A Visit From the Goon Squad

Hello readers and welcome to this installment of the 2020 Reading List. Last time I wrapped up a months-long tour of science fiction tales and now am getting back to another goal of reading more contemporary female authors. To that end I began with Jennifer Egan’s multiple award winning 2010 novel A Visit From the Goon Squad. This book could be considered a short story collection or a novel (or both), and while the prose was quite gripping the overall structure left me wanting more. But first I wanted to get into why this book was so interesting.

The story concerns two “major” characters (Bennie and Sasha) and a host of “minor” characters that headline a chapter and then disappear into the overall narrative concerning these two and their lives in the music world. The first six chapters (“A”) are made up of stories Egan had published in various places and the ending six (“B”) seem to be more written for this book. Of the first set, I found “The Gold Cure” and “Ask Me If I Care” to be standouts, the former showing an aging Bennie still attempting to find musical acts, the latter a much earlier look at Bennie the musician. In the second set there is a good story showing Sasha’s world travels (“Goodbye, My Love”) and we also get to find out what happened to another character in Bennie’s life (“Pure Language”). I would have loved to find out much more about these supposed main characters but that’s about the most we get.

I have to say my biggest problem with this book is how it is supposed to all tie together. The narrative is quite disjointed over time and space, and while this supports the character interactions it also means we read about a lot of people we never see again. I found myself wondering what happened to the pop star that got abducted by a dictator (“Selling the General”), why did it matter that someone in Sasha’s life drowned (“Out of Body”), and what impact any of these secondary characters had on anyone else in these stories. I also had some issues with the various style choices Egan made, including a DFW-esque magazine article and an uninteresting segue of power-point type slides written by Sasha’s daughter (“Great Rock and Roll Pauses”).

While the stories themselves are unique, I question whether or not it helps the overall narrative connecting them together like this. While there were sublime moments when it did work, a lot of this felt jammed together into a forced commentary on the music business that did not always work for me as a reader.

I wanted to make a quick note about the Reading List going forward. I am still planning on getting to my blind spot that has existed for years, female authors. But it continues to need (more) non-white authors and I will continue to go in that direction over the next year. And I still hope to do a genre detour within the coming months. Up next, I am getting to a book I’ve wanted to read for years: Kathy Acker’s 1988 novel Empire of the Senseless. Thanks as always for reading, and stay cool and healthy out there.​