Title: A Visit from the Goon Squad
Author: Jennifer Egan
Publisher: Anchor Books
Year: 2010/2011
347 pages
Unlike some readers, I quite enjoyed the shifts in time and perspective, especially those that articulated characters' future outcomes as asides. Much of the novel might be characterized thematically as "rust never sleeps," though the other pole of that theme emerges as well: Some people move on, whatever form that may take and whatever pleasures or regrets this inspires. American rock is the symbolic ground, but it could as easily be sports, or beauty pageants, or politics. Are you stuck in your childhood/teen years/early adulthood, do you change, are you happy about the changes? These are the novel's big, underlying questions.
There is much reviewer discussion of the chapter written in PowerPoint. I understood it as a use of that medium to show how cultures shift and change with the generations. What are the great pauses or breaks in each person's life? What makes it good? The questions are still the same.
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