Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: 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.
- Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
I recently finished Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and quite enjoyed it. The novel spans different but connected perspectives that transcend time, person (i.e., first, second, third), and format (one “story” is told as a PowerPoint presentation).
It is a book very much about experience and about growing up and growing old in a culture imbued with technology. What’s great about this novel is that interesting peripheral characters become protagonists and vice-a-versa. There is not one character who is uninteresting or unaffected.
