7.2 /10 1 Votes
Country United States Publication date June 8, 2010 ISBN 978-0307592835 | 3.6/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 288 pp. Originally published 8 June 2010 Publisher Alfred A. Knopf | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (hardback & paperback) Characters Bennie, Lou, Lulu, Rhea, Scott, Dolly, Bosco, Alex, Sasha Awards Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Nominations Goodreads Choice Awards Best Fiction Similar Works by Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jennifer egan reads chapter 1 from a visit from the goon squad
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a 2010 work of fiction by American author Jennifer Egan. It won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Contents
- Jennifer egan reads chapter 1 from a visit from the goon squad
- Collection or novel
- Stories
- Characters
- Themes
- Critical reception
- HBO series
- References
A Visit from the Goon Squad revolves around a large cast of different characters, various friends, lovers and associates, all somehow connected to Bennie Salazar, an aging rock music executive and his beautiful, mysterious assistant, Sasha. The book centers around the mostly self-destructive characters, who, as they grow older, are sent in unforeseen, and sometimes unusual, directions by life. The stories shift back and forth in time, moving from the late sixties to the present and into the near future. Many of the stories take place in or around New York City, although some are set in California, Italy and Kenya.
Collection or novel
Because of its unusual narrative structure, some critics have characterized the book as a novel and others as a collection of linked short stories. A Visit from the Goon Squad has 13 chapters, all of which can be read as individual stories, and does not focus on any single central character or narrative arc. In addition, many of the chapters were originally published as short stories in magazines such as The New Yorker and Harper's. In an interview with Salon.com's Laura Miller, Egan said she leaned toward calling the book a novel rather than a short story collection. She has also said that she considers the book to be neither a story collection nor a novel.
Stories
Characters
Themes
"Goon squads" were originally groups of violent thugs who would beat up workers who tried to form labor unions. Later the term "goon" came to refer more generally to any violent thug, and this is where the book draws its central metaphor. In one story, a character named Bosco declares: "Time's a goon, right?", referring to the way that time and fate cruelly rob most of the book's characters of their youth, innocence and success. As Bosco complains: "How did I go from being a rock star to being a fat fuck no one cares about?" Some of the book's characters do end up finding happiness, but it is always a limited happiness, and it is rarely in the form that they intended. In an interview, Egan explained that "time is the stealth goon, the one you ignore because you are so busy worrying about the goons right in front of you."
Many of the book's characters work in the music industry, particularly the rock music business. Rock and roll, with its emphasis on youth culture, plays into the book's themes of aging and the loss of innocence. As Egan says, "my 9-year-old loves Lady Gaga and refers to Madonna as ‘old school’. There’s no way to avoid becoming part of the past." Rock music was also central to the marketing push behind the book, although the actual text does not focus directly on musicians or music making. Egan said she knew rock and roll only as a consumer at the time she began writing the book and had to do a lot of research on the subject.
Egan said the story was inspired by two sources: Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and HBO's The Sopranos. It is a novel of memory and kinship, continuity and disconnection.
Critical reception
The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. The Pulitzer Prize Board noted that the novel was an "inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed". In commenting on her Pulitzer, NPR critic Jonathan Bastian noted that "Egan is the one of the most recent and successful examples of a trend that has been steadily seeping into the world of contemporary literature." The unusual format of the novel, taking place across multiple platforms, has led some critics to label the novel "post-postmodern". Many critics were impressed by Egan's experiments with structure, such as a section formatted like a PowerPoint printout.
HBO series
On April 20, 2011, two days after the Pulitzer win, it was announced that a deal with HBO for a television series adaptation had been signed. As of February 2013, the project had reportedly "fizzled", meaning it was no longer in development.