A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

This was the last book in my six session Galley Beggar Critical Reading class led by chief Galley Beggar Sam Jordison. The others were:

1. The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
2. Kindred by Octavia Butler
3. The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien
4. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
5. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (didn’t have time to finish that one – will do so soon)

Before I get into discussing the book, I’ll just say that it’s been a rewarding six months. The two hour sessions give much more time for discussion of the books and also background to the novels picked. I have enjoyed all the books, although the Erskine was a stand-out as a new discovery, and O’Brien was a superb re-read. They are running another series starting in August – find out more here. I’m a big fan of this indie publisher, having a Galley Buddy subscription, plus I subscribe to their Substack.

A Visit From the Goon Squad was Jennifer Egan’s 4th novel, written in her 40s, published in 2010 – it definitely feels of its time – but I’ll get to that later. It loosely follows the lives of a group of New Yorkers over a couple of generations into the book’s near future, and it garnered much critical praise on its publication, winning Egan a Pulitzer prize in 2011.

The term ‘Goon Squad’ comes from the 19th century for an assemblage of thugs. Egan’s Goon Squad is conceptual rather than physical – referring to ‘Time’s a Goon, right?’ She had two main influences for writing the novel, Proust – a master of time – and The Sopranos, which has that extended family polyphonic feel applied to her group of characters, along with a Proustian sense of reflection and anticipation as she moves back and forth in the non-sequential timeline.

Each chapter is written from a different character’s PoV – unlike many conventional novels, their name isn’t at the top, she leaves it to the reader to work it out, which I found slightly frustrating at times, as you have to work out both who and when. Sam told us Egan hadn’t wanted to call it a novel as such, and had had three rules for structuring the novel: 1. Each chapter must focus on a different person; 2. Each must have a different tone; 3. Each must stand on its own as a short story. Thus the novel becomes a story cycle of interlinked short stories – after I’d worked out the who and when for each one, I rather enjoyed this aspect of it, having a fondness for story cycles.

The two main and best-developed characters though are probably Sasha and Bennie. When we first meet Sasha, she is on a date, where she steals her date’s wallet – she’s a bit of a kleptomaniac at this time. Later on, we’ll travel backwards to meet her in Naples after she ran away from home in the US. Bennie Salazar runs a record label in NYC (Sasha is his assistant), and is past his peak as an A&R man, in fact he’s becoming a dinosaur as the music business changes. He reminisces back to his earlier days when he signed the punk band Flaming Dildos (a rather uninspired name for a band – perhaps a cross between psych band the Flaming Lips with a nod towards Steely Dan, which itself hails from the steam-powered dildo in William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.)

If Egan’s characters were mostly stereotypes – you know Bennie’s career trajectory instantly – they are fun for the most part. Egan is not afraid to poke fun at her use of them, as in the ‘Safari’ chapter – where you just know someone will get too close to the lions. She has Mindy observe the others on their trip – categorising and defining them into ‘Structural’ types, (Resentment, Affection, Incompatibility, Desire and Fixation).

Structural Incompatibility: A powerful, twice-divorced male will be unable to acknowledge, much less sanction, the ambitions of a much younger female mate. By definition, their relationship will be temporary.

Another chapter, ‘Forty-minute Lunch’ written as an article from his prison cell, John Jules attempts to rape Kitty. It shouldn’t be funny at all, but cringingly is. It’s written as a parody of David Foster Wallace’s style, complete with copious footnotes as in his doorstop novel Infinite Jest. These footnotes include mentions of quantum physics and Einstein’s description of electron entanglement as ‘spooky action at a distance’. I’ve not read the Foster Wallace, and am unlikely to I think, but I’m OK with footnotes viz Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, which I read pre-blog.

I did also like Egan’s wordplay. In the last chapter set in the book’s near future, student Lulu is explaining some marketing terms to Alex, who is trying to remember a date way back when where he lost his wallet… ‘Atavistic purism’, and ‘calcified morality’ are mouthfuls of psychological marketing gobbledygook that made me giggle.

And then there is the 76 slide Powerpoint presentation! (which you can see in full colour with music on Egan’s website here). It’s put together by Sasha’s daughter Alison, and is entitled ‘Great Rock & Roll Pauses’, after something her neurodivergent brother Lincoln is obsessed with. It’s really about the family dynamics though told in graphical and flow chart form. It’s rather touching in places. Yes, it does contain rock & roll pauses – and I was briefly obsessed with trying to think of one to add to the list in the book. (I did think of one too! It’s in ‘I don’t like Mondays’ by the Boomtown Rats, and comes after the lyric, ‘and the lesson today is how to die….’ which you may remember Bob Geldof milking to great effect at Live Aid). In 2010, Powerpoint was in, now it’s all social media and reels of course – although I still use it for many presentations (or Google Slides) – it’s not dead yet! However, as this chapter is set into the book’s future, the Powerpoint is a bit of an anachronism, but I enjoyed it.

One thing that was largely missing from the book, given that it essentially centres around music, is the music itself. A few band names, both real and fictitious, are quoted; the finale is predicated on a ageing rockstar’s swansong, but apart from the pauses in rock & roll, very little discussion or description of the music takes place – it’s all superficial.

Although this book was fun to read, and didn’t take itself too seriously; most of the group appeared to have enjoyed it as I did. However, you have to question whether it deserved its Pulitzer? Probably not. Sam asserted that it wasn’t as original as the critics thought. Linked story cycles in particular aren’t new – James Joyce wrote Dubliners in 1914, and as Sam pointed out Sherwood Anderson produced Winesberg, Ohio in 1919.

I’m glad I have read this book though. Have you read it?

Source: Own copy. Corsair paperback, 2011, 351 pages. BUY at Amazon UK or Waterstones via my affiliate links.