Welcome to the Goon Squad- Jennifer Egan (2010). [too much gushing/I liked it too much]

The Chicago Tribune wasn't incorrect on the dust cover "...as you watch them do what they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human".  It's about falling apart, and coming back together.  Sort of.  It's about your anger at characters and your need for their redemption.  It's about your own twisted ife and the leaving behind of who and what you thought you were in an attempt to achieve "adult", whatever that means.

A novel seems like an inappropriate classification.  It's more a series of short stories, but even that term seems wrong; even if Egan did publish parts of the book individually before Welcome to the Goon Squad was published.  Egan is brilliant when it comes to combining the twists and turns of the lives of multiple intertwined characters typical of a novel with the complete independence of the short story.  This is something different.  This is something awkwardly messed up to the point of almost beauty.  I want to say awe, but that seems like too much.

I can't think of one, even slightly minor, character that isn't deeply, almost darkly, flawed, and yet complete perfect in and of that moment.  Even Susan, Ted's supposedly perfect wife, who's allowed her self to be brainwashed into a sort of marriage coma so that the desire between herself and Ted doesn't consume them both.  In her three minutes of airtime she says all the normal, expected, right things- but she's still off, still distant, still perfectly imperfect.

Nothing is so poignant, so aptly worth the pause as Alison Blake's slide diary and her brother Lincoln's assumed autism and subsequent obsession with the pauses, the silences, in songs.  How it seems to physically pain their father as he attempts to understand what they mean, what Lincoln means.  The direct abruptness of Alison's slides seem to change everything.  The blank slides.  The pauses.  A family in a perpetual state of pause.  Listening to silence, wondering what it means, what's there to be found- in the song.  To them.  It makes you wonder what the pauses mean to you- they start to take on more meaning before you get the chance to realize it.  (To me- think "Love Love Love" by Of Monsters and Men.  Pregnant pauses indeed).

The timeline is fucked.  Annoyingly fucked.  We start with Sasha in what we assume to the be the present, only to learn at the end that it was 20 years ago.  And Bennie starts in the same place, only to go backwards 15 years, then fast forward another 20 by the end.  At the same time, other than my general issues with continuity, it doesn't really matter.  This cross between the novel and short story doesn't leave a whole lot of room for timelines and continuity to matter much more than being a slight annoyance.  The same humanity exists whether or not you know when on the timeline things are happening.  The same feeling of giving up on something to gain another and feeling lost in the process is still there.

Welcome to the Goon Squad isn't something to read when you need to figure out where you're going.  All it can possible do is help remind you where you've been and that you have no idea what or who you are now.  It's about always feeling lonely around other people and getting over it.  It's about feeling off in your own skin and pretending you're over it.

It all seems so incredibly apt.

I'm sure I'm supposed to be writing about the more technical aspects of the book: the structure, the plot, what it says about society as a whole, theme- blah blah blah.  But I'm the one that's supposed to be reading with the heart and not the head (or so I've decided).  I underline things in books not only because the phrasing is interesting and I want to get it stuck in my head, but so that I can remember that I felt something trigger when I read it.  It's not about what it's supposed to mean in the overall context of the narrative- it's about what it feels like.  What I know something feels like.

I'm not terribly surprised that it won the Pulitzer.  Its format is experimental enough without sacrificing meaning, story or good writing.  The characters are tragically flawed and looking for redemption- always a good formula for Pulitzer.  The stories are accessible enough to draw you in, but obtuse enough to make you question what Egan real intentions were.  Everything is sort of muddy and warm- enveloping you in an uncomfortable sense of foreboding and hope.

I can never quite tell if I read too much into these things or not enough.  We all ascribe different meanings to different things.  I'm sure this book would have read differently if I had finished it in the same headspace as I had started it.  I guess that says something about reading things in one sitting- there is no time to change, the book can't change that quickly.  You can't change that quickly.

Then again, nothing is good if you can't relate.  Right?

I (team Justin) join the action

Books.  I know what you’re thinking.  “We’ve got TV, we’ve got videogames, why books?”  I know what else you’re thinking:  “Why should I be reading fiction, at this day and age, when I could be writing fiction and selling my book to make megaprofits?”  Maybe that last part is only me.

For the sake of picking a side, I’m picking practice.  You hear this about writing constantly; any authentic writing comes from experience, people like to be shown rather than told.  Being able to visualize the experience is theoretical, but you miss those nuances if you haven’t lived it.  Could I write a western?  Sure!  Yeah, fine, I’ll write a western.  But I’m not going to understand how the sand between your toes, the wind in your hair, the sand in your hair or the wind between your toes feels.  I’ve never been shot before, and I’m not going to go get shot just to be able to write more authentically.

This guy, Sheygar Iyengar, explains a process implicit in media consumption (mostly in experimental settings), called “framing”.  Sure, you’ll frame the book you’re reading differently when you’re 28 than when you were 16.  But you can’t account for your subjectivity, either, which adds to the can’t-step-in-the-same-river-twice argument.  So I’m helping your argument.  For now.

What I am to prove as we read these books is:  however unique your reading is, however nuanced your interpretation, inspired your interpretation; I can see it from your perspective.  As a meta/postmodern/decontructionist, I know each story can be broken down to a sum of its parts, that stories all follow similar trajectories (including shaggy dog stories), and that while an idea can be analyzed in many different ways it’s still the same idea.  You have your mother, your trickster, your bildungsroman, mystery story, red herring, numerous symbols, etc.  As we reference other books we’ve read, or I do particularly, the allusions should take us to the opposing conclusion:  all work is derivitative.

However, I won’t be reading like a detective.  I won’t be looking for arguments to support my own side in a straw dog argument, lighting all kinds of small fires for you to put out.  I’m just going to have fun, and try to entertain whoever it is that will stumble upon our blog (most likely people who get paid to click on advertisements in East Germany or China).  Hello!  (in case they speak English).

So now just to wait for things to come in the mail.  And then we're going to cook with gas.

Tomato, Tomahto

I'm pretty sure it was Edmond Wilson who said that "no two people read the same book".

I have to agree.

And this is where it all begins.  This conversation- this intellectual vs emotional, this theory vs practice, this process vs visceral response, this heart vs head fight to the metaphorical (or not so metaphorical, depending how this goes) fight to the death.

This isn't a debate about whether the content is the same for every reader, that's not the point, or even the issue.  What changes is what the reader gets out of the book at the end.   Who we are at the time that we read something, what we've done and experienced in our lives, our own personal philosophies color what the content means, how we relate to the content, what we walk away with.

This also isn't to say that this meaning stays static, it changes as we change.  Reading a book when you're 16, is going to be a very different experience when you re-read the same book (the same copy) when you're 28- because you're not the same person that you were, thus, you can't re-read the exact same book you did when you're 16.  It's changed.

Books have a life all their own.

I will use Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, in part because it is actually a good example of this, and also because I'm a jackass with a very strong desire to annoy the crap out of a specific person.  But, Choke.  I found it wondering around Central Library trying to waste time and because I do judge books by their covers, and the cover was at the very least a little "what the fuck".  I got home around 2pm and was done with the book by 5pm.  I couldn't eat dinner- I laid in my hammock and just stared, trying to get over this emotional mind fuck that I'd been waiting to have for the past 3 years.  Part of me related to Victor and his intense need to feel loved in any way possible, no matter how self destructive.  I didn't quite understand the whole meaningless sex with strangers things- in part because I was a virgin and a very naive, romantic one at that.  I didn't quite understand the idea of having flashbacks about a parent who showed you care in the most messed up of ways and you can't help but love them.

None of that made sense until I re-read it in my 20s.  The book changed because I had changed.  I was no longer the same person, the book could no longer be the same one that I carried around for weeks.  I understood certain parts of it better, and others lost their attachments.  I knew what it meant to have meaningless sex, I truly understood what it meant to be that kind of self-destructive.  Somewhere within time though, my intense need to be love faded into a quiet, "that would be nice" sort of thing- the plot that drew me in in the first place was now somehow different, less important.  The words and phrases that I underlined in pencil the second time I read it (about a month after the first time), were very different than what caught my eye when I was 27.  Even the stylistic elements held different meaning as my understanding of them on a more academic, intellectual level grew.  The book altered as I compared it to the other books I had since read, in large part because I got distracted by the cover of Choke more than 10 years before.

If a book can change so drastically for one person over the course of time, how could two individuals really read the same book?  Yes, there is overlap.  Yes, people can get two very, very similar readings of the same content- but they will never be identical.

When it comes to nonfiction, I'm not entirely sure if the same holds true.  So much of what changes a book for any one person is the multitude of interpretations that can be taken from any one story.  I don't think the same holds true for facts.  While we may each relate to some series of facts in very different ways, I think it would be difficult to say that those facts would be markedly different- the way things can be in fiction.

Philosophy is another one of those sticky wickets.  One that I know I am no where near well versed enough in to attempt to tackle.  But I'm sure I will be since I've been told that a fair amount of this reading list will consist of just that.

So, now it begins.  The discussion, the conversation, the death match that ensues when two people read the same thing and come up with different answers.  It's the fun of reading, and the worst part simultaneously, which, I guess pretty much makes it the best thing ever really.

Welcome to Thunder Dome, bitch.