I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.
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Jennifer Egan Quote
“Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.”
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'Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.
I did go on safari in Kenya when I was 17, with my mother, stepfather and little brother, and I kept a careful journal of the experience that was very helpful in terms of my sensory impressions of Africa. I have traveled quite a bit at distinct times in my life, though now that I have kids I've settled down.
We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.
The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.
Proust, my big inspiration for 'Goon Squad,' uses music a lot in his novel, both in terms of plot and structure. I liked the idea of doing the same thing, which is one reason I structured 'Goon Squad' as a record album, with an A side and a B side, that's built around the contrasting sounds of the individual numbers in it.