Paperback
English language
Published April 16, 2011 by Constable & Robinson, imusti.
Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian …
Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city's demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale.
We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life--divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house--and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco's punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang--who thrived and who faltered--and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie's catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou's far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both--and escape the merciless progress of time--in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers. From the Hardcover edition.
Time jittered account of assorted screwed-up characters who strive to be better, or not. Very well done (one chapter in Powerpoint - one as text messages), and does quote Proust - unlike Proust, underlying truths are not clearly exposed, but we recall that "...Proust's pointing finger is unequaled".
A Visit from the Goon Squad is really unique and well written, but it left me without any form of closure. This is a collection of short stories rather than a novel; telling individual memories from people (and family) involved in a record label that is struggling to remain in touch with the digital age. The people in the book include musicians, producers, assistants, executives and publicists; but all their memories doesn’t really quiet make a complete story, there is too many holes and information missing. It does feel a collection of short stories from the good old days that have been pieced together to try and understand what it was like. While I enjoyed the stories and the way the book was writing (including a whole perspective done in PowerPoint) I wanted more and expected more from this Pulitzer Prize winning novel.
Because I am dragging myself through a list, The 2011 Tournament of Books, in order to impose a challenge and to experience some other tastes in literature, I didn't abandon this book as I would have done.
It's enough like The Imperfectionists that I couldn't stop comparing it unfavorably as I slogged through. As a collection of short stories, few of the entries would hold up as well on their own as The Imperfectionists'. As a novel, the thread that binds these vignettes together is woven of too thin a fiber. Some of these short pieces are interminable with characters that can be punishing to encounter.
There is a rescue, partially, with the last entry - a future that is not quite implausible but written well enough to settle into. And one that offers some closure and sympathy. I hope that doesn't count as a spoiler; I only want to …
Because I am dragging myself through a list, The 2011 Tournament of Books, in order to impose a challenge and to experience some other tastes in literature, I didn't abandon this book as I would have done.
It's enough like The Imperfectionists that I couldn't stop comparing it unfavorably as I slogged through. As a collection of short stories, few of the entries would hold up as well on their own as The Imperfectionists'. As a novel, the thread that binds these vignettes together is woven of too thin a fiber. Some of these short pieces are interminable with characters that can be punishing to encounter.
There is a rescue, partially, with the last entry - a future that is not quite implausible but written well enough to settle into. And one that offers some closure and sympathy. I hope that doesn't count as a spoiler; I only want to encourage readers on the verge of abandoning the Goons two-thirds in to stick it out.
TOB 2011: The Imperfectionists is on your long list. You should have dropped the Good Squad and gone with that one instead.
One of the best pieces of experimental literary fiction I have ever read.
