Front Page Reviews & AIR
Jennifer Egan - A Visit From the Goon Squad
The body begins to decline in its twenties, the mind in its forties. It's inevitable and irreversible and sucky. Or, as Jennifer Egan puts it in her Pulitzer Prize-winning rock and roll novel, “time is a goon”—and life, presumably, a visit from its squad. Our ragged battle against getting old has rarely seemed as pathetic and/or understandable and/or entertaining as it does in this collection of wild little tales, with subtly overlapping characters, and an Indie Rock sensibility. She claims it's written with Iggy Pop in mind. This may be true. You won’t believe the range of odd scenarios that Egan gets your heart rate up over. And you won’t believe that Goon Squad is written by the same person who wrote the haunting and horrifying and excellent novel, The Keep (2006), just a few years previous. Egan’s got Coen-Brotherly range. I liked The Keep. I loved Goon Squad. Read them, before time batters your brains.
I loved this book. It held an impressive number of truly transcendent moments where Egan is able to artfully capture in writing human emotions, motivations, and subconscious decisions not often put into words, and even more seldom put into words as accurately and poignantly as she is able. It stands out as one of the best written books I have read in years with some of the most unforgettable moments. My wife called it the literary equivalent of the movie Crash, which I think pretty much nails it (well, unless you didn’t like Crash…). That said, I thought the end was disappointing. The book ends oddly and in my view is unsatisfying both in where it leaves the characters and in its lack of a worthy message. After vividly plumbing the depths of her characters psyches, Egan leave the reader feeling like they were unceremoniously dumped out of a car mid journey. It was as if Shawshank Redemption had ended after Andy gets out of solitary confinement. Sure, the scenes with the beers on the tarred rooftop and the opera over the prison PA system were majestic and the characters memorable, but the work is unfinished, and decidedly lacking in redemption. This was, of course inevitable, since the premise “time is a goon” is such a limp philosophical offering. We should have known we were heading nowhere satisfying. But if we had arrived at something more worthy, in my view it would have made a very good book great.
Your summary makes me want to both read this book and not read this book. Though I'm leaning towards just going ahead and reading it, but with tempered expectations...
I just recently watched an interview with Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn in which he talks about the priviledge of growing old (he was 80 at the time of the interview), the wisdom he has acquired with age, and virtue of growing old and dying well - which he sees as both a calling and a gift. He also laments the contemporary obsession with youth and the way in which the older (and wiser) among us no longer command the respect they did in previous cultures. Anyway, the entire interview (of which the discussion of aging was only a small part) was in sharp contrast to the idea that aging is "sucky"; aging is ineveitable, yes, but the virtue lies in the extent that we accept it as opposed to fighting it. Solzhenitsyn's view was particularly interesting because it so far from the typical opinion heard on such things.
In another note related to this book's premise, my brother Josh and I have been discussing why rock musicians have such a short window of vital creativity and are so often completely irrelevant by middle-age, whereas for those working in other artistic disciplines (novelists, poets, painters, etc.) it is not uncommon for artists to produce their best work in middle-age and beyond. We came to the conclusion (though feel free to challenge it) that the stardom that typically accompanies rock success separates rockers from reality to the extent that they lose all sense of perspective and are no longer in touch with the common human experience. Whereas writers/poets/painters don't typically experience stardom on anything approaching that level, and are therefore able to remain more grounded and productive. Agree? Disagree?
yeah, aging/dying is, historically (!), a tough one. personally, I don't think the approach to these can be as simple as affirmation/acceptance or denial/resistance. life seems to me to require/entail both-sometimes simultaneously-within one being. some aspects of my being at some times call for the one while other aspects rage for the other. at different phases of life, these things shift around. its a dynamic process requiring frequent readjustments. part of this might have to do with the tendency of aging to take something away everytime it gives. the characters in the Goon Squad are living proof of this.
Its an interesting question: why do rockers often have such short creative life spans when this isn't true of other types of artists (painters, etc.)? there are certainly exceptions in both directions. and the losing-touch-with-reality-due-to-stardom could be part of it. but while the stardom of painters may be different than that of rockers it still can be as reality-altering as "strutting on a jumbo-tron". so I wonder if it has more to do with the physicality of rock and roll. its demands on the body. its intimate relationship to the body and/or sexual activity and/or its reliance on the raw emotions coursing through the body in youth--and often trailing off in the 30s. More cerebral/wisdom-tradition acts--like Dylan/Waits--don't seem to suffer the same fate, thankfully, though they too must undergo changes--sucky and otherwise.
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