Before I began reading this 2010 Pulitzer winner, I did a quick Google search for the author, Jennifer Egan. In one of the interviews, she talks about the format of A Visit from the Goon Squad. It is not written in the form of a traditional novel, one where you follow the protagonist through the story while s/he arrives at some conclusion to the dilemma proposed in some earlier part of the book, nor is it a collection of short stories since the characters in AVFTGS are intertwined by a series of events that occur in their mostly hapless lives. In the interview, Egan explains how she perceives time. She says she thinks of time as moving laterally as opposed to forward the way most of us think of it (I do anyway). Like our past, present, and future are all happening at the same time.
What also caught my attention was the mention of Mabuhay Gardens (a legendary puck rock venue in San Francisco), because I used to read an old ‘zine called Search and Destroy published in San Francisco that often featured interviews with the members of The Avengers, The Nuns and many others. The ‘zine was definitely before my time as the SF music scene reached its peak before I was even born. The characters in this story had their hay days with dreams of playing the Mabuhay, but life takes them and the ancillary characters to unexpected places once they are no longer living their teenage dreams.
