Tuesday 20 October 2015

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan


Underneath all that froth there must be some coffee. A Visit from the Goon Squad is a piece of lying trash quite readable at it but for the Powerpoint bit which I glanced at but did not read. I could never look Dickens in the page again if I did. The story towards the end about the marketing of the Scotty comeback could be applied to the 5 pages of fulsomeness from critics world wide. A B.T. (blind team). No never. Up to that point I thought the Scotty story where he visited Benito Salazar with a fish that he caught in the East River was more true than the others. Scotty, poor, psychotic, with un-American bad teeth of the worst sort - missing. More likely to be a stalker than anything invoking a blood boltered home invasion with a note of apology - ‘then it all came down’. Jennifer Egan is clever and witty but her cynicism lacks the bite of the dog, no teeth but a vicious suck. Still it is shaken free of cliche and unlike that biography of Jim Morrison ‘Everybody gets out of here alive’. Even Scotty gets a set of delph.

2 comments:

john doyle said...

The Keep was better. Goon Squad reads like a treatment for a proposed television series, which I believe is now in the works.

ombhurbhuva said...

John:
HBO, I read, bought the rights but it seems to have not been acted on but perhaps that has changed again. It would be hard to do if it were followed faithfully. It amused me to read the fulsome review in the New York Times where a incident in the initial story was related incorrectly. You may recall that klepto Sasha stole a woman’s wallet in the toilet. The review had it that she stole her date’s wallet. Now, such a mistake seems almost a deliberate message - don’t take this seriously, she reviews for this paper, I could meet her at a dinner party: first rule of life - don’t foul the nest.
I'll look out for 'The Keep'.