Prize end to a short tale for author Jennifer Egan

JENNIFER Egan might have claimed a swag of literary awards for A Visit from the Goon Squad, but the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction-winning novel had a humble and unexpected genesis.

Jennifer Egan

JENNIFER Egan might have claimed a swag of literary awards for A Visit from the Goon Squad, but the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction-winning novel had a humble and unexpected genesis.

    Egan was inspired to create the novel's main protagonist Sasha, a kleptomaniac, after finding a wallet in a hotel bathroom.
  

The next day, she put aside research on a historical novel to write a short story about a young woman who cannot resist the opportunity of stealing an unclaimed wallet from a restroom.
   

"I've been robbed a lot. My wallet has been taken every way imaginable,'' says Egan, from her New York apartment.

"I thought it was exciting to explore the other side of the transaction, to imagine myself in the other position.''

A Visit from the Goon Squad evolved organically. The short story, which became the book's opening chapter, features Sasha on a date at a hotel with Alex, a young idealist who is new to New York.
   

Sasha works for colourful music producer Bennie Salazar, who sprinkles gold flakes on his coffee to improve his libido and uses pesticide as an underarm deodorant.

Egan became so curious about the character of Bennie that she wrote a piece about his job and his ex-wife Stephanie, a publicist.

She then became intrigued with the character of Stephanie, who is working on a comeback tour of overweight has-been rock star Bosco. It is Bosco who says: "Time's a goon, right? Isn't that the expression?''
   

It was at that moment Egan knew she was in the midst of a novel, one that was highly unconventional. She was concerned her book - with its decentralised structure, huge cast of inter-related characters and constant time - and genre-hopping - would not have a broad appeal, but she should not have worried.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is not only a critical success but it has become a sleeper commercial hit (currently No.3 on the New York Times bestseller list) after collecting a string of prizes, including the National Book Award.

The novel has been bought by HBO for TV adaptation.
 

"It's strange,'' Egan says. "I'm 48 years old and I've never won anything in my life until two months ago. It feels bizarre, freakish and very wonderful.

"We all want recognition so it's very exciting to feel so many people are excited about my ideas and work.''

Egan satirises the business of celebrity and image-making as well as tackling the passing of time, the music industry and technology in A Visit from the Goon Squad. The book's last chapter is set in a dystopian future where pre-talking toddlers can communicate through handheld devices.

"Technology makes everyone feel old. A laptop is old after two years. Someone always has something newer,'' she says.

"Everyone seems to feel obsolete now, even the young. Maybe this is why the book has resonated with so many people.''

A Visit from the Goon Squad is also a modern love letter to Marcel Proust's seven-volume epic In Search of Lost Time (1913-27).

"He had this gigantic vision, he wanted to capture the passage of time, the impact of time,'' Egan says. "He wrote about a lot of the ingredients I wanted to include such as humour, music, a sense of radical transformation, the sense of a world changing through technology.''

Egan believes music is the perfect medium to illustrate the passing of time and A Visit from the Goon Squad sweeps from the San Francisco punk scene in the 1970s to a futuristic community rock concert set after 2020.

She worked for four years on A Visit from the Goon Squad and often relied on her subconscious to find connections between characters. She had many doubts the book would come together as she hit several dead-ends.

Four of the novel's chapters were originally published as short stories in the mid-1990s and only needed minor fine-tuning.

"I had always felt that those four stories wanted to reach beyond their own borders but I never thought they would all connect in a book because they had nothing in common with each other,'' she says.

"The subconscious is the most important ingredient for a fiction writer. It is smarter, makes more connections and has the great ideas that you never seem to have with a conscious mind.''

Egan, who was raised in San Francisco, is glad she achieved success later in her career and not at the beginning because then "you would think this happens easily''.
   

In 1987 she arrived in New York to start a career as a writer following a two-year scholarship at Cambridge, England, and several months travelling around Europe. For 18 months she struggled with a series of low-paying jobs while she produced "crummy work that no one liked''.

"My scholarship money was finished, the fantasy world was over. I had no support system, no family around. It was a bleak moment but that's what kept me going,'' she says.

"I sure as hell wasn't going to quit at that state of failure. I had barely gotten started. I had no perspective that things were going to get better. I'm a dogged person. I respond to adversity with a steely resistance.''
   

Within two years she had sold her first story to The New Yorker, which "gave me legitimacy and calmed my parents down a lot''.

Egan published a short story collection, Emerald City, in 1993, followed by the 1995 novel The Invisible Circus. She then wrote Look At Me (2001) and The Keep (2006).

"Truthfully I'm not sure I feel I have earnt it (the Pulitzer Prize) yet,'' she says. "I hope I can earn it in the end. My goal is to keep getting better. I really hope I can stay focused and keep moving forward book after book . . . then I will feel a Pulitzer winner.''
   
    A Visit From the Goon Squad
    Jennifer Egan
    Corsair, $24.99