A Visit from the Keith Squad

Read from Tuesday, June 7th to Saturday, June 11th.

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan.  I really enjoyed this new novel, and since it had been earning a lot of praise recently, I eagerly awaited its release in paperback.  Egan uses a really "novel" concept in her book: each chapter is from a different period of time, and focuses on a different character, often loosely related to other characters.  For the most part, it is the story of Bennie Salazar and his assistant, Sasha (at the present time).  However, different chapters explore their past, focusing on crucial moments as teenagers, young adults, in their marriages.  There are also chapters in the near future, with interesting views on technology.  

It is difficult to sum up the overall plot, but here it goes.  Bennie Salazar grew up in San Francisco as a punk rocker.  He started a band with his friend Scotty called the Flaming Dildos.  One of their close friends meets a sleazy record producer, Lou, at one of their shows and becomes his new girlfriend.  Lou has six children, and we meet some of them and one of his wives on a trip to Africa in one chapter.  The band breaks up and Bennie eventually hits the big time discovering a band called The Conduits, and he is a big-shot in the music industry.  His marries a woman named Stephanie, and they move to New York, but have trouble fitting into a country club with the other rich snobs.  (Here we go off on a tangent,) Stephanie has a brother Jules, who was an entertainment reporter, and he was arrested for attempted rape of a young starlet, Kitty Jackson.  Stephanie and Jules go into the city one morning and meet her client (Stephanie is in PR), Bosco, the former guitarist of the Conduits.  Bosco is old and fat and sick, and he proposes one final tour that will end up killing him, so he can go out with a bang.

Later we learn about Stephanie's boss, Dolly, who ends up being disgraced from her profession after an oil accident at a party she threw.  She is desperate for money so her daughter Lulu can attend a private school, and she ends up doing secretive PR work for a brutal dictator-general in a country unnamed.  She recruits Kitty Jackson to be his girlfriend, so he can have a more positive image in the press. 

Sasha is Bennie's assistant in the present-day.  He is attracted to her, especially since his wife Stephanie left him.  However, Sasha is a compulsive kleptomaniac, always stealing whatever she can.  We learn that as a teenager she ran away from home all over the world.  She ended up in Italy, where she pick-pocketed tourists and prostituted herself with a gangster.  Her uncle was sent over by her parents to find Sasha, and he ended up stumbling upon her.  She stole his wallet, and he almost gave up, but he persisted and managed to bring her home.  Sasha went to college and managed to turn it around.  Her close friend Rob fell in love with her, but she didn't feel the same way.  Sasha dated a promising man named Drew, and one night Rob and Drew took ecstasy and ended up swimming in the river, but Rob drowned. 

In a chapter consisting entirely of power-point slides, we learn in the near-future that Sasha reconnected with Drew years later after working for Bennie, and they married and had two children.  Her daughter made the slides, about her relationship with her parents, and her brother Linc's obsession with pauses in the middle of rock and roll songs.  Finally, in the future as well, Bennie is an aging and irrelevant executive, but he tries once again to promote his client, and old friend, Scotty, who is a reclusive artist.  Bennie and his protege Alex and new assistant Lulu, manage to influence the blogosphere to create buzz for Scotty's free concert.  Egan tells of a future where everyone is interconnected with technology, and you only had to point to get songs, and people mainly communicate via an abbreviated texting language.  Scotty's concert is a success, and the title of the book is explained at the end.  Time is the goon squad, always hunting you down, and always behind you.  Time cannot be overcome, and it will get you in the end. 

This is the overall theme of the book, as it examines the interconnected life stories of the very well-developed characters.  Music is ever-present as well.  I also really enjoyed Egan's propensity to experiment with different forms.  One chapter is a newspaper or magazine article (about Jules and Kitty), another is only power-point slides, and other experiment with the point of view, shifting from first to third and even second.  My plot summary does not do the story justice, and it is always interesting to see certain characters, even peripheral ones, resurface many years later.  Funny, moving, and poetic, this book is highly recommended.  Four and a half out of five stars.