For our July 2016 book discussion, we met to talk about Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer prize-winning novel
A Visit from the Goon Squad. We enjoyed coffee ice cream with gold sprinkles, in honor of the character Bennie's penchant for adding gold flakes in his coffee. ;)
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| Ice cream, sprinkles, and books! What could be better? |
Reviews
Author Interviews
Discussion Questions
- How would you define this book? A novel or interconnected short stories? Do you ever get a feeling of a closure with anyone’s storyline?
- Was this book like anything else you’ve read? Did it live up to your expectations based on the jacket description -- “a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunctions of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction, that we all must either master or succumb to the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both -- and escape the merciless progress of time -- in the transporting realms of art and music.” ?
- This book takes place across many different locales (NYC, San Francisco, Naples, etc.). Did any one place seem more real or evocative than another? Which chapter was your favorite?
- Do the coincidences of the book feel too contrived or do they mesh with your own “small world” experiences? For instance, Lulu has connections - direct or indirect - to all of the other characters in the book. The daughter of La Doll/Dolly, Lulu ends up working for Bennie and collaborating with Alex before marrying Joe, the grandson of the warrior seen on the safari tour taken by Lou, the mentor of Bennie, and his children.
- The cult of celebrity is one underlying theme in the book. What do you think the book says about the dangers of celebrity worship? About a culture in which political assassins can’t find a genocidal dictator but paparazzi can?
- The idea of selling out is also a theme throughout the book, especially in the last chapter. Can art and commerce mix? When does an artist “sell out”? Is Egan being purposefully ironic by describing Scotty’s concert as “pure” and “untouched” when the way that everyone got to the concert was so disingenuous?
- Do you agree with Sasha’s uncle that she is simply “lost” during her teens/early adulthood? Is there anything else that could have been done to help her? For that matter, for any of the book’s myriad “lost” characters (e.g., Rob, Scotty, Jocelyn, etc.)?
- What do you think is the real reason behind Sasha’s kleptomania? Is it to regain a sense of control in a world that is out of her control? Is it to make people dependent on her (as in Bennie’s case)? Is it the mere shock & thrill? She starts shoplifting at age 13 but manages to stop for a few years in her late teens/early 20s -- what do you think causes her to pick it up again? Is it Rob’s death? After it causes her to lose her job, she still continues the habit. Do you think that she eventually shakes it? If so, how? Do you think that her “found art” hobby as an adult is just another manifestation of this? (“I don’t know why she loves junk so much. ‘Not junk,’ Mom will say. ‘Tiny pieces of our lives.’ She uses ‘found objects.’ They come from our house and our lives. She says they’re precious because they’re casual and meaningless. ‘But they tell the whole story if you really look.’ - pp. 206-207, chapter “Great Rock and Roll Pauses”)
- Do you think there is any validity in Scotty’s observation “I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.” (p. 71, chapter “X’s and O’s”) ?
- What do you make of the character Kitty? How is she able to forgive Jules Jones for attacking her? Yet she later spirals out of control and tanks her career after this attack. Why, in the jungle, does she seem willing to risk her life and the lives of Dolly and Lulu (especially given her own recognition of Lulu’s innocence, probably now shattered by this incident) by speaking out against the General? What do you make of her becoming a public darling again after her “relationship” with the General? Do you believe she thought this would happen?
- Can you envision the future that Egan portrays? How do you imagine we get there from here to there - or in Egan’s parlance, from A to B?
- Do you think that Bosco’s plan to document his own death and die by overwork can be considered an art project? Instead he ends up recovering and owning a dairy farm, as Sasha’s daughter tells us in a brief side note. Is there an irony to the fact that Egan never shows us how Bosco got from this A to B? All we know is that Jules Jones did ultimately write Conduit: A Rock-and-Roll Suicide (and perhaps that the phrase “time’s a goon becomes part of the parlance, as Benny later says it to Scotty). Is recovering and owning a dairy farm a kind of rock-and-roll suicide? In that respect, does Bosco ultimately achieve his goal?
Musicality
“The answers were maddeningly absent -- it was like trying
to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title,
artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.” - p. 253, chapter “Pure Language”
Music plays a large role in the book. Here are just some of the many bands mentioned throughout the book’s pages:
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Flipper
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The Mutants
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Eye Protection
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The Stooges
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Patti Smith
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Black Flag
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The Stranglers
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The Nuns
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Negative Trend
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Crime
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The Avengers
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The Germs
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Ricky Sleeper
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Dave Brubeck
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Joe Rees/Target Video
Lincoln’s collection of songs with pauses:
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“Bernadette” by the Four Tops
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“Foxey Lady” by Jimi Hendrix
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“Young Americans” by David Bowie
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“Fly Like an Eagle” by the Steve Miller Band
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“Mighty Sword” by the Frames
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“Long Train Runnin’” by the Doobie Brothers
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“Supervixen” by Garbage
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“Roxanne” by the Police
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“Rearrange Beds” by an Horse
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“Closing Time” by Semisonic
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“Faith” by George Michael
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“Good Times, Bad Times” by Led Zeppelin
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“Pls. Play This Song on the Radio” by NOFX
“The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the
song isn’t really over, so you’re relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song
ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE.
END. IS. FOR. REAL.” - p. 223, chapter “Great Rock and Roll Pauses”
Here are some of the music-based locations and large musical
festivals mentioned in the book:
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| Members of our group wearing band / concert t-shirts |
“Sow’s Ear” - the name of Bennie’s record company, likely a
reference to the idiom “You can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” meaning
you can’t make quality products out of inferior materials, symbolic of Bennie’s
feelings that music is dead? - “‘The problem is,’ Bennie went on, ‘it’s not
about sound anymore. It’s not about music.
It’s about reach. That’s the bitter ---- pill I had to swallow.’” - p. 253,
chapter “Pure Language”
Miscellany
