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Reading Questions for A Visit from the Goon Squad

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A Visit from the Goon Squad Discussion Questions

A visit from the goon squad, by jennifer egan.

1.     What did you think of the novel? Did you like it? Love it? Hate it? What made you lean that way?

2.     What did you expect before picking up this book? How were your expectations met or missed?

3.     Would you define this as a novel? Short story collection? Something else? Why?

4.     What was your favorite story? Least favorite story? Why?

5.     What character did you find most compelling? Why?

6.     Do you feel like there was one character which was the focal point of these stories? If so, who? Why?

7.     What character relationships did you find most compelling? Why? What about their evolution throughout these stories drew you to them?

8.     The book is set throughout the world: San Francisco, NYC, Upstate NY, Africa, Italy, and other places. Does this add to the narrative’s interest or detract from it?

9.     Why do you believe these stories are arranged out of chronological order? Did that enhance or diminish your reading experience? How did you feel when you read the final story?

10. Egan wrote these stories with three guiding rules: 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 means each story can be read as a stand-alone. How do you think pulling a story out of the context of this novel would affect its impact on the reader?

11. Most of the characters in this book are tied to music: Passionate consumers, in the industry, performers. Why do you think music has been given so much significance? Why is this an appropriate backdrop for these stories?

12. Jennifer Egan wrote this book as though it were a concept album (think The Who’s Tommy, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Green Day’s American Idiot), a story told in parts which sound completely different from each other yet also work together. How do you see this reflected in these stories?

13. Why do you believe there was a chapter entirely in PowerPoint? Did you go online to see the real PPT? If so, what did you think of the music clips? How did this enhance or detract from your experience?

14. The phrase “time’s a goon” appears three times in this book. Once by Bosco, once by Scottie, and finally by Bennie at the end of the novel. What do you think this means, coming from each character? Why do you think this novel is titled A Visit from the Goon Squad? (Note: Goon (n): a thug who robs you of your youth and strips you of other aspects of your being)

15. Jennifer Egan won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2011 with the committee stating the book was “an inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed”. Do you agree with this statement? Do you think this is Pulitzer Prize material?

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Reading guide for A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

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A Visit from the Goon Squad

by Jennifer Egan

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• Literary Fiction
• Generational Sagas
• Coming of Age
• Mid-Life Onwards

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Reading Guide Questions

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• A Visit from the Goon Squad shifts among various perspectives, voices, and time periods, and in one striking chapter (pp. 234–309), 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?
• In "A to B" Bosco unintentionally coins the phrase "Time's a goon" (p. 127), used again by Bennie in "Pure Language" (p. 332). What does Bosco mean? What does Bennie mean? What does the author mean?
• "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" (pp. 8–9). Bennie tries to adhere to a list of no-no's his shrink has supplied (p. 24). 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?
• Lou makes his first appearance in "Ask Me If I Care" (pp. 39–58) as an unprincipled, highly successful businessman; "Safari" (pp. 59–83) provides an intimate, disturbing look at the way he treats his children and lover; and "You (Plural)" (pp. 84–91) 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?
• 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. 98) 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?
• Sasha's troubled background comes to light in "Good-bye, My Love" (pp. 208–33). Do Ted's recollections of her childhood explain Sasha's behavior? To what extent is Sasha's "catalog of woes" (p. 213) 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. 233) imply about the transitory moments in our lives?
• 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.
• 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?
• Read the quotation from Proust that Egan uses as an epigraph (p. ix). 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?
• In a recent interview Egan said, "I think anyone who's writing satirically about the future of America and life often looks prophetic. . . . I think we're all part of a zeitgeist and we're all listening to and absorbing the same things, consciously or unconsciously. . . ." ( Brooklyn Daily Eagle , February 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."
• 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?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Anchor Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.

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• About the Book

Bennie Salazar, an aging punk rocker and record executive, and the beautiful Sasha, the troubled young woman he employs, never discover each other's pasts, but the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other people whose paths intersect with theirs in the course of nearly 50 years. A Visit from the Goon Squad is about time, about survival, about our private terrors, and what happens when we fail to rebound.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

• Publication Date: March 22, 2011
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Anchor
• ISBN-10: 0307477479
• ISBN-13: 9780307477477

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BKMT READING GUIDES

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Introduction

â??It may be the smartest book you can get your hands on this summer.â? â??Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times

â??Jennifer Egan is a rare bird: an experimental writer with a deep commitment to character, whose fiction is at once intellectually stimulating and moving. . . . Itâ??s a tricky book, but in the best way. When I got to the end, I wanted to start from the top again immediately, both to revisit the characters and to understand better how the pieces fit together. Like a masterful album, this one demands a replay.â? â??Malena Watrous, The San Francisco Chronicle

â??For all its postmodern flourishes, Goon Squad is as traditional as a Dickens novel. . . . Her aim is not so much to explode traditional storytelling as to explore how it responds to the pressures and opportunities of the digital age. Egan herself does not appear to be on Facebook, but A Visit From the Goon Squad will likely make her many new friends.â? â??Jennie Yabroff, Newsweek

â??Clever. Edgy. Groundbreaking. . . . For all of its cool, languid, arched-eyebrow sophisticationâ??thatâ??s the part that will make you think â??Didionâ??â??and for all of the glitteringly gorgeous sentences that flit through its pages like exotic fishâ??thatâ??s the DeLillo partâ??the novel is actually a sturdy, robust, old-fashioned affair. It features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human.â? â??Julia Keller, The Chicago Tribune

â??Expect to inhale Jennifer Eganâ??s A Visit From the Goon Squad. Then expect it to lodge in your cranium and your breastbone a good long while. I expect this brilliant, inventive novel to become enshrined. Such rash speculation is foolish, I knowâ??we live amid a plague of bloated praise. But A Visit From the Goon Squad is emboldening. It cracks the world open afresh . . . Would that Marcel Proust could receive A Visit From the Goon Squad. It would blow his considerable mind.â? â??Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer

â??In her audacious, extraordinary fourth novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan uses the pop-music business as a prism to examine the heedless pace of modern life, generational impasses, and the awful gravity of age and entropy. . . . A Visit from the Goon Squad is fascinating for its daring scope and fractured narrative, but along the way, Egan crafts some brilliant scenes. . . . A rich and rewarding novel.â? â??David Hiltbrand, Philadelphia Inquierer

â??Wildly ambitious. . . . A tour de force. . . . Music is both subject and metaphor as Egan explores the mutability of time, destiny, and individual accountability post-technology.â? â??Liza Nelson, O, The Oprah Magazine

â??A Visit from the Goon Squad [is] an exhilarating, big-hearted, three-headed beast of a story. . . . [A] genius as a writer. . . . We see ourselves in all of Eganâ??s characters because their stories of heartbreak and redemption seem so real they could be our own, regardless of the soundtrack. Such is the stuff great novels are made of.â? â??Kimberly Cutter, Marie-Claire

â??[Egan is] a boldly intellectual writer who is not afraid to apply her equally powerful intuitive skills to her ambitious projects. . . . While itâ??s a time-trekking, tech-freakinâ?? doozie, the charactersâ?? lives and fates claim the story first and foremost, and we are pulled right in. . . . Brilliantly structured, with storylike chapters.â? â??Lisa Shea, Elle

â??Remarkable . . . A finely braided meditation on time, memory, pop culture, and the perils of growing up in America.â? â??Paul Vidich, Narrative Magazine

â??Poignant. . . . A nice reminder that even in the age of Kindles and Facebook, ambitious fiction is still one of the best tools available to help us understand the rapidly changing world. . . . Her startling, apocalyptic take on the near future is all the more chilling for its utter plausibility, and brings the realization that Egan was up to much more here than just trying to reinvent the novel's format. Youâ??ll want to recommend it to all your Facebook friends.â? â??Patrick Condon, Associated Press

â??Forget what literati the world over say about the demise of the â??bigâ? novel, the kind that patiently threads its way through the tangled knot of humankindâ??s shared urges, fears, frailties and joys. A Visit from the Goon Squad admittedly cannot be described either as a novel or a collection of short stories, but it is a great work of fiction, a profound and glorious exploration of the fullness and complexity of the human condition. . . . An extraordinary new work of fiction.â? â??Rayyan Al-Shawaf, The New York Press

â??Poetry and pathos . . . Egan conveys personality so swiftly and with such empathy. . . . Yet she is not a conventional dystopian novelist; distinctions between the virtual and the real may be breaking down in this world, but her characters have recognizable emotions and convictions, which is why their compromises and uncertainties continue to move us. . . . Another ambitious change of pace from talented and visionary Egan, who reinvents the novel for the 21st century while affirming its historic values.â? â??Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

â??Egan is a writer of cunning subtlety, embedding within the risky endeavors of seductively complicated characters a curious bending of time . . . a hilarious melancholy, enrapturing, unnerving, and piercingly beautiful mosaic of a novel.â? â??Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

â??The star-crossed marriage of lucid prose and expertly deployed postmodern switcheroos that helped shoot Egan to the top of the genre bending new school is alive and well in this graceful yet wild novel . . . powerful.â? â??Publishers Weekly (starred review)

â??Well-defined characters and an engaging narrative. . . . Readers will enjoy seeing the disparate elements of this novel come full circle.â? â??Gwen Vredevoogd, Library Journal

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Recommended to book clubs by 4 of 14 members.

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Wonderfully thought provoking, intertwining story lines! I thoroughly enjoyed following the characters through the many facets of their lives. A great read!

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Look Inside | Reading Guide

Reading Guide

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Pulitzer Prize Winner

By Jennifer Egan

By jennifer egan read by roxana ortega, category: literary fiction, category: literary fiction | audiobooks.

Mar 22, 2011 | ISBN 9780307477477 | 5-3/16 x 8 --> | ISBN 9780307477477 --> Buy

Jun 08, 2010 | ISBN 9780307592835 | 6-1/4 x 9-1/4 --> | ISBN 9780307592835 --> Buy

Jun 08, 2010 | ISBN 9780307593627 | ISBN 9780307593627 --> Buy

Feb 12, 2019 | 608 Minutes | ISBN 9780593151518 --> Buy

Buy from Other Retailers:

Mar 22, 2011 | ISBN 9780307477477

Jun 08, 2010 | ISBN 9780307592835

Jun 08, 2010 | ISBN 9780307593627

Feb 12, 2019 | ISBN 9780593151518

608 Minutes

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About A Visit from the Goon Squad

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption ”features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn’t, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human” ( The Chicago Tribune ) . One of  The Atlantic ’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs.  “Pitch perfect…. Darkly, rippingly funny…. Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.” — The New York Times Book Review

Listen to a sample from A Visit from the Goon Squad

Also by jennifer egan.

About Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan is the author of The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her nonfiction appears… More about Jennifer Egan

Product Details

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A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME One of the Best Books of the Year: Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The Daily Beast, The Miami Herald, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Newsday, NPR’s On Point, O, the Oprah Magazine, People, Publishers Weekly, Salon, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Slate, Time, The Washington Post, and Village Voice “Pitch perfect. . . . Darkly, rippingly funny. . . . Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.” — The New York Times Book Review “At once intellectually stimulating and moving. . . . Like a masterful album, this one demands a replay.” — The San Francisco Chronicle “A new classic of American fiction.” — Time “Audacious, extraordinary.” — Philadelphia Inquirer “A spiky, shape-shifting new book. . . . A display of Egan’s extreme virtuosity.” — The New York Times   “Wildly ambitious. . . . A tour de force. . . . Music is both subject and metaphor as Egan explores the mutability of time, destiny, and individual accountability post-technology.” — O, The Oprah Magazine   “The smartest book you can get your hands on.” — Los Angeles Times   “A rich and unforgettable novel about decay and endurance, about individuals in a world as it changes around them. . . . [Egan] is one of the most talented writers today.” — The New York Review of Books “It ends in the same place it starts, except that everything has changes, including you, the reader.” — The New Republic “Clever. Edgy. Groundbreaking. . . . Features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn’t, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human.” — The Chicago Tribune “Egan’s bravura fifth book samples from different eras (the glory days of punk; a slick, socially networked future) and styles (sly satire, moving tragedy, even PowerPoint) to explore the interplay between music and the rough rhythms of life.” — Vogue   “Told with both affection and intensity, Goon Squad stands as a brilliant, all-absorbing novel for the beach, the woods, the air-conditioned apartment or the city stoop while wearing your iPod. Stay with this one.” —Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered   “Brilliant, inventive. . . . Emboldening. It cracks the world open afresh. . . . Would that Marcel Proust could receive [a copy]. It would blow his considerable mind. . . . Expect to inhale Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. Then expect it to lodge in your cranium and your breastbone a good long while.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer   “Frequently dazzling. . . . Egan’s expert flaying of human foibles has the compulsive allure of poking at a sore tooth: excruciating but exhilarating too.” — Entertainment Weekly   “If Egan is our reward for living through the self-conscious gimmicks and ironic claptrap of postmodernism, then it was all worthwhile. . . . [A] triumph of technical bravado and tender sympathy. . . . Turn up the music, skip the college reunion and curl up with The Goon Squad instead.” — The Washington Post

L.A. Times Book Prize (Fiction) WINNER 2011

Los Angeles Times Book Prizes WINNER 2011

National Book Critics Circle Awards WINNER 2010

Pulitzer Prize WINNER 2011

IMPAC Dublin Literary Award FINALIST 2012

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FINALIST 2010

Author Q&A

Q: Ok so tell us, what exactly constitutes a “visit from the goon squad”? A: I knew the title of this book before I knew almost anything else.  So I, too, entered the project in a state of wondering who the Goon Squad was, exactly.  In addition to Proust, whose In Search of Lost Time I was working my way through as I wrote Goon Squad, my other primary literary (if you will) influence was The Sopranos , whose polyphonic structure I found deeply compelling.  So I guess you might say that there are goons in my book’s genome.  The book is certainly full of people who feel beaten up in one way or another—disappointed, out of luck, gypped of what they once expected and still feel they deserve—but these hardships aren’t the work of particular enemies so much as life’s vicissitudes.  Without giving anything away, I’ll say that the reader’s understanding of who the real goon is accrues over the course of the book in much the way that my own comprehension of life’s extreme brevity has overtaken me as I’ve pushed into my forties.  And that’s all I’m going to say! Q: In the thirteen chapters in this book we meet a large cast of characters and come to see, chapter by chapter, how all of their lives are connected, and often entangled, in surprising ways.  Where did you get the idea to have their stories unfold in this way? A: It happened organically, and I was led by little more than my own curiosity.  I started with “Found Objects,” the first chapter in the book, and found myself intrigued by the the brief mention of Bennie Salazar, who sprinkles gold in his coffee and sprays pesticide in his armpits. I thought:  Why would someone do those things?  And from that question came the next piece, “The Gold Cure.”  In that one, there’s a mention of Bennie’s ex-wife, Stephanie, who plays tennis at a country club.  And I thought:  Hmm, what’s Stephanie’s story, and how did her marriage to Bennie end?  So I wrote “A to B.”  Small, lateral observations in a character’s life would catch my eye much as they do in my own:  I’m forever watching people and wondering:  Who is that person?  Where is she going right now?  What does his apartment look like?  What expression does he have when he’s completely alone?  And of course, there’s no way to answer those questions without violating people’s privacy!  But in fiction, I can go anywhere I want. Things really got interesting when the new pieces I was working on began to extend their tentacles to a few pieces I had already written.  One of those was “Goodbye, My Love,” which I wrote in the late nineties in almost exactly the form it takes in the book.  I was standing in the shower one night (the site of many of my inspirations for Goon Squad, for some reason) when I suddenly realized that Sasha, the thief in “Found Objects,” is the same person, years later, as the runaway in “Goodbye My Love.”  They had the same history—no father—and both protagonists had even stolen a wallet!  And yet it wasn’t until that shower that I saw the connection.   Q: It seems that Bennie, former punk rocker turned music industry executive and Sasha, his assistant, are the two people around whose lives most of the other people in this book connect.  Yet Bennie and Sasha know very little of each other’s pasts or, as things unfold, futures.   Can you talk a little about how they anchor the book? A: I think that what interested me about the Bennie-Sasha relationship is that it’s coincidental:  they’re ten years apart in age, with completely diverse pasts and present-day lives, yet they’re thrown together by circumstance (Sasha works for Bennie) and form a strong bond that is, in its way, deeply intimate for a time.  So many relationships are like that—dictated mostly by chance, yet meaningful on their own limited terms—but I don’t feel like I read much about those relationships.  So I began with that intersection of Bennie and Sasha, and followed it as it fanned out into each of their private lives and then their pasts and futures, and then the private lives and pasts and futures of some other people connected to each of them.  It was an instinctive unfolding, with Bennie and Sasha as its starting and endpoint.     Q: There are so many wonderful people in this book.  Are there any you are particularly fond of or had an especially good (or especially difficult) time writing about? A: I had a ball writing about many of these folks.  The pieces I enjoyed working on most were probably those that commingle absurdity with logic; “Selling the General,” for example, in which a disgraced publicist is hired to rehabilitate the reputation of a genocidal dictator in an unspecified thirdworld country, or the part of “A to B,” when the ailing rock star unveils his plan for a publicity/suicide tour.  In general my comfort zone is as far away as possible from my own life, so I tend to have more fun writing from a male point of view, for example, than from one more reminiscent of my own, like the teenage female narrator of “Ask Me if I Care.”  The hardest character to write was probably Lou, Bennie’s mentor—a selfish man who wreaks havoc in many people’s lives, including those of his children.  As always with such a character, the challenge is to make sure he’s compelling and complex—not simply alienating—and there’s often some trial and error before I manage to strike that balance. Q: You have said you are interested in the role of chance and time in people’s lives.  How big a role do you think chance actually plays in most people’s lives? A: Well, an enormous one—starting with the circumstances we’re born into.  Beyond that, chance probably has the most impact on lives that are relatively privileged: one needs to have some choices, and some physical mobility, to be available to a wide array of chance occurrences.  Presuming that one has the luxury of getting some education, choosing a job, picking a partner, etc.—I think that many lives play out as a counterpoint between random elements of chance and the gravitational pull of what we already know, and have come from.     Q: Music is a huge part of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Why did you decide to make music so significant and do you think it is fair to say that in one way or another it is what connects every character in the book? A: Yes, I think that’s fair to say.  And given that my obsession in Goon Squad is time and its workings, I guess it’s no surprise that I ended up writing about music (which also plays an enormous part in Proust’s novel), because the interaction between time and music is so complex.  In one sense, music is timeless—it transports us instantly back to periods of our lives that are long gone, and makes us feel like we’re fully back in their midst.  Yet in a cultural sense, music marks the passage of time like almost nothing else; the music of the sixties counterculture or the eighties punk rock scene will never be new again, much as we might still enjoy it—in fact, it’s an indelible reminder that the cultural movements that produced it are ancient history.  And finally, all of my books are in some sense investigations of the evolution of technology and its impact on people’s lives.  This time, the music industry—so ravaged by digitization—became another lens through which to look, even peripherally, at some ramifications of technological change. Q: You capture the music industry so well, from the early punk rock scene of nineteen-seventies San Francisco, populated by bands like Flipper and The Damned, to a current day boardroom meeting where Bennie actually serves cow patties to his board members as a metaphor for the shit they are forcing him to serve to the public.  How do you know this world so well? A: The truth is, I only know it well as a consumer.  I’ve always wanted to dig my way into the music industry somehow, and have tried more than once to pursue nonfiction stories in that realm (at one point I was supposed to write for the New York Times Magazine about a pair of identical twin female rappers who became the basis for the Stop/Go sisters in “The Gold Cure”).  I guess that my yen to be a music industry insider in some ways motivated Goon Squad, but any expertise I might seem to possess is purely the product of research; I read a few books and talked at great length, more than once, with an extremely helpful music producer/mixer.  The one part of the industry that I do know, though, is what it feels like to be a teen who hopes music will transform or subsume her.  Although I haven’t been to a rock concert in years, that’s a feeling I’ll never forget, and enjoyed tapping into again.   Q: There is a chapter in this book called “Great Rock & Roll Pauses” which is an intriguing concept in and of itself but on top of that, it’s written in the form of a PowerPoint presentation!  So, first, what is a great rock and roll pause? And what inspired this chapter in this particular form? A: I’m not sure that the term “rock & roll pause” is generally used, but I got the idea from a book by Jacob Slichter, the drummer of a band called Semisonic.  Semisonic’s most famous song, “Closing Time,” contains what Slichter calls a “Clearmountain pause,” named after Bob Clearmountain, who produced and mixed the song, and is apparently known for inserting pauses into the music he works on.  I can’t say exactly why the idea of musical pauses caught hold of me, but it did.  On a separate track, I’d also become obsessed with the idea of writing a story in PowerPoint—a program I did not own and had never used.  I remember exactly when that idea came to me: I was reading an article about the Obama campaign’s turnaround two summers ago, and it mentioned that a particular PowerPoint presentation about the campaign’s shortcomings had led to a successful strategy shift. The fact that the presentation in question wasn’t referred to as a “paper,” or a “document” or a “memo,” but as a “PowerPoint,” really struck me.  I thought:  PowerPoint has become a literary genre; I’d love to write a story in it.  This proved to be a long and convoluted process; I’d thought I could somehow do it without actually buying PowerPoint (it’s expensive!), and when I finally did spring for it, I found it incredibly limiting and hard to use.  I attempted a story that failed, and assumed that would be the end of it.  But having bought PowerPoint, I was finally able to open and read other people’s PowerPoint’s, and as with any genre, reading in it was ultimately inspiring. After I had sold Goon Squad , which I (and my publisher) considered to be complete, I had a brainwave about how to combine rock & roll pauses and PowerPoint into a narrative written by a 12-year old girl in the future, as part of her journal.  I became absolutely consumed with the project of writing that PowerPoint.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done—I write fiction in longhand, so just staring at a computer screen for a many hours made my brain ache—but I was finally able to make something happen. Q: It seems the idea of the pause is very much at work in your book—in the spaces between when people last met or between who they once were (as one of your characters says pre-marriage, pre-parenthood, pre-money, pre-hard drug renunciation, pre-responsibility of any kind) and who they are now.  What intrigues you about the pause? A: You’re right, the book is all about pauses.  Unconsciously, I think this must be what intrigued me about the idea of pauses in songs when I first encountered it.  Let’s face it—human life is a pause. It’s tiny, and in the larger scheme it hardly registers against the mysterious magnitude of what precedes and follows it.  But it’s all we’ve got, and it’s sweet and bitter and powerful.  This is what Jules ends up saying in “A to B,” when he tells his sister, “Yes, everything is ending.  But not yet.”  In retrospect, I think I wanted to design a book that consciously occupied and explored that very small, yet vividly powerful, “not yet.” Q: A Visit from the Goon Squad covers a wide geographical sweep. While much of the action takes place in New York City and San Francisco, you also take readers to Africa, to Italy, to a secret compound inhabited by a third world dictator.  How important is setting in your fiction? A: I don’t want to sound over-dramatic, but for me, setting (with its component parts of mood and atmosphere) is literally everything.  Without it, I can’t begin, and often a setting is all I have when I do.  This was true of virtually every piece in Goon Squad ; in “Found Objects,” all I had going in was the feel of that hotel bathroom, with the wallet in plain view.  I didn’t know who was seeing it, or what she would do, or why.  In “Goodbye My Love,” I was moved by the grand decrepitude of Naples, with its decaying palazzi and multitude of street thieves.  Even in “Great Rock and Roll Pauses,” for all my interest in both pauses and PowerPoint, my entry to the story was the feeling of the California desert at night.  In almost every case, I began with a place, or even an atmosphere that precedes place, and out of that came people, and events, and eventually a story.  It’s been this way with all of my fiction, from the very beginning. Q: Bennie gets a surprise visit from one of his former band mates Scotty Hausmann, once the young star but now a down and out part-time custodial worker for the city. Scotty says to Bennie, “I came for this reason . . . I want to know what happened between A and B.”  Tell us about this idea of A to B as you actually divide the book into two parts titled A and B, what is different about the lives we see in each of those sections? A: Well, “A” and ”B” mean a lot of things in this book.  First, I conceived of this book not as a novel or a story collection, but as an LP: a narrative that unfolds in segments that contrast a great deal with one another, but contain a range of styles and tell a story over time.  Like any LP, it has an A side and a B side, organized on the same principles of evolution and contrast.  In our era of atomized song-buying, the LP is not just a physical relic, but a conceptual one—which is partly why I wanted to honor and exploit it as a structural model in this book.  But given that the book’s subject, to a large extent, is change over time, “A to B” is also a kind of shorthand for that change.  If Goon Squad is about pauses, then “A to B” is the space inside of which the pauses takes place. Q: “Pure Language,” the last chapter in the book, takes place in a futuristic Manhattan where babies use handsets; the media world has survived something called the “Bloggescandals”; one character is writing a dissertation on the phenomenon of “word casing,” a term for words that no longer have meaning outside quotation marks; the use of devices for communication leads someone to describe another person as someone who “lived in his pocket.” What inspired this chapter?  Are you nervous about the future of language? A: I think we all are; it’s impossible to contemplate the speed of technological change, and the magnitude of the economic and cultural and environmental impact of those changes, without getting nervous about where the hell we’re going to find ourselves in twenty years—much less two hundred.  So yes, I’m nervous.  But more immediately (maybe this is why I’m a writer), I’m fascinated, and curious.  I can’t help imagining forward. There may be something apotropaic about these imaginings—a hope that conceiving of a water wall protecting Manhattan from its rivers means that there won’t ever actually be one.  But what I often end up feeling, even as I experience vertigo at the thought of the future—is that human beings are immensely resourceful, and capable of great beauty and genius, and that language and inner life will survive and even thrive because of those qualities, whatever threats they may face. Q:  I don’t want to give anything away about the ending of A Visit from the Goon Squad but it really seems to suggest that music (and the music industry) throughout the book has in many ways been used as a metaphor for language. Is that so?  Can you talk about this connection between music and language? A: I think that’s right. The point of connection between music and language is that both are deep and basic forms of human expression.  At the moment, they both feel imperiled, from a business standpoint (will there still be publishing or a music industry in the future?) and, more ominously, from a creative standpoint (will language and literary creation be debased by texting shorthand and the plagiaristic ‘sampling’ mentality of Web culture, as the music industry has been?)  Culturally and humanistically, these are vast, gaping questions.  I think that, finally, “Pure Language”—and in some sense all of A Visit from the Goon Squad —is my attempt to answer them.

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A Visit from the Goon Squad

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At different points in A Visit from the Goon Squad , both Scotty and Bosco say, “Time’s the goon” (127; 332). The idea of time as a goon suggests that time is destructive, but also potentially protective. Time is a cause of both anxiety and hope, and its effects are seen on people, and also on objects and on culture.

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Visit from the Goon Squad (Egan)

A Visit from the Goon Squad   Jennifer Egan, 2010 Knopf Doubleday 288 pp. ISBN-13: 9780307592835 Summary Winner, 2011 Pulitizer Prize Winner, 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award Moving from San Francisco in the 1970s to a vividly imagined New York City sometime after 2020, Jennifer Egan portrays the interlacing lives of men and women whose desires and ambitions converge and collide as the passage of time, cultural change, and private experience define and redefine their identities.

Bennie Salazar, a punk rocker in his teenage years, is facing middle age as a divorced and disheartened record producer. His cool, competent assistant, Sasha, keeps everything under control—except for her unconquerable compulsion to steal. Their diverse and diverting memories of the past and musings about the present set the stage for a cycle of tales about their friends, family, business associates, and lovers.

A high school friend re-creates the wild, sexually charged music scene of Bennie’s adolescence and introduces the wealthy, amoral entertainment executive Lou Kline, who becomes Bennie’s mentor and eventually faces the consequences of his casual indifference to the needs of his mistresses, wives, and children. Scotty, a guitarist in Bennie’s long-defunct band, emerges from life lived on the fringes of society to confront Bennie in his luxurious Park Avenue office, while Bennie’s once-punk wife, Stephanie, works her way up in the plush Republican suburb where they live.

Other vignettes explore the experiences and people that played a role in Sasha’s life. An uncle searching for Sasha when she runs away at seventeen becomes aware of  his own disillusionments and disappointments as he tries to comfort her. Her college boyfriend describes a night of drug-fueled revelry that comes to a shocking end.  And her twelve-year-old daughter contributes a clever PowerPoint presentation of the family dynamics—including hilariously pointed summaries of her mother’s “Annoying Habit #48” and “Why Dad Isn’t Here.”

From a trenchant look at the vagaries of the music business and the ebb and flow of celebrity to incisive dissections of marriage and family to a provocative vision of where America is headed, A Visit from the Goon Squad is unnerving, exhilarating, and irresistible. ( From the publisher .)

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A Visit from the Goon Squad

By jennifer egan.

‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’ by Jennifer Egan follows a multi-style narration where some are done in the first person, some in the second, and others in the third person. The book consists of 13 chapters and each tells a complete, independent story with a different protagonist of its own.

About the Book

Article written by Victor Onuorah

Degree in Journalism from University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

In the book’s opening plot, Bennie Salazar, a former punk rockstar turn record producer, and Sasha Grady Blake, his assistant appear to be the two characters to which tenths of other later characters are connected. The book spans fifty years – from the 1970s to the 2020s – and the stories are not nearly as chronologically arranged as one might expect , but that all adds to the overall excitement and creativity in the book. Here’s all you need to know about the plot of Jennifer Egan’s ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad .’

‘Spoiler Free’ Summary of A Visit from the Goon Squad

As Sasha Grady sits with her therapist, dissecting the many ways to overcome her kleptomania, she recounts all the times she had shamelessly taken from her family, friends, and strangers.

Sasha is many things, but poor is not one of them. But this is a mental health issue. So it seems. But she is not the only one with such issues. So did her boss of 12 years. And all their other equally passionate punk rock music fanatic friends who go way back to the 70s. Scotty, Rhea, Jocelyn, Drew, Rob… all of them. 

Like Sasha, the time has hit them so hard into submission and resignation. But for Sasha, yes, she might have spent her youth living on the edge. She might have brought disgrace to her family and friends with her shameless pilferings. But this time, all she wants is one last late chance to get her life together and do one honorable thing for a change. If not for her interest, then for the interest of her children unborn.

Full Summary of A Visit from the Goon Squad

Warning – This article contains important details and spoilers

Part A (Chapters 1 – 6)

Sasha books a date with her therapist with the hope of finding a permanent solution for her kleptomania, the reason she would lose her job as Bennie’s assistant. During her session, she recalls two stealing incidents; the first was a lady’s purse at an eatery which she returned after being cornered. The second was done on Alex, her date, at her house.

In the next chapter, Bennie, a forty-something years old music producer, and his son Christopher attend an indoor music performance by his band, and everyone – including his now assistant Sasha – attends. As the beat plays, the normally frigid Bennie is feeling some sort of arousal, but a series of humiliating thoughts snap him out of it as he drives home wife his son – dropping Sasha at her place.

We are taken aback to the late 70s, where two friends – Rhea and Jocelyn – have heavily invested interest in punk rock. While Rhea, a very fanatic punk rocker, has self-esteem issues and feels less beautiful because of her facial dots, Jocelyn, a beautiful but naive underage girl, is sharing a carnal knowledge with rock music icon, Lou – and would eventually elope with him. But before that happens, the girls get him to attend their friend Bennie’s show with his rookie band, ‘The Flaming Dildos,’ an event that would see Lou take Bennie under his wing resulting in Bennie’s later success in the industry.

Chapter four opens with Lou out on vacation on the safari with his two children – a boy named Rolph and a girl named Charlie, his girlfriend Mindy, and two other entourages. On the trip, Mindy clashes with Lou as she can’t seem to get along with his children, and when a chance show of bravery proves Albert (one of the entourages) a bigger man after he guns down a lion about to attack them, Mindy, who feels charmed by the event, secretly makes out with him (Albert). Lou’s enraged but later wins his girl back (and based on the flashforward in this chapter) – even weds her and have two children together before they divorce. The foreseeable future isn’t as great either for Lou’s children – as Rolph will die first from a disconnect from his father, and later from suicide. Charlie will go to law school and later, out of wedlock, have a son she will secretly call Rolph.

The next chapter sets in a few decades forward with Lou now old and on his dying bed. As the women stand over him and catch up, a clear picture is painted of how much has happened since they last saw each other; Rhea is married with kids, and Jocelyn has gone back to live with her mother and enrolled for a degree in UCLA at age 43. Jocelyn still holds resentment toward Lou for wasting an important part of her life and wishes him death, but Rhea seems to interfere to calm the tension. They layer help Lou outside to a pool area, and – on Lou’s request – the three of them hold hands in one final act of unity and forgiveness.

The final chapter of part A takes us back into Scotty’s life after he and Bennie went their separate ways around chapter two. Scotty is living like a failure, withdrawn from social life, and finds new joy in fishing, but he still loves music and occasionally plays. One day Scotty pays a visit to his old friend Bennie but is left devastated by how successful Bennie has become. As they talk, there is a sort of bad blood between them as back in the day, Scotty won the battle for Alice and married her (although they would later divorcé catastrophically), to Bennie’s despair. Scotty then leaves with Bennie’s business card and a faint hope of contacting him in the future about a possible music project.

Part B (Chapters 7 – 13)

Part B opens with Bernie moving to Crandale with his PR wife Stephanie, but both can’t seem to fit into the bigoted neighborhood because Bennie is Latino and Stephanie is a tattooed woman. Stephanie’s older brother and ex-convict Jules ( he was a journalist imprisoned for attempting rape on his source) – who also stays with them – accompany her to Bosco’s, a once punk music icon now sick, bloated, and dying, but wants one last concert where he pushes himself and dies poetically on the stage. Jules thinks it’s a good idea, has an interest, and wants to write about it – even though Stephanie feels otherwise. Returning home that night, Stephanie accidentally finds her tennis friend Katty’s bobby pin on the floor as Bennie goes to use the bathroom – confirming her suspicions he’d been cheating on her.

Chapter two of part B brings the story of a former famous PR consultant, Dolly Peale, who has this one job of selling a genocidal General. Personally, Dolly needs this work to set her career back on track after her last event left several celebrities going home with massive burns. She travels with her daughter Lulu and actress Kitty – who is supposed to only pose for the camera with the General but goes off spotlighting him about the genocide event. Kitty is taken away by the General’s entourage as Dolly flees with her daughter. She would never return to her PR job again and would instead travel to a remote neighborhood seeking a fresh start as a burger store owner. 

Stephanie’s brother Jules Jones narrates the next chapter in the form of a magazine article he wrote from jail. Jules details the interview he did on Kitty and how he got a little personal (comparing her with his ex-fiancé) – leading to the part where he attempted rape on her. Kitty, however, wrote him apologizing for what transpired between them – an act which further made the actress more popular. 

Rob tells the next story – taking us back to the days of him, Sasha, and Drew studying at New York University. Rob is gay and has mental health issues, and had attempted suicide in the past. While the three of them are close-knot friends, Sasha seems to confide in Rob but secretly loves Drew. After catching the Conduit concert one day, while Sasha meets and talks (for the first time) with Bennie, her friends Rob and Drew stroll down to East River, where Rob leaks Sasha’s decadent past lifestyle in Naples. Drew is distraught and goes solo-swimming in the river, and as Rob trails behind him, he is unlucky and drowns. 

Sasha’s Uncle Ted Holland narrates the next chapter and talks about how he’s being paid ( by Sasha’s stepfather ) to track Sasha down in Naples. Ted – who is a man of art – is distracted from his main quest and begins visiting museums and viewing fascinating artworks. By chance, he stumbles into Sasha in the street and convinces her to meet up and talk. When this happens, both talk about their problems and soon go to the club, where Sasha steals his wallet and flees. Ted can trace her home and get her to return his wallet. As they sit together and look out the window – enjoying the warming blaze from the sun, we are taken into the future where Sasha is married and have two kids Uncle Ted will visit her, and both will share similar scenarios again.

The next chapter takes us several decades into the future, where Sasha’s daughter Alison tells the story of her family in a PowerPoint slide. She talks about the general mood in her family and how her busy doctor father, Drew, doesn’t seem to get along well with her autistic little brother Lincoln (whom she loves so much). And after he makes Lincoln cry so hard one day, Alison advises him to try working on the great pauses of rock music – as he (Lincoln) loves that. Alison has a mental health issue of her own, and something has pessimistic revelations about her family.

The concluding chapter returns us to Alex but in the future, and this time he and Dolly’s daughter Lulu (now a grownup) work with Bennie to sell Scotty Hausman’s upcoming concert via social media. Scotty had resigned from his janitorial job and returned to making music. On the day, Scotty has a fit because of the large crowd, but Lulu walks onto the stage with him as he plays. The concert is a hit, and they will be remembered for many years to come. Bennie and Alex take a walk; Bennie talks about Sasha and how he misses her. Alex can’t quite recall the details about her but seems to remember when they coincidentally walk into the building where Sasha had lived. But not anymore. As some new girl named Taylor comes out of the door playing with her keys.

What is Egan’s ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ’ about?

‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ’ by Jennifer Egan is a book that captures the brutal reality of time flashing before people’s eyes, and they sometimes have to watch their dreams and aspirations disappear and unaccomplished.

How long does it take to reach ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ’ by Jennifer Egan?

It only takes a few hours to start and finish ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ,’ however, you might be required to spend extra hours revisiting previous pages and come back to current ones to be up to speed with all the characters and their role in the book. 

Is ‘ Goon Squad ’ a hard book to read?

Across its use of non-linear story chronology and multiple narrative styles, ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ’ can be tagged as a relatively harder book to read than the average book.

Who are the foundational characters in ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad’ ?

Record producer Bennie Salazar and his assistant Sasha Grady Blake are the two foundational characters from whom all the other fleet of characters are connected. 

About Victor Onuorah

Victor is as much a prolific writer as he is an avid reader. With a degree in Journalism, he goes around scouring literary storehouses and archives; picking up, dusting the dirt off, and leaving clean even the most crooked pieces of literature all with the skill of analysis.

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Onuorah, Victor " A Visit from the Goon Squad Summary 📖 " Book Analysis , https://bookanalysis.com/jennifer-egan/a-visit-from-the-goon-squad/summary/ . Accessed 5 April 2024.

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A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer egan, everything you need for every book you read..

A Visit from the Goon Squad is unconventional in the way its narrative unfolds. Each chapter stands as a self-contained story, but as a whole, the individual episodes create connections that form a cohesive narrative. The stories, as they appear in the novel, do not follow a traditional chronology. Instead, they leap through time, showing slices of different time periods occurring between the late 1970s and the 2020s. The novel is also split into two parts—A and B—which echoes the two sides of an album. Several characters appear in more than one story, and through the ways in which they appear at different points in time, their narratives become clear.

In the novel’s first story, “Found Objects,” Sasha meets with her therapist, Coz , with whom she is working to overcome an addiction to stealing. She recounts a date she went on with a man named Alex , during which she steals a wallet in the restaurant’s bathroom. After a brief confrontation with the woman Sasha stole from, Sasha returns the wallet and admits she has a problem. Afterward, Sasha and Alex return to her apartment and have sex. Alex then takes a bath and Sasha goes through Alex’s wallet. She finds a piece of paper that says, “I believe in you.” She steals the paper and puts the wallet back before he returns.

The next story is called “The Gold Cure.” This introduces Bennie Salazar , a divorced record executive in his mid-forties, who struggles with anxiety and sexual impotency. He sprinkles gold flakes into his coffee to combat his sexual dysfunction. Benny and his son Christopher meet Sasha, who is now Bennie’s secretary, at the home of one of the bands signed to his record label. The band is not selling albums, but as they play some new music for Bennie, he begins to feel sexually aroused by the music. His arousal, however, suddenly escapes him as a flood of shameful memories strikes him. He runs out of the house. Afterward, Bennie drops Christopher off at his mother’s house, and drives Sasha home. As Bennie drops Sasha off at her building, he tries to tell her about his attraction to her. She stops him, saying, “We need each other.” She then goes home.

In the next story, “Ask Me If I Care,” the narrative leaps back to the year 1979. Rhea , an insecure punk rocker with green hair, tells this story. Rhea feels undesirable and not “punk” enough because of her freckles. Rhea’s friend Jocelyn begins sleeping with Lou , a powerful record executive and much older man. She convinces Lou to come see Bennie Salazar and Scotty Hausman ’s band, The Flaming Dildos. At the concert, Jocelyn gives Lou oral sex as the band plays. Lou has his arm around Rhea, and Rhea feels like she is a part of the sexual act in a way that disturbs her. After the concert, the group goes to Lou’s house. Rhea and Lou share a conversation on the balcony in which Rhea scolds him for sleeping with Jocelyn, who is under age. Lou gets a kick out of her belligerence, and tells her never to change. Two weeks later, Jocelyn runs away with Lou. Lou promises to bring Jocelyn home when he returns to San Francisco.

In the next story, “Safari,” Lou, two of his children, and his new girlfriend, Mindy , go on an African safari. They are joined by a cast of other characters, including Chronos , the guitarist of a popular band, and Albert , the tour guide. During the story, Mindy feels tension with Lou’s children, Charlie and Rolph , who miss their mother. Out on the safari, a lion attacks Chronos, but Albert saves him by shooting and killing the lion. Later, Mindy sleeps with Albert. When Lou realizes that something is going on between Mindy and Albert, he tells Rolph that all women are “cunts.” Rolph condemns his father’s reaction, but Lou, a fiercely competitive man, feels a newfound desire to conquer Mindy. Later that night, Rolph and Charlie dance together in the hotel restaurant—a moment of connection they have not experienced yet on the trip. In this moment, the narrative leaps forward, revealing the future. Mindy will marry Lou, and they will have two children together. After they divorce, she will work as a travel agent as she raises their children, and later will go on to continue her Ph.D. Charlie will go on to join a cult in Mexico. Rolph will become estranged from his father and commit suicide at the age of twenty-eight.

The narrative jumps forward a quarter century for the next story, “You (Plural).” Jocelyn narrates, and she and Rhea return to Lou’s house after his health has failed. In the years since the story “Ask Me if I Care” Jocelyn has been in and out of rehab for drug addiction. Rhea has gotten married and had children. They find Lou bedridden and alone. After they catch up for a while, Jocelyn and Rhea push Lou’s bed outside and stand by the poolside. Jocelyn thinks of Lou’s son, Rolph, who was her age, and remembers loving him. Jocelyn asks Lou about Rolph, forgetting that he committed suicide years earlier. Lou begins to weep. Rhea responds empathetically, thinking Jocelyn has said this to spite Lou. Jocelyn is struck with anger, and feels like pushing Lou’s bed into the water . Jocelyn tells Lou he deserves to die. Lou then asks Rhea and Jocelyn to stand on either side of him and hold his hands. They take his hands and stand together, staring into the pool, just like old times.

Scotty Hausman is the narrator of the next chapter, titled “X’s and O’s,” which happens nine years before “The Gold Cure.” Scotty is living a reclusive life in New York City, working as a janitor and spending his free time fishing in the East River. He decides to visit his old friend, Bennie. When he goes, he brings with him a dead bass he caught while fishing. Scotty is stunned by the glamour of Bennie’s office, and notes how his life has gone in a different direction than Bennie’s. As Scotty talks to Bennie, Scotty realizes that they are no longer friends. Bennie asks Scotty about his ex-wife, Alice, who appears in the story “Ask Me if I Care.” Bennie had a crush on Alice, but Alice chose Scotty. Scotty realizes this is a point of insecurity for Bennie. As Scotty leaves, Bennie gives him a business card, and tells him to get in touch if he ever has any new music to show him. Scotty leaves the dead fish. The next day, Scotty gives the card to a young couple, one of whom is a musician.

In the first story of part B, titled “A to B,” the focus is on Bennie’s wife Stephanie before they get divorced. The family moves to a wealthy community outside of New York City, called Crandale. They attempt to fit in, but Bennie is racially profiled because he is Hispanic, and Stephanie feels like an outsider because of her tattoos. Stephanie begins playing tennis with a woman named Kathy . One day, Stephanie goes to the city to meet with the guitarist Bosco , for whom she does PR work. Her brother, Jules , who has just been released from prison, volunteers to go with her. Jules mentions that Stephanie and Bennie seem jumpy, which makes Stephanie worry that Bennie is cheating on her again. When they arrive at Bosco’s apartment, Bosco tells Stephanie that he wants to go on a suicide tour. The former guitarist for the Conduits, Bosco has become fat, alcoholic, and is dying of cancer. He wants to go out with a bang and die on stage. Stephanie thinks the idea is ludicrous, but Jules wants to write a book about the suicide tour. Later that night, Bennie comes home and while he showers, Stephanie finds a gold colored bobby pin on the floor. She realizes it belongs to Kathy, whom Bennie is having an affair with. Stephanie wanders downstairs, and goes out to the garden. She is surprised when Noreen , her reclusive neighbor, whispers to her from behind the fence. They share a brief interaction before Stephanie goes back inside.

The next story in the novel, “Selling the General,” features Dolly Peale . Dolly, formerly known as “La Doll,” was a famous PR expert, but she ruined her name after a light display at one of her parties malfunctioned and burned the famous attendees. She begins doing work trying to save the image a military dictator called The General . She hires Kitty Jackson , an actress with a flagging reputation, and they travel to meet the general so Kitty can appear in a photograph with the dictator. Dolly also brings her daughter, Lulu , in hopes of repairing their relationship. When they meet The General, Dolly takes a photograph of Kitty’s interaction with him, but things take a turn for the worse when Kitty begins asking the General about the genocide. The General’s guards carry Kitty away into captivity. Dolly and Lulu leave immediately. Months later, the General’s country has transitioned to democracy. Kitty is released and begins working on a new movie. Dolly and Lulu move out of the city, and Dolly opens a successful sandwich shop.

The following story, titled “Forty-Minute Lunch: Kitty Jackson Opens Up About Love, Fame, and Nixon!” appears in the novel as a magazine article written by Jules Jones, Stephanie’s brother. The article was written prior to his release from prison, and the style of the article, including rants and footnotes, shows Jules coming unhinged. As he talks with Kitty, he begins to conflate Kitty Jackson with his ex-girlfriend, who left him for a memoirist. Sensing his time with Kitty is almost up, Jules convinces her to go on a walk with him in Central Park. Once in the park, Jules pushes her down and tries to rape her. Kitty sprays him with pepper spray and stabs him in the leg with a Swiss Army knife. Later, Jules is convicted of attempted rape, and sent to prison. Kitty sends him a letter apologizing for whatever role she had in his mental breakdown. Her letter creates a media sensation, and Kitty is pegged as the Marilyn Monroe of her generation.

The next story, “Out of Body,” is told through the voice of Rob , and includes Sasha. This story is set before Sasha begins working for Bennie Salazar, while she is still in college at NYU. Rob has recently attempted suicide and his friends, including Sasha, are worried about him. Rob and Sasha met after she asked him to pose as her fake boyfriend. Sasha believes that her father has detectives watching her, and she wants to appear as if she is dating a nice boy. Rob resents the fact that Sasha seems interested in their mutual friend Drew . Sasha, Drew, and Rob go to a Conduits concert. As the band plays, Rob begins to fantasize about Drew, imagining that seeing Drew naked would give him a sense of relief. After the concert, Sasha goes to a party with Bennie Salazar, whom she has just met. Rob and Drew end up going to the East River together. Rob tells Drew that Sasha was a hooker in Naples. He immediately regrets betraying her. Drew decides to swim in the river. Rob follows Drew into the icy water, but gets caught in a current and drowns.

Next comes the story titled “Good-bye, My Love,” told from the perspective of Sasha’s uncle Ted Hollander . Sasha is in Naples, and her stepfather has flown Ted to Naples to look for her, but Ted, who is an art scholar, takes the opportunity to escape his wife and kids and view famous pieces of art. As he walks the city and views different pieces of art, he remembers Sasha as a child, describing her as lovely and bewitching. When he accidently runs into Sasha on the street, he doesn’t know what to say. They schedule dinner, and meet later that evening. As they eat, Sasha asks Ted about his family and his work. Ted is unhappy, and struggles to connect to his wife and family. Ted lies, telling Sasha he is not there for her. Later they go to a club where Sasha convinces Ted to dance with her. Sasha disappears on the dance floor, and Ted realizes she has stolen his wallet. The next day, Ted finds where Sasha lives, and waits outside her door until she gives him his wallet and lets him in. They watch the sun set, and Ted realizes how alone she is in this foreign country. The narrative then flashes forward, revealing that Sasha will have a family in the future. Ted will visit her, and they will reminisce about their time in Naples.

The story “Great Rock and Roll Pauses” is told in the form of a PowerPoint presentation created by Sasha’s daughter, Alison . It is some time in the 2020s, and Sasha has married Drew and started a family. Alison uses the slides to tell the story of the family’s current situation. Alison’s autistic brother Lincoln is interested in pauses in great rock and roll songs. He struggles to connect with his father, who is a doctor and rarely home. One night, Drew returns home from work in a bad mood. Drew becomes angry with Lincoln, and yells at him. Sasha comes to Lincoln’s defense, but Lincoln runs to his room. Alison and her father go for a walk in the desert. Drew admits that he has trouble connecting with his son. Alison suggests Drew help him make graphs of the rock and roll pauses as a way to find connection. As they return to the house, Alison experiences tremendous anxiety, feeling as if she has traveled into the future, and their home may be gone. She is relieved to find it still there, and goes to bed. The chapter ends with slides of graphs created by Lincoln and Drew.

The final chapter, “Pure Language,” brings the novel full circle by returning to Alex, who appeared as Sasha’s date in the novel’s first story. The year is sometime in the 2020s, and Alex has taken a job with Bennie as a social networking marketer, promoting a performance by Scotty Hausman, who has had a comeback as a musician who plays music for toddlers. Alex is reluctant to tell his wife, Rebecca , about his new job due to the stigma around the kind of marketing he’s doing. Alex works with Lulu, Dolly’s daughter who appeared in “Selling the General.” On the day of the concert, the venue is packed, and Alex feels proud. Before the concert Scotty has a panic attack, and refuses to play. Eventually, Lulu convinces Scotty to get on stage. On stage, Scotty plays his songs for children, but then switches to more personal material. Everyone is wowed, and the concert later becomes historic. As Alex and Bennie walk home after the show, they pass the building where Sasha used to live. They ring the doorbell, but nobody answers. Just as they leave, a woman approaches. For a moment they hope it is Sasha, but it is another woman.