Chris

// **A Visit from the Goon Squad** //

//By: Jennifer Egan//

About the Book: //A Visit from the Goon Squad// is a work of fiction published in 2010 by an American author by the name of Jennifer Egan. The novel is a set of entwining stories that concern a matured rock music executive, Benny Salazar, and his new, young assistant Sasha, while including their numerous business acquaintances and casual friends. A majority of these stories take place in or around New York City, however a sundry are set in exotic locations such as California, Italy, and Africa. The characters are a cast of self-destructive people as they mature in the world and destiny leads them in unfavorable directions.



About the Author:

Jennifer Egan is an American short story writer and novelist who currently resides in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and was born on September 6, 1962. She has only one novel other than A Visit from the Goon Squad, a well-received novel titled, //The Keep//, published in 2006. Egan has become a very prominent author with a Pulizer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and many other honors for her second novel, //A Visit from the Goon Squad//. Egan is very well received by critics and is known for how relatable her works are to people of all ages and ethnicities in America today.


 * Critical Reception:


 * “If Jennifer Egan is our reward for living through the self-conscious gimmicks and ironic claptrap of postmodernism, then it was all worthwhile.”
 * **-Washington Post**, 6/16/2011
 * “Egan’s expert flaying of human foibles has the compulsive allure of poking at a sore tooth: excruciating but exhilarating, too.”
 * **-Entertainment Weekly,** 6/9/2011
 * “In her audacious, extraordinary fourth novel, //A Visit from the Goon Squad//, Jennifer Egan uses the pop-music business as a prism to examine the heedless pace of modern life, generational impasses, and the awful gravity of age and entropy.”
 * -**The Philadelphia Inquirer**, 6/10/2011

Characters and Conflict:

The main conflict of the story is the various characters' confrontation with loss of their innocence and prosperity over time and with a simple twist of fate. They continue to self-destruct over the course of the novel and are led to disparaging destinations. The main character, Benny Salazar, could be considered the tragic hero of the story with his craving for perfection in his music leading to his downfall. His assistant, Sasha, is also used in order to spice up his love life and creates an issue in his head, the conflict between his future with music and his future love life. While many other characters come and go throughout the novel, Benny and Sasha are the steady two. They help each other through the good times and the bad times.


 * "The "goon squad" of the title is not itself a reference to //The Sopranos//: there are no mobsters here. It is one character's name for time: "Time's a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?" Everyone in the book is pushed around by time, circumstance and, occasionally, the ones they love, as Egan reveals with great elegance and economy the wobbly arcs of her characters' lives, their painful pasts and future disappointments. Characters who are marginal in one chapter become the focus of the next; the narrative alternates not only between first-person and third-person accounts, but – perhaps just because she can – Egan throws in a virtuosic second-person story as well, in which a suicidal young man tells his tale to a colloquial "you"." (Churchwell)

Theme: Through time and fate many different luxuries, such as purity and success, can be undeservedly deprived.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">A Short Analysis Of Style:

Egan uses a unique approach in her novel, //A Visit From the Goon Squad//, starting with a lot of discussion to whether it is simply one ficticous novel or if it is a small collection of short stories very loosely related that displays the same theme. Another unique display of her style is the setting which is constantly changing from page to page. The time periods change from the early 70s to future tense throughout the book, while also constantly changing places from Los Angeles to New York City to Africa. There are many other approaches that Egan used in this novel that I have yet to seen replicated in another, such as an entire chapter in the form of a Powerpoint Presentation. This shows a much more modern style of writing and I think fits in with the constant changes in setting. Overall Egan uses slang diction that is able to appeal to many readers today with her fast-pace novel that is leaves the reader with a little bit of mystery by the end.
 * "Whether this tough, uncategorizable work of fiction is a novel, a collection of carefully arranged interlocking stories or simply a display of Ms. Egan’s extreme virtuosity, the same characters pop up in different parts of it." (Maslin)
 * "[Egan] also shifts dramatically across times and places: punk teenagers in 1970s San Francisco become disillusioned adults in the suburbs of 1990s New York; their children grow up in an imagined, slightly dystopic future in the California desert, or attend a legendary concert at "The Footprint", where the Twin Towers used to be, sometime in the 2020s." (Churchwell)

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Book Review:

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">In the 2010 novel, //A Visit From the Goon Squad//, the ingenious author Jennifer Egan was able to portray the effects of what fate and time have on an assemblage of aging musical devotees. She uses sland in her diction that makes the novel effortlessly relevant at the high-school and college levels of today's society, despite the fact that it is still instructing a valuable lesson. The heavy use of conversation and interactions between the characters is exemplified by the expeditiously coalescing plot. Egan also uses the seperation of her chapters to distinguish the new stories, which are all relative to the overall theme of purity and success begin taken away through time and fate. They mutally show the reader a glimpse into the modern American socio-economic class system and analysis of where music terminates to be considered art and commercialism inagurates. I would heavily recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in music and has a passion for nostalgia. This book had me unable to put it down until the very last page was turned.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Further Information:


 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Link to purchase book from Barnes & Nobel:
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 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Here is a link to a very accurate and intriguing mock video trailer from an AP Literature student:
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 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">A link to an interview with Jennifer Egan about the process of writing her novel:
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">[]

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Works Consulted:

Churchwell, Sarah. "A Visit from the Goon Squad." //The Guardian//. The Guardian, 12 Mar. 2011. Web. 02 Jan. 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/13/jennifer-egan-visit-goon-squad>. Egan, Jennifer. //A Visit From the Goon Squad//. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Print. Maslin, Janet. "Time, Thrashing to Its Own Rock Beat." //The New York Times//. The New York Times, 20 June 2010. Web. 02 Jan. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/books/21book.html>.

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