A Visit From the Goon Squad
Ten great audiobooks for summer, part 8: 'A Visit From the Goon Squad'
For ten days, we'll be suggesting some of our favorite audiobooks for the summer, in a series of articles brought to you by our partner, Audible.com. More
Jennifer Egan talks about her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, dedications, and getting inspired in the shower
The book Egan is referring to, of course, is her 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Visit From The Goon Squad. Because no prize was given for fiction this year, it looks like Egan will be getting another victory lap. It’s a book that’s often called experimental and genre-defying, perhaps because Egan never intended to call it a novel. “I’m still reluctant to use the word novel to talk about the book,” Egan told Weisberg. “But when the hardback didn’t sell for four months, the publisher informed me we were going to call it a novel when it came out in paperback. And that it wasn’t a question, it was a fact.” More
The last thing on Jennifer Egan's mind is the needs of e-readers
On the 15th floor of Columbia University’s International Affairs Building, about 200 people listened last night as Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Jennifer Egan speculated on the pros and cons of technology, the benefits of escapism, and why people are attracted to a digitized version of Stalinist apartment blocks. More
Jennifer Egan in 'A Visit From the Sales Squad'
She's won a million awards and been on a billion critics' "Best Of" lists. But cracking the big-money sales still takes foot-work for writers, and Jennifer Egan is a workhorse.
“I think I always assumed that I would have to sell my books,” Egan said at a reading last night in Brooklyn. “I just thought why would anyone else do it, you know?" More
On the Jennifer Egan blockbuster: it really is that good
Jennifer Egan’s new novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, is alternately hilarious, portentous, and withering. But it is not subtle. The goon is time, we learn from a former rock star—reduced, when we meet him, to a crippled, graying, Rocky Road-addled shut-in whose desperate last gasp of a new album, A to B, asks Egan’s basic question: how does a person get from there to here? More
