A Visit from the Goon Squad

The older you get, the more you notice the relentless march of time. Weeks, months and years pass with ever increasing speed, so that everything that has happened seems to have happened in some unquantifiable recent past, and the 80s still seem like they were about 20 years ago.

Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit from the Goon Squad explores exactly this issue; it is a story about time and how it carries on regardless.

Written as a set of 13 linked, but self-contained stories, the novel is unusual in that it does not have a singular protagonist – instead it is based loosely on a music producer named Bennie Salazar, his assistant Sasha, and various other people who are connected in some way to these two. It is also structured unusually; as previously stated, each chapter can be taken as an individual story, and as a consequence, there is no over-arching narrative thread. Instead, there are a series of events and their effects. In the same way that the characters at times overlap, so the events in one chapter may influence those in another. However, this is merely incidental.

In this way, the structure of Egan’s novel cleverly emulates life. It is not a clean narrative arc, but a series of mini-narratives with a changing cast, just as life is. There is no climax or resolution; there are no heroes.

Egan also plays about with time in A Visit from the Goon Squad. The chapters flit back and forward as frequently as the narrative perspective shifts. Often, it is possible to sequence these into the larger tapestry of the novel – the chapter that makes reference to a family holiday to Africa, for instance, occurs after the chapter featuring the holiday itself. Obviously. However, at times it is less clear cut. What is clear cut, though, is the sense of movement, of time constantly shifting.

Each character, no matter how peripheral their part in the novel, feels the effects of time. Its forward movement carries them with it, not always in the direction they expected to go. From Bennie’s former bandmate, Scotty, whose punk-rock aspirations have found him fishing in the East River, to Lou, the philandering, sex-obsessed music executive whose body surrenders to aging more willingly than his mind. No one is exempt.

Of all the characters in A Visit from the Goon Squad, it is aging rocker Bosco, who understands this best: ‘how did I go from being a rock star to being a fat fuck no one cares about?’ This question encapsulates the whole novel; it conveys the sadness, the resignation, the cynicism, which Egan imbibes into her tale, because, in some way, it is true of everyone. There will be a point in everyone’s life when they shine most brightly, as definitely as there will be a time when they are merely a shadow of their former self. Albeit a particularly large shadow, in Bosco’s case.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. A Visit from the Goon Squad is a genuinely funny book. It’s characters are often sassy, even those who are hopelessly jaded (think cokeheads, rapists, etc.), and there is some surprising warmth via a detailed powerpoint presentation (honestly) from Alison in chapter 12.

Most of the warmth in the novel seems to come as a result of children, in fact. This is partly to imply, perhaps, that parental love is more real and more important than any other form of love, but also, because, to quote Whitney, the children are our future. As yet unspoilt, they will determine what is cool in the future, in much the same way that Bennie and his peers did in their youth; and they too will have their shining moments, while the cool kids of the present fade away.