A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010)

Published: 2010
Pages: 274
Genre: fiction, Punk Rock Music, Psychological Fiction
My copy: Library book

A series of interconnected stories of a wide cast of characters who all have some kind of connection to each other, covering five decades with the backdrop of the music industry and covering locales such as New York, San Francisco, Africa and Naples. I loved this book because it is about time. I like stories about time. The title, A Visit From the Goon Squad, is a reference to time. Time is a goon and it beats you up. This is a work of originality. Not that interconnected stories have never been done but all the elements of this story; the interconnects, time as a theme, shifts in communications, use of texting and slide shows all come together to make this a unique work deserving of a Pulitzer Prize. There are many characters but they are all connected on some level, they don't even know how connected they are or how much they have impacted each other. I liked many of them and the way Egan developed them was very different and fun. The language was fresh and changed over time and with various characters and finally progressing to texting and to power point. There was a lot of emotional impact for me. The passing of time is emotional, the hurts, the tragedies and the victories.
I liked these quotes; Ms Egan uses a passage from Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time to introduce the book "Poets claim that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. It is in ourselvs that we should rather seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years." and "The unknown element in the lives of other people is like that of nature, which each fresh scientific discovery merely reduces but does not abolish."
Pg 174, "...she'd felt the passage of time." The slide show of Pauses (wonderful), pg 269, "times a goon", and page 259 gives a most wonderful (probabably exaggerated for effect) description of today's relativism. ( )

Het is niet helemaal duidelijk hoe je dit boek moet karakteriseren: Is het nu een verzameling losse verhalen of een roman ? Het heeft de kenmerken van beide. De verhalen gaan losjes over mensen rond de muziek-producent Bennie Salazar en zijn medewerkster Sasha. Mensen die in het ene verhaal een bijrolletje spelen zijn in het volgende verhaal de hoofdpersoon. Daarnaast verspringen de verhalen in tijd, alleen uit de context kun je afleiden of een verhaal zich eerder of later afspeelt dan de andere verhalen. Het laatste verhaal speelt zelfs in de toekomst. Jennifer Egan experimenteert in dit boek met verschillende schrijfstijlen. Een heel hoofdstuk is zelfs geschreven in de vorm van een Powerpoint presentatie en het is ook nog eens een bijzonder indrukwekkend hoofdstuk. Sommige verhalen zijn geschreven in de ik-vorm, anderen in de tweede of derde persoon. Kortom een geweldig boek om te lezen. Jennifer Egan won met dit boek de Pulitzer Prize voor Fictie in 2012 en nog een hele rij andere prijzen.

Het centrale thema (voor zover je daarvan kunt spreken) is de teloorgang van een destructieve generatie. Hoewel na alle extreme experimenten met drugs en seks, de meesten nog wel aardig terechtkomen realiseren ze geen van allen de dromen uit hun jeugd. De titel lijkt er op te wijzen dat de tijd fungeert als een "goon souad", een groep straatcriminelen die je een klap op je kop geven waarna je nooit meer dezelfde bent.

Je zou ook kunnen zeggen dat het op een dieper niveau gaat het over teloorgang van universele dromen en idealen in een wereld die is opgebouwd uit glamour, reclame en PR mensen maar waar de menselijke waarden verloren zijn geraakt. Alles álles draait om de kick en om de beeldvorming van het eigen "ik", wat is dan je ankerpunt in het leven ?

Het laatste hoofdstuk is misschien het mooist met ook de grootste uitersten. Andy komt in dienst van Bennie om een oude rockster te "papegaaien". Hij is een spindoctor die niet eens tegen zijn vrouw durft te zeggen wat hij doet, zo schaamt hij zich. Samen met het jonge meisje Lulu werkt hij een plan uit en dat plan werkt wonderwel. Er komt een concert waar duizenden mensen op af komen. Het contrast tussen het steile PR jargon van Lulu aan de ene kant en het rauwe, ongepolijste optreden van de eenvoudige gitarist aan de andere kant geeft de essentie van het boek weer. De bezoekers krijgen tranen in hun ogen en worden in hun hart geraakt. Later beweert iedereen dat hij bij dit concert is geweest hoewel de zaal (symbolisch: op de plaats waar het WTC stond) helemaal niet zoveel ruimte heeft.
( )

I did not realize "A Visit From the Goon Squad" is a commentary on who we were and where we're headed until the last few chapters. As a member of the generation which can remember life before Google, but only just barely (I believe I'm regarded as a member of Gen Y), I am wary of the power of Facebook, smartphones, and GPS, but powerless to their omnipresence. I usually shy away from (post)modern books set in the future, because I read their ubiquitous and invasive gadgets as a promise of what life will be not twenty years from now (and that scares me). But I did not realize that "Goon Squad" would end up in that world, starting as it did in what I assumed to be present day. The future world isn't even the focus of the book, but I felt it influenced the theme, which has something to do with time, regrets, and the indifference (or perhaps blindness) in which the world progresses as a whole, while people as individuals grow weary and nostalgic. I only finished the book a few minutes ago; my brain is still attempting to form conclusions, and I'm digressing from the actual reviewing, which I haven't even begun.

I liked "Goon Squad" and officially rate it a 3.5, but that's not an option on Goodreads. The book follows multiple characters (I disagree with its claims that there are two main protagonists) and employs multiple viewpoints (first, both thirds, and second), which I found impressively well done, for the most part. I had difficulty orientating myself to its style at first (the book jumps from one character to another each chapter, all characters being distantly and/or closely connected), attempting to figure out the story Egan was trying to tell. But you have to get used to the fact that she's not telling one story, and that you will learn deep, often depressing details concerning characters who may or may not be mentioned again.

Each chapter can (and from my understanding, filched from other reviews, do) stand alone as a short story, a detailed glimpse into certain characters. Initially I found this off-putting; if I liked a character I could not stay with them for more than twenty pages. Initially I felt the narration style was a cop-out, an entire novel of information dumps, where stories and characters are told and not shown, never given a chance to develop, but begun and ended in one chapter. But the book does have a sort of wholeness to it, through its connected characters and circular narrative. Egan sometimes focuses on characters whom I found unimportant, and did not remember clearly by the end, but I believe that adds to the books commentary on life and time (our lives are filled with people who lead elaborate lives of their own, and who drift in and out of our focus). And, I'm often disappointed by endings, but Egan's use of the circular narrative (one of my favorite writing styles) pleased me; oh, how oddly and closely we are all connected.

Since this seems to be an important topic to other reviewers, I'll mention that I actually enjoyed the entire chapter done in PowerPoint (a 12-year-old's "slide journal"). I thought it was an important example of how the world and people are changing, how information is received in bursts, how our attention spans have shortened (not that this character's journal was not revealing, detailed, and contemplative, but her journal is a series of slides - she's clearly a kid of computers).

Although the characters are often unlikeable and the reader knows too much about them, "Goon Squad" is well-written and well-thought out. A book that merits a second reading, which I believe would reveal information and details I didn't quite catch the first time.

I loved the way the author moves rapidly through time as well as space in this series of interconnected plots. Almost feels like the days when music albums used to be themed--so that the different tracks talk to each other. Also, plenty of surprises and lots of creativity. Who else would attempt an entire chapter composed of power point slides? ( )

I didn't see what the big fuss was about, even the powerpoint chapter. A little too gimmicky yet bland for my taste. ( )