A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan

Finished Su 1/15/12

Chapter 1, Found Objects: “Into My Arms,” Nick Cave
Chapter 2, The Gold Cure: “I Wanna Live,” The Ramones
Chapter 3, Ask Me If I Care: “Breakdown,” Tom Petty
Chapter 4, Safari: “Grand Canyon,” Magnetic Fields
Chapter 5, You (Plural): “Exile Vilify,” the National
Chapter 6, X’s and O’s: “Pan American Highway,” Frank Black & the Catholics
Chapter 7, A to B: “Beyond Belief,” Elvis Costello
Chapter 8, Selling the General: “And She Was,” Talking Heads
Chapter 9, Forty-Minute Lunch: Kitty Jackson Opens Up About Love, Fame, and Nixon!: “Goddess of Love,” Bryan Ferry
Chapter 10, Out of Body: “Paradise Circus,” Massive Attack
Chapter 11, Good-bye, My Love: “Nothingman,” Pearl Jam
Chapter 12, Great Rock and Roll Pauses: “Mother of Pearl,” Roxy Music (part of me feels I should have chosen the Doobie Brothers “Long Train Runnin’,” though, for obvious reasons)
Chapter 13, Pure Language: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Jimi Hendrix

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/bookclub/a-visit-from-the-goon-squad#ixzz1jgTrXklu

Link to a webpage where links to the characters are graphically presented (seems almost as confusing as the novel)

http://readywhenyouarecb.blogspot.com/2011/06/visit-from-goon-squad-by-jennifer-egan_21.html

Link to NPR
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/19/135546674/goon-squad-ushers-in-an-era-of-new-perspectives

Transcribed from the scribbled notes that I made while reading this fascinating novel.

#1 (3rd person)
Sasha- 'the stolen wallet incident' at the Lassimo Hotel while on a date with Alex
The apartment in lower Manhattan had a 'kitchen tub'.
Cos is Sasha's shrink. She suffers from Kleptomania.

#2 (3r person)
"Stop/Go" name of girl group. Bennie is a record producer and Sasha is his assistant.
Bennie takes son, Chris, with Sasha to an audition of "Stop/Go" at their home.
Bennie's pals:
Scotty-Slide guitar player He made the instrument himself. Later a washed-up janitor who drinks Jagermiester.
Alice-The Rich Girl of the bunch.
Jocelyn-Lou's girlfriend who becomes a drug addict.
Rhea-Freckles.
Bennie remembers, and later, Sasha thinks that the note he has made is really a list of song titles.
-Kissing Mother Superior- In the past, he had hoped to sign a bunch of singing
nuns, and he was so happy about the deal, he kissed the mother superior.
-Incompetent
-Hairball What his business friends think of him.
-Poppy Seed Once lice were found in his son Chris's hair.
-On The Can Once after snorting coke he got diarrhea and Abby walked in on
him.

#3 (Rhea's point of view) THE FLAMING DILDOS Bennie's punk band. Scotty on guitar.
Played at "The Mabuhay Gardens" in San Francisco. Black Flag, The Germs, Robin Wiliams, and Whoopi Goldberg appeared at this legendary nightclub.
Rhea and Jocelyn meet Lou for dinner and then go to see THE FLAMING DILDOS. Later, back at Lou's apartment, he tells Rhea that someone will love each and every of her freckles.

#4 The Safari (3rd person) Lou with Rolph (his son)/ Charlie (Charlene) his daughter/Mindy, Lou's 23 year old girlfriend. A lioness attacks bass player for The Conduits named Chronos. African driver, Albert, is attracted to Mindy. Rolph describes what he 'thinks' is going on, and Lou is stricken with jealousy. He steps up the sex with Mindy.
"Women are too crazy, or not crazy enough". Mindy is studying for a degree in Anthropology at UCLA, and took many books with her on the safari, but didn't use them.

#5 (Jocelyn's point of view) Takes place at dying Lou's bedside. Rhea has had three kids, and is living in Seattle. Jocelyn has kicked drugs. Rolph had shot himself in the head at 28 years old.

#6 (Scotty's point of view) Scotty writes Bennie Salazar a letter at Sow's Ear Records, and shows up with a fresh caught fish for him. As a child, when Scotty's mother died, he starred at the sun and suffers from vision loss. Bennie and Scotty were both after the same girl, Alice. Bennie ends the interview by giving Scotty a card, and tells him to get in touch if he wants to get back into music. Scotty gives this card to a junkie couple that he sees on the street later that day. The guy was a musician.

"B" #7 Bennie is now married to Stephanie and they live in the suburbs of NY. They have recently joined The Crandale Country Club. They are both 'outsiders'. Stephanie makes friends with Kathy, and they bond over tennis. Jules Jones, Stephanie's brother, has recently gotten out of prison for the attempted rape of film star, Kitty Jackson. Stephanie handles PR for Bosco, The Conduits guitarist.
Jules says, "I'm like America, Our hands are dirty".

TIME IS A GOON first mentioned by Bosco This is after Stephanie and Jules go to visit Bosco. She had made up the appointment to play tennis with Kathy. She was using the meeting (much later in the day) as an excuse to tell Bennie. Bosco wants to stage A SUICIDE TOUR. He knows that he is a 'has been', so he wants to blow it all on one last tour, and go down in flames. Jules volunteers to handle the publicity. Stephanie is appalled. Stephanie finds a bobby pin, and surmises that Bennie has been cheating with Kathy. In the last part of the chapter, she staggers to the fence and says hello to Noreen. Noreen is a neighbor who has been ostracized by the community of rich Republicans.

#8 SELLING THE GENERAL (3rd person) PR woman, LA DOLL (Dolly) represents a genocidal dictator. She does this to support her daughter, Lulu. She has expensive tuition payments. Dolly's career ended when a ceiling display made from oil and water, broke apart, and rained down on the party guests. Many were disfigured, and the lawyers had a field day. She served time in jail, and "gained 30 pounds and fifty years". She convinces 'over the hill' Kitty Jackson to have her photo taken with the General to 'sex up' his image. They (Kitty, Dolly, and Lulu) meet with The General and his followers at a remote location, Kitty harasses The General about his bloody practices, and Kitty is taken, and Dolly and Lulu are flown home. Several months later, the photos are released, and the General's image really is saved. He pays Dolly, and she has enough money to set up a gourmet shop in upstate New York.

#9 JULES JONES INTERVIEWS KITTY JACKSON This chapter has many foot notes and explains Jules's incarceration, but really doesn't make clear Why he did it. This incident happened when Kitty was 19, and she is 28 when she goes to meet The General. She tells Jules that she used to ride horses, and she had a horse named Nixon. He says, "like the president"?, but she doesn't know what he's talking about. She just liked the sound of the word. Jules spent time on Riker's Island.

#10 (first person Robert Freeman, Bobby) Bobby is a big football player from Florida who drowns in the East River when Drew and him jumped in one winter morning. Bobby told Drew about Sasha's background of theft, prostitution in Italy, and drug use. Drew is shocked. Drew is from Wisconsin. They take Ecstasy. "You are a survivor".

#11 (3rd person) Ted Hollander, Sasha's uncle, goes to Naples, Italy to find Sasha. She had been missing for two years, and she left when she was 17. Ted is married to Susan, and teaches Art History in college. He yearns to write Art criticism. ORPHEUS/EURYDICE Beth and Andy are Sasha's parents. Ted worked as a contractor through college. Ted stumbles upon Sasha buying black market cigarettes in a sleazy part of Naples. She agrees to meet him for dinner, and later they go to a nightclub where she picks his pocket, and steals his wallet. The sun is framed in a window of her apartment. "It's Mine".

#12 Chapter Twelve is a series of drawings with dialog. Lincoln is Sasha's brother and he catalogs pauses in songs. She tells of her life with Drew.

THE FLAMES song "A MIGHTY SWORD" This might be the heart of the novel.

#13 The scene begins before Scotty's Comeback Concert in lower Manhattan. Alex wants to work for Bennie. Bennie is in his early sixties, everyone has children. Lots of texting. Lulu gets Scotty to play the show. Lulu is Dolly's daughter. Alex and Bennie go to see if Sasha still lives where she used to many years ago. They see a woman, but it is just another young woman trying to put her keys into the door.

Mo 1/16/12 Watched the PowerPoint presentation of Chapter #12 at Amazon books. I was on the Monday night chat, and wasn't even aware that Egan had made this page. This chapter was written, and presented to the publisher months after the novel was completed.
"Shame Memories" are the list that Sasha thinks are song titles.
'Gold Flakes/Pesticide Deodorant(Raid)' are the initial components that Egan used to create the character of Bennie.
"I BELIEVE IN YOU" This is the note that Sasha found in Alex's wallet in Chapter #1. I thought that he might have written it himself, but Egan is not so sure.

Egan writes her fiction in long hand, and non-fiction in PowerPoint. Chapter #12 was her first use of PowerPoint in fiction.
She feels that now PowerPoint is a genre unto itself.
DISCONTINUITY is the structural principle of the 'pauses' and the key to the novel.
Chapter #12 is set in the dessert, and Andrew is now a heart surgeon and married to Sasha. Alison is their daughter, and she is the creator of the presentation. Talks of her relationship to her parents, and their relationship to each other. Lincoln is her brother and originator of the 'Pause Principle'. She and her father go for a walk in the dessert, and they speak of the child that died the day before of heart problems that Drew was unable to cure. They walk by solar panels which have realigned to capture the light of the moon. Alison thinks that it might be a time machine and when they get back to their house, no one will be there, and the house will be abandoned.

Reminded me of TIME'S ARROW Martin Amis, and some of the novels of Don DeLillo