The day that time caught up with the rock stars: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

You would be forgiven, if judging from the title alone, for coming to the erroneous conclusion that Jennifer Egan’s much-acclaimed novel is a crime thriller, sprawling with mobsters, violence and shameless immorality. And yet, although Egan attributes part of her inspiration to HBO’s The Sopranos, the ‘goon squad’ is in fact a metaphor for that passive, yet omnipresent, entity: time. As one character remarks, ‘Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?’ A Visit from the Goon Squad is concerned with what happens when time catches up with those who are most eager to keep it at bay and cling to the fantasy of eternal youth; it is about memory in its fragmented entirety; and about human relationships on a cosmic scale. 

The evolution of the US music industry provides a fitting backdrop to Egan’s episodic narrative. Time, or tempo, so intrinsic in music, is reflected by the disjointed form which, in turn, reflects the disjointed framework of life in the States. This is neither a novel nor a collection of short stories, but something in between, as Egan flits between the vibrant assortment of characters, time and space. We tear through settings, from New York to Naples via the African bush, leapfrogging from the grungy 1970s to the techno-savvy near future. Characters who are minor in one chapter come to the forefront of the next, their lives intricately interwoven into the fabric of US society.

The book opens with the confessions of Sasha, the kleptomaniac PA, who is hired by the music producer, Bennie, who was once an untalented young bass player in the quaintly named punk band, the Flaming Dildos, mentored by the coke-snorting, teenage-girl-seducing Lou who ends up IV-fed and dying in hospital, whilst Bennie now extravagantly sprinkles gold flakes into his coffee in an attempt to bring back his former libido. The effect is a disorientating cacophony of voices that demands the reader’s full attention, or even – if you can muster up the will to sit through the melancholy and drab portrait of America for a second time – a subsequent reading. Since all characters are touched on so lightly, it is difficult to empathise with any of them; Egan takes this literary convention and turns it on its head: time becomes the chief protagonist in this book, a character in its own entity that takes no prisoners.

If Egan can be criticised for the lack of a gripping plot, then she makes up for it with a rich array of ideas and literary pizzazz. Goon Squad becomes more fragmented and more formally experimental as it progresses. The penultimate chapter is written entirely as the PowerPoint slide diary of Sasha’s teenage daughter, and I became increasingly lost, I admit, in the last chapter where the English language decomposes into extreme text-speak: ‘if thr r children, thr mst b a fUtr, rt?’ Yet this alienating effect, whilst not gratifying to read (be not fooled, this is no beach read), underpins the essence of the book: technology lends a hand to the erosion of communication and, therefore, the breakdown of human relationships.

For those who require an antidote to this bleak outlook, however, look no further than the interconnectedness that pervades the book’s format and content: the impacts these characters have upon each other are a direct result of their inherent connectedness, not mere coincidence. And so it seems that, although at times we come dangerously close to isolating ourselves from our own kin, humanity, with all its interlinking and colliding relationships, is far too deeply etched into our very being ever to be annihilated. A Visit from the Goon Squad is the type of book that, after a first reading, leaves you unmoved but after a second or third, leaves you sort of jelly-legged.