A Visit From the Goon Squad

 U.K. Cover

Literary prizes are frustrating things. I mean, we all know that literature, like all art, is highly subjective – but its prizes are riven by politics, seemingly unearthing as many duds as genuine classics. At least that’s my take, having read a fair few recent Booker and Pulitzer winners; for every The Road or Vernon God Little, there’s a Tinkers or The Inheritance of Loss. So, given the fanfare of rave reviews, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, I approached Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad with much trepidation – even if it did seem like my kind of book.

Thankfully I was wrong to feel apprehensive and can safely state that it is a wonderful book and a worthy winner. It is a bold and idiosyncratic work, which has much wisdom to impart about its central subject matter of time and its effects – and, by extension, the concomitant themes of ageing, loss and compromise. Much has been made of its experimentalism, but I think far too much. Egan herself has said, “experimentation serving anything other than a human story is boring, and I’m not interested in it;” Pynchon or Robbe-Grillet it ain’t. The fact that every chapter is told in a different way: 1^st person, 3^rd person, even 2^nd person – with different focalizations – and that there is a chapter told entirely in PowerPoint, is definitely distinctive. But there would have been no other way to compose the story without seeming repetitive.

For the book tells the story of a large cast of characters orbiting round the twin suns of Bennie Salazar, an ageing record producer and former punk rocker, and Sasha, his faithful assistant. It spans continents and decades: from the 1970s to the future, and explores not just the Proustian themes of À la rechereche du temps perdu, but also the modern effects of technology on human interaction. Therefore, playfulness with form allows the author to paint a more detailed, vivid picture of these sad, changing lives destroyed by excess and tinged with failure.

Jennifer Egan

There is also a virtuoso mixture of genres: ranging from political satire, through David Foster Wallace-esque non-fiction parody, right up to a dystopian future – each one pitch-perfect. Yet, as you might expect, given the central nature of the music industry, many of these stories are profoundly melancholy and affecting, narrating as they do the fall out of past immoderation. Nonetheless, it is the wisdom and compassion of Egan – not the skilful writing – that stood out for me. The characters all seem realistic, no matter how outré their behaviour and it all works towards a conclusion that never feels sentimental or mawkish.

I would recommend this gem of a novel to anyone – as there genuinely is something for everyone. Don’t be put off by PowerPoint chapter (which works wonderfully, by the way) or the word postmodern. This novel-in-pieces forms a triumphant whole. I'm intrigued and excited to see what HBO make of it.

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore)

Vintage Cover

Having originally come to my attention during a university class on contemporary fiction, I had been meaning to read Italo Calvino’s metafictional classic for some time. Described by David Mitchell as “Breathtakingly inventive” and heralded as a classic in most parts, it has a coruscating – if difficult and slightly wanky – reputation. After reading it, I can report that it is a bravura piece of writing and much, much more satisfying than some people give it credit for – on Amazon, at least.

Its structure is a complicated postmodernist one, recalling the 1001 Nights, Borges and others, whereby the narrative alternates between chapters told in the second person, addressed to “You” the reader, and the beginnings of ten unrelated novels, which stem from a printer’s error. The novel openings are in a number of different styles, including: thriller, western, romance, detective story, satire and more. This can, of course, disorientate and confuse, not to mention frustrate – so beautifully crafted and appealing are the introductions, so stop-start are the different chapters. But as the second-person chapters’ story starts to take shape, the novel becomes all the more captivating as the reader tries to make sense of all that is happening. There, a romance burgeons between two readers of the original novel, as they try and piece together what has happened to the original. The action that follows is part detective story, part elaborate conspiracy: a tale that takes in oppressive regimes, Japan, shady translators, along with several dead languages and republics.

Many themes central to postmodernism are lightly touched on and explored in detail, such as: intertextuality and the problems of authorship. However, much of the book is devoted to the art of writing: why we do it, how we do it, etc.; it is a “meditation on reading”. Those second-person chapters are fascinating and offer genuine insight, rather than trite truisms. Each sinuous sentence has to be mulled over for some time before it meaning eventually rises to the surface; but, given how slick William Weaver’s translation is, this is never tiring – just part of the literary detective’s work. Indeed, every start of a novel at some point contains a playful analysis of the literary techniques in use and their eventual goals.

In fact, considering what I had read about the book beforehand, I am pleased to report that the most frustrating thing about the novel was actually the clash between the British and American spellings of “Traveller/Traveler”. With its understated love story and screwball plotting, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller is an eccentric gem. Any ideas or fears of a typically postmodern shaggy dog story are quickly banished by the real things that the book has to say about the art of reading and writing. It really is a must for anyone interested in postmodernism, metafiction, writing or reading. It just goes to show that being serious and playful aren't mutually exclusive.

Italo Calvino