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

i'm about 100 pages into this and i'm not really sold. everything that happens is too important, if that makes any sense. every person is constantly being arrested by a memory that they can't shake or a sudden flash of intense emotion that they have to hide or the sudden realization that this is the moment where everything is going to be different forever etc etc. it feels very soapy to me. maybe there's something stylistic about young people (and those that wish to be them) that i'm missing, idk.

the interconnections and the time-shifting are keeping me going tho.

PJM, I didn't really get to duel banjos but I did sing harmonies during his set till he said I should come up on stage.

Then another night we were backstage and I said he should play 'black and white unite' and he started working it out on his acoustic, which was good to hear, and saying of one bit 'It's all Buffalo Springfield, simple as that'.

it is kind of soapy, tbh

The book was written as if for people skeptical of the possibilities of the novel ("See? You can write about Africa, Italy, and rock!").

Good stuff, PF.

i think this is pretty bad tbh.

the punk teenagers segments kind of had me going, and i wanted to follow bennie himself, but none of the rest of this is ringing true or insightful to me at all. the pop-cultural stuff just feels off: "the conduits"? "kitty jackson"? the melting lamp celebrity disaster? the characters are both "too interesting" by occupation and circumstance but not interesting in themselves. escapist and kind of trite. people's crazy lives!! they're so sad!!

right now i'm mired in the piece of celebrity meta-journalism and basically hating it. are we meant to understand that this guy's DFW act is irritating? i wanted to soldier through to the powerpoint chapter to see wtf that's about but eh

yes I hated this book

I thought it was ok at the time and now -- naaah

that said on a micro level egan is all right. the novel about the disfigured model sounds intersting

written as if for people skeptical of the possibilities of the novel is pretty accurate as to why i liked and didn't love this, i think

egan makes pseuds corner this week w/ this:

"I've always been interested in terrorism, for the same reason that I've always been interested in modelling. I mean, they're so much alike."

They're definitely not alike.

This isn't much dafter than DeLillo's comparison of terrorism and novel-writing in / around Mao II - which a lot of people seem to have taken fairly seriously.

i would like to see the context, because that reads like a joke more than anything

delillo's line was more nuanced but unfortunately did not appear to be a joke

don't have my private eye to hand, but think the quote comes from a recent telegraph interview

I mean, they're so much alike.

They're about making statements usually in some graphic fashion.

the novel about the disfigured model sounds intersting

It's pretty good and quite funny at times.

The book was written as if for people skeptical of the possibilities of the novel

this one of the books better qualities

Maybe it's a generational thing (she's a few years older than me) but I have generally enjoyed her novels.

I liked Goon Squad!

tweeting tho?

http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/coming-soon-jennifer-egan-black-box.html

i know, right

no thx

I'll try it

new yorker's blog seems p good

so i read the first installment of this. i liked it, it works, but it means 'using twitter' in a way that's really not much like anyone in the world uses twitter? -- several dozen connected tweets, one of which ended with a fucking semi-colon, requiring the reader to make some kind of attention commitment -- oh well.

Good thread imo

timely revive: am just going through old notebooks, transcribing then into my computer. Found a bunch of stuff on Goon Squad. Still like this book. Miss the pinefox.

as always the single malt of the pinefox's often considerable insight is diluted by the tesco value cola of his sometimes plain baffling conceptual filters

holy

I loved that post. As I do all posts of the Pinefox.

The Italy part was great, though I'm enjoying the whole thing.

Way better than Super Sad and Freedom, though the former was more terrifying in terms of future fic

I'm not sorry I read this but yeah Alfred "vaporous" seems appropriate

One thing that caught me is the idea of even in the semi distant future being able to lose people thoroughly, despite the surveillance culture we're all complicit in expanding further: that human nature is such that we'll probably ALWAYS lose track of people or be lost track of ourselves...

But the moment in 1993 when Bix says in the future we'll never lose anyone really quite moved me.

Me too

this book is insuff and the writing is so plain, which has the effect of making the odd occasions where she tries out some ~writing~ (every 10 paragraphs or so) as awkward as a sore thumb

abandoning 100 pages in

Just finished the Safari chapter and I'm not sure if I'm blown away or very frustrated. She has a great knack for exploring the dynamics between the characters she writes about - the relation she creates between Lou and Rolph is particularly memorable - but there's just so much going on and so many characters that it's pretty hard to absorb. Or maybe that's just me.

absolutely loved the first three chapters though. Especially Sasha's one.

i reread this a while ago, i acquired a beat-up copy of it from the bookshelf of someone i had a thing with who is now no longer in my life, it seemed appropriate

saw someone reading this on the train yesterday. reminded me that i enjoyed it and i was slightly surprised by some of the heavily adverse criticism it got in places.

The last few chapters let the book down very badly, imo

I probably made my feelings about this book known here years ago.

What I’ll say in its favor: the stuff about “what future generations might be like” has stayed with me, it made an impression.

Anyone read the Candy House?

Pauses in songs seems like a thread for ILM. A Faulty Chromosome has a good example. I think they were from Texas and existed when myspace existed. I think there is still a case for music from the suburbs. Does anyone have an equivalent for Croyden in the United States? Could it be compared to Brooklyn?

Do you mean the UK borough of Croydon?

It's somewhat comparable to Brooklyn but realistically Brooklyn might be better compared to the whole of South or South-East London.

Yes. Are any of the subjects in the Michael Apted 7 up series from SE London? It seems like a place where there would be enthusiasm for English breakfasts with toast racks and crumb catchers/sweepers as well as football clubs.

It turns out that A Faulty Chromosome are originally from Los Angeles, the original suburb (based on some notion of cars and sprawl).

The Candy House, so far, is a better book.

I must read it!

books. lots of books.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/interactive/2023/jennifer-egan-home-library/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f005