BookHampton was delighted to welcome Jennifer Egan for a return visit last Friday night. Before what must have been the largest crowd that ever gathered in the East Hampton store, the recipient of this year’s Pulitzer Prize—among many other honors—for her extraordinary book A Visit From the Goon Squad read the first chapter of the book and then engaged in a fascinating discussion about the book, about writing, about the writers who influenced her, among other topics.
As she explained, the book began with the chapter she had just read (“Found Objects’), which was initially conceived as a stand-alone short story. The story contained fleeting references to other characters and incidents, each of which seemed to demand another story and then another, and before long the story had become an entire book.
In response to another question, Ms. Egan explained that the original plan was for each chapter to move backwards in time from the chapter before it, and that indeed was the structure of the first draft. However when she read it through she felt that something was missing and even at the risk of costing the reader the advantage of proceeding in a simple backwards arc, the new version—which moves backwards and forwards and in to the future—had a life and style that were vastly preferable.
Ms. Egan also said that she was quite in awe of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and wanted to be able to use “time” as almost a character in the story (while hoping to avoid the enormous length of Proust’s work). The title, she told us, was a phrase she had coined years before, knowing that at some point it would be put to use; although she admitted that it is occasionally criticized, she was for the most part delighted that it could be used for this book and that most people seem to like it.
In response to a question about a chapter written in the second person (i.e., “you do…” or “you say…”) Ms. Egan said that this unusual technique was suited for particular situations, just as in a conversation with (for example) someone who has lost a job will say “you feel terrible when this happens…”. Her goal in this book was to give each chapter a separate voice and style (including the chapter written in Power Point which she admitted having to learn for this purpose), and this one fit in to the situation of that chapter.
Jennifer Egan had read at BookHampton a year before, when the book was quite new. As she said on Saturday night, it had gotten excellent reviews but was not generating much sales activity—except here at BookHampton. We reviewed it here and here. We are thrilled to have been part of the launch of this highly important book and at the honor of this return visit; we look forward to many more.
Books by Jennifer Egan are available on our website.
Signed copies of A Visit From the Goon Squad,
both in hardcover and paperback, are also available.
