soon as i get it back ill try to defend my claims about style
― max, Tuesday, 27 September 2011 12:22 (twelve years ago) link
thank you! i immediately lent this book to a friend after reading it. i think egan's an amazing stylist but i can only defend with passages from her other novels rn.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 27 September 2011 13:26 (twelve years ago) link
Stevie was right, the LRB review (which I remembered to read tonight) was dire. I'm not quite sure why. A lot of phoney certainty for one thing. I think I am coming to detect a particular LRB house view or tone which I don't like so much.
But anyway it compared this book to JLG's DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES - very arbitrary - and quoted a totally mediocre passage of dialogue from an earlier JE book as though it was really great.
It was really irritating.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 11 October 2011 23:48 (twelve years ago) link
did you guys know that jennifer egan used to date steve jobs
― max, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:26 (twelve years ago) link
Explains the tech fascination
― Muammar for the road (Michael White), Friday, 21 October 2011 20:30 (twelve years ago) link