The characters generally link up around music, whether they create it, market it, or just listen to it. But in embodying the post-Internet generation’s attention deficiency, Egan never allows momentum to build, nor does she connect the dots between the stories in any meaningful way outside of the “coincidence” of character relations. Most closely resembling Joyce’s Dubliners, with its collection of fragmented stories fitting together under a linking theme, A Visit from the Goon Squad seeks to comment on human relations in the digital age by leaping around time to cover the interconnected lives of listless Gen-Xers and advanced but emotionally stunted Millennials. It’s a ridiculous, inane contention for many reasons, not least of which that A Visit from the Goon Squad is not a successful example of either category. A post-postmodern menagerie of tales, Egan’s book prompted a debate as to whether it was a novel or a short story collection. Having received comparisons to Joyce and Proust, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad perhaps suffers unfairly under the weight of expectations.
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