A Visit from the Goon Squad
Aug 23, 2011 There are 34 plugs for the brilliance of Goon Squad (title from Bowie's Fashion) on the UK edition. You know where this is going, don't you...
It is very readable: 13 intertwined stories, and no, that is not a new technique, think of La Ronde, going back over a century, or writers like Sterne going back a couple of hundred years. Goon Squad has been compared to Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, but I think that Mitchell is a more interesting and versatile writer. Egan has that eau de creative writing programme spritzed all over her style, which is pared down and has a sort of nod back to Hemingway in its laconic throw-away delivery, via the Carvers and Fords. It is not as irritating as that other disappointing Pulitzer Prize winner, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which really jerked my chain, but it shares a kind of faux-hip ambience that probably seduced the Pulitzer judges that year.
So - plot: Look at where we've all ended up...and doesn't it pretty much suck because we've all sold out in one way or another.
Characters: Mainly Sasha Blake and Bennie Salazar and their friends/acquaintances. People connected with the music industry/PR with some academic types thrown in.
Themes: how time gets us all in the end.
Structure: 13 connected but disparate narratives deliberately jumbled up so sometimes we're in the 80s, 90s, 10s and then end up in maybe 2020.
Narrative voice: sometimes first person, sometimes limited third, sometimes omniscient.
I did not think it was that funny or wise or smart or magical. But it was entertaining and lively and erm, just not so deep as some reviewers seem to imply. I think people have assumed the book is deep because Jennifer Egan seems like a very deep person in her interviews, or alternatively, a touch pretentious, and she namechecks Proust in the epigraph and in her interviews. Proust is often like a magic blanket, because you chuck his name out there and we all know we should have read A La Recherche, but most of us haven't or, like me, have maybe dipped a toe in the Proustian well and enjoyed it but erm, are taking our time about getting our whole foot wet. So when a writer has really read Proust and been influenced by them, there's room for a little shock and awe. But in this case, Proust has nothing to fear. And all those reviewers who are feeling a little intimidated by Egan, well, the empress is wearing a very dainty thong. And not much else.
