Day 914, Quasi-Quarantine: Off-Putting Structure Undercuts Intriguing "A Visit From The Goon Squad"

"Alex closed his eyes and listened: a storefront gate sliding down. A dog barking hoarsely. The lowing of trucks over bridges. The velvety night in his ears. And the hum, always that hum, which maybe wasn't an echo after all, but the sound of time passing."

A dizzying tale that laments the loss of youth and dissects generational gaps, "A Visit from the Goon Squad" is a quick, fun read. Jennifer Egan sketches memorable characters, but makes them difficult to place in her continuum of interweaving plots.

Admittedly, the author's sneaky humor and cultural commentary do make up for some of the discontinuity along the way.

"Kathy's husband, Clay, wore seersucker shorts and a pink oxford shirt, an ensemble that might have seemed ironic on a different sort of person."

"'This is my period of youthful experimentation,' he says, with an earnestness that would be laughable in a person who wasn't from Wisconsin."

The music industry is an undercurrent running through the story, but not being able to characterize the book as a novel or a collection of short stories can lead to some reader disorientation (if looked at as a collection of short stories, "Goodbye, My Love" is the standout here for me). 

"I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?"

Egan's talent is apparent throughout, and accepting her embrace of non-traditional, post-modern structural decisions is key to a full appreciation of "A Visit from the Goon Squad."

But, somehow, this book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011, and -- not to put too fine a point on it -- I just didn't see it.

" ... Atavistic purism. AP implies the existence of an ethically perfect state, which not only doesn't exist and never existed, but it's usually used to shore up the prejudices of whoever's making the judgments."