A Visit From the Goon Squad

Aging is an issue that everyone deals with. I know that I'm still very young, but I'm starting to face the world of people I knew as babies entering high school and my friends getting married and having kids. I'm also at the point where I feel as if I need to balance my interests in the styles and lifestyles of whatever subcultures I might find myself entrenched in and the working world. When you're a student, you can get away with pretty much anything as far as style and lifestyle goes but when you have to go into the office and work a consistent schedule, things change.

Anyway, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan tackles these issues along with the aftermath of being "cool" in high school. The story follows two different people in the music business, Bennie, a punk-turned-record-executive, and Sasha, his assistant with sticky fingers and a mysterious history. (doesn't that sound like the back cover of a novel?) The first two chapters are from Sasha and Bennie's perspectives, respectively, and the rest of the book shows their lives from the points of view of those around them. The story follows Bennie from high school to late middle age, and Sasha from her late teens to early middle age. Both Sasha and Bennie go through periods before their professional careers of reckless, youthful living, which ends up stalling the progression of their professional lives before they are able to flourish.

A Visit From the Goon Squad discusses aging in a candid way, which brings to light many of the dilemmas that every generation feels. The fear of loosing relevance, trying to keep relevance, and loosing it by trying too hard. Bennie is hit the hardest with this dichotomy, as his career as a record executive is a roller coaster through the story. He constantly has to fight to find the next big thing and, as he gets older, this gets harder. This is a reality for pretty much everyone, the fight between age and relevance. There is a line in the last chapter that sums up this feeling as Bennie says to his friend Scotty, "Time's a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?" (332).

The last chapter gives a peek into the near future, a time when my generation's children are just at my age now. Included in this, is the idea that the next generation will be "clean," meaning that they will not have piercings or tattoos after seeing all of our assorted body art age and deteriorate. Quite an interesting aspect seeing as I'm just at the point where I'm adding more and more... I definitely recommend this novel. It won the 2011 Pulitzer, which I feel is greatly deserved.