Should I go ahead and set up the Zoom meeting for Wednesday? Looking forward to this one!
3 Likes
Yes please!
Here’s the meeting link! Ryan McDonald is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Refuge Book Club
Time: May 5, 2021 09:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 935 1399 2572
Password: 442252
One tap mobile
+16465588656,93513992572# US (New York)
+13126266799,93513992572# US (Chicago)
Dial by your location
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
Meeting ID: 935 1399 2572
Password: 442252
Find your local number: https://pace.zoom.us/u/adUH6zhIPC
5 Likes
Just found out tonight my son has a make-up baseball game scheduled for tomorrow night at 8 cst, so I’m going to miss the discussion. Super bummed because I needed to hear all your opinions on this one. True rub of the green.
Looking forward to this one! Was weird not having book club every Wednesday…
5 Likes
bump!
Can you help out updating the title to “Refuge Book Club - A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan, Wed June 9th” ? Thanks!
2 Likes
Ah shit, totally missed bookclub for Milkman. I didn’t hear much after Moby Dick and forgot to search this thread out. Dang! Catch y’all on the next one.
1 Like
Goon squad, lol
1 Like
Always enjoy hearing such a wide range of thoughts and viewpoints on these books. Fun discussion tonight, as always… looking forward to “Goon Squad.”
2 Likes
Hahaha autocorrect… @OffTheDole “Goon Squad” please! sorry about that!
2 Likes
For anyone not on tonight’s call, I strongly recommend a paper/hardback version of Goon Squad, not a Kindle for reasons that will be fairly obvious once you read it.
4 Likes
Read this one a few years back. I’ll go pull it back out read up. Spring semester ends next week and I can get back on the reading for fun train.
3 Likes
Cheers to the end of the semester!
6 Likes
I just started re-reading this - would like to get it done before A Course Called America arrives - and 12 pages in, I’m remembering how good this book is.
3 Likes
The year of the re-read going strong here, too — at about the halfway point here. As always, I’m a little bit amazed at how much I missed w the first read and having a blast the second time through. This is a great one.
1 Like
I started collecting some Book Club questions, located under the Spoiler tag.
Spoilers for The Goon Squad
1. A Visit from the Goon Squad shifts among various perspectives, voices, and time periods, and in one striking chapter (pp. 176–251), departs from conventional narrative entirely. What does the mixture of voices and narrative forms convey about the nature of experience and the creation of memories? Why has Egan arranged the stories out of chronological sequence?
2. In “A to B” Bosco unintentionally coins the phrase “Time’s a goon” (p. 96), used again by Bennie in “Pure Language” (p.269). What does Bosco mean? What does Bennie mean? What does the author mean?
3. “Found Objects” and “The Gold Cure” include accounts of Sasha’s and Bennie’s therapy sessions. Sasha picks and chooses what she shares: “She did this for Coz’s protection and her own — they were writing a story of redemption, of fresh beginnings and second chances” (p. 7). Bennie tries to adhere to a list of no-no’s his shrink has supplied (pp. 18-19). What do the tone and the content of these sections suggest about the purpose and value of therapy? Do they provide a helpful perspective on the characters?
4. Lou makes his first appearance in “Ask Me If I Care” (pp. 30–44) as an unprincipled, highly successful businessman; “Safari” (pp. 45–63) provides an intimate, disturbing look at the way he treats his children and lover; and “You (Plural)” (pp. 64–69) presents him as a sick old man. What do his relationships with Rhea and Mindy have in common? To what extent do both women accept (and perhaps encourage) his abhorrent behavior, and why to they do so? Do the conversations between Lou and Rolph, and Rolph’s interactions with his sister and Mindy, prepare you for the tragedy that occurs almost twenty years later? What emotions does Lou’s afternoon in “You (Plural)” with Jocelyn and Rhea provoke? Is he basically the same person he was in the earlier chapters?
5. Why does Scotty decide to get in touch with Bennie? What strategies do each of them employ as they spar with each other? How does the past, including Scotty’s dominant role in the band and his marriage to Alice, the girl both men pursued, affect the balance of power? In what ways is Scotty’s belief that “one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out” (p. 74) confirmed at the meeting? Is their reunion in “Pure Language” a continuation of the pattern set when they were teenagers, or does it reflect changes in their fortunes as well as in the world around them?
6. Sasha’s troubled background comes to light in “Good-bye, My Love” (p. 157). Do Ted’s recollections of her childhood explain Sasha’s behavior? To what extent is Sasha’s “catalog of woes” representative of her generation as a whole? How do Ted’s feelings about his career and wife color his reactions to Sasha? What does the flash-forward to “another day more than twenty years after this one” (p. 175) imply about the transitory moments in our lives?
7. Musicians, groupies, and entertainment executives and publicists figure prominently in A Visit from the Goon Squad. What do the careers and private lives of Bennie, Lou, and Scotty (“X’s and O’s”; “Pure Language”); Bosco and Stephanie (“A to B”); and Dolly (“Selling the General”) suggest about American culture and society over the decades? Discuss how specific details and cultural references (e.g., names of real people, bands, and venues) add authenticity to Egan’s fictional creations.
8. The chapters in this book can be read as stand-alone stories. How does this affect the reader’s engagement with individual characters and the events in their lives? Which characters or stories did you find the most compelling? By the end, does everything fall into place to form a satisfying storyline?
9. Read the quotation from Proust that Egan uses as an epigraph (p. vii). How do Proust’s observations apply to A Visit from the Goon Squad? What impact do changing times and different contexts have on how the characters perceive and present themselves? Are the attitudes and actions of some characters more consistent than others, and if so, why?
10. In a recent interview Egan said, “I think anyone who’s writing satirically about the future of American life often looks prophetic…I think we’re all part of the zeitgeist and we’re all listening to and absorbing the same things, consciously or unconsciously…” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 8, 2010). Considering current social trends and political realities, including fears of war and environmental devastation, evaluate the future Egan envisions in “Pure Language” and “Great Rock and Roll Pauses.”
11. (spoiler) What does “Pure Language” have to say about authenticity in a technological and digital age? Would you view the response to Bennie, Alex, and Lulu’s marketing venture differently if the musician had been someone other than Scotty Hausmann and his slide guitar? Stop/Go (from “The Gold Cure”), for example?
I also found this which is a note from the author (Jennifer Egan) which has no spoilers and is really about reading the book itself and her approach:
A Note from Jennifer Egan
When I talk to audiences about how I came to write A Visit from the Goon Squad in the form it takes, someone invariably says, “I really wish I’d heard what you just said before reading the book; I would have enjoyed it more.” So it seems worth summarizing my remarks for the benefit of book clubs—or individual readers—who haven’t yet read the book, or might have read it and felt confused.I began A Visit from the Goon Squad without a clear plan, following my own curiosity from one character and situation to the next. My guiding rules were only these: 1) Each chapter had to be about a different person. 2) Each chapter had to have a different mood and tone and approach. 3) Each chapter had to stand completely on its own. This last was especially important; since I ask readers to start over repeatedly in A Visit from the Goon Squad , it seemed the least I could do was provide a total experience each time.
In other words, you can read this book without making a single connection between any two chapters. They were written—and published—as individual pieces, apart from the book as a whole.
I didn’t think of A Visit from the Goon Squad as a novel while I was working on it; nor did I think of it as a collection of short stories. I honestly wasn’t sure what it was. Only when I found myself wanting to call its halves “A” and “B,” did I suddenly realize which genre I’d been working in all along: the concept album. By which I mean the great storytelling albums I grew up with in the 1970s: The Who’s Tommy , Pink Floyd’s The Wall , David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust . A concept album is a story told in parts that sound completely different from each other (that’s the fun of an album, right?), yet also work together.
So, as you read A Visit from the Goon Squad , don’t worry about whether you’re “getting it” or whether it’s really a novel, or what connections you might have missed. None of that matters. The point is to have fun reading a tangle of stories in a lot of contrasting styles. If you’ll do that, then you’re exactly the reader I’d hoped for.
5 Likes
Thanks for posting this. I’m only a few chapters in and wasn’t really sure where it was going but this sheds a lot of light on it.
4 Likes
Ditto
2 Likes
For those of you who read The Overstory with us, you might find this of interest.
3 Likes