A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD - JENNIFER EGAN

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 335

It may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering, as it did at the first Human Be-In and Monterey Pop and Woodstock. Or it may be that two generations of war and surveillance had left people craving the embodiment of their own unease in the form of a lone, unsteady man on a slide guitar.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 323

Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words -- "friend" and "real" and "story" and "change" -- words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some, like "identity," "search," and "cloud," had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had "American" become an ironic term? How had "democracy" come to be used in an arch, mocking way?

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 323

For as long as he'd known her, his wife had offset her sexy beauty with a pair of dorky glasses, sometimes leaning toward Dick Smart other times Catwoman. Alex had loved the glasses for their inability to suppress Rebecca's sexy beauty, but lately he wasn't so sure; the glasses, along with Rebecca's prematurely graying hair and the fact that she was often short on sleep, threatened to reify her disguise into an identity: a fragile, harried academic slaving to finish a book while teaching two courses and chairing several committees.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 314

Alex loved the dead of night. Without the rant of construction and omnipresent choppers, hidden portals of sound opened themselves to his ears: the teakettle whistle and sock-footed thump of Sandra, the single mother who lived in the apartment overhead; a hummingbird thrum that Alex presumed was her teenaged son masturbating to his handset in the adjacent room. From the street, a single cough, errant conversational strands: "...you're asking me to be a different person..." and "Believe it or not, drinking keeps me clean."

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 273

Rob was Mom's best friend. She keeps his picture in her wallet. If you look carefully, you can tell that Rob will die young. He has that look of someone who'd only in old pictures.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 249

Lincoln Wants to Say / Ends Up Saying:

"I love you, Dad." -> Dad is from Wisconsin -> I love music -> Dad loves me -> Steve Miller is from Wisconsin ->  The Steve Miller Band was popular fifty-something years ago -> One of their biggest hits was "Fly Like an Eagle" ---->    "Hey Dad, there's a partial silence at the end of 'Fly Like an Eagle,' with a sort of rushing sound in the background that I think is supposed to be the wind, or maybe time rushing past."

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 246

Lincoln loops the pause in each song so it lasts for minutes. If my friends are around, I ignore Lincoln's music. When it's just us, the pauses are my favorite.    They sound like this:

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 231

On a trip to New York, riding the Staten Island Ferry for fun, because neither of them had ever done it, Susan turned to him suddenly and said, "Let's make sure it's always like this." And so entwined were their thoughts at that point that Ted knew exactly why she'd said it: not because they'd made love that morning or drunk a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé at lunch -- because she'd felt the passage of time. And then Ted felt it, too, in the leaping brown water, the scudding boats and wind -- motion, chaos everywhere -- and he'd held Susan's hand and said, "Always. It will always be like this."

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 201

She lay alongside you, every part of you touching, like you'd done so many nights before she met Drew. You felt Sasha's strength seeping into your skin. you tried to hold her, but your hands were stuffed-animal stumps, and you couldn't move them.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 197

Of course, Drew knows nothing about how bad things were for Sasha in Naples, and lately you have the feeling she's starting to forget, begin over again as the person she is to Drew. This makes you sick with envy; why couldn't you do that for Sasha? Who's going to do it for you?

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 196

After Bix and Lizzie got together, you started spending nights in Sasha's room, sleeping in Lizzie's empty bed, three feet away from Sasha's. You know the scar on her left ankle from a break that had to be operated on when it didn't heal right; you know the Big Dipper of reddish moles around her belly button and her mothball breath when she first wakes up. Everyone assumed you were a couple -- it was that deep between you and Sasha. She would cry in her sleep, and you'd climb into her bed and hold her until her breathing got regular and slow. She felt so light in your arms. You'd fall asleep holding Sasha and wake up with a hard-on and just lie there, feeling this body you knew so well, its skin and smells, alongside your own need to fuck someone, waiting for the two to merge into one impulse. Come on, pull this all together and act like someone normal for a change, but you were scared to put your lust to the test, not wanting to ruin it with Sasha if things went wrong.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 191

"It's okay," she says, and you know you should leave it there -- it's fine, leave it alone, but some crazy engine inside you won't let you stop: "I'm sorry your mom is a bigot. I'm sorry Bix has to have a girlfriend from Texas. I'm sorry I'm an asshole. I'm sorry I make you nervous because I tried to kill myself. I'm sorry to get in the way of your nice afternoon...." Your throat tightens up and your eyes get wet as you watch their faces go from stony to sad, and it's all kind of moving and sweet except that you're not completely there -- a part of you is a few feet away, or above, thinking, Good, they'll forgive you, they won't desert you, and the question is, which one is really "you," the one saying and doing whatever it is, or the one watching?

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 186

Everyone laughs except Bix, who's at his computer, and you feel like a funny guy for maybe half a second, until it occurs to you that they probably only laughed because they could see you were trying to be funny, and they're afraid you'll jump out the window onto East Seventh Street if you fail, even at something so small.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 173 - footnote 2.

Occasionally, life affords you the time, the repose, the dolce far niente  to ask the sorts of questions that go largely unexamined in the brisk course of ordinary life: How well do you recall the mechanics of photosynthesis? Have you ever managed to use the word "ontology" in a conversational sentence? At what precise moment did you tip just slightly out of alignment with the relatively normal life you had been enjoying theretofore, cant infinitesimally to the left or the right and thus embark upon the trajectory that ultimately delivered you to your present whereabouts?

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 131

And now Bosco was sick, hardly able to move, feverishly planning his death. Was this outcome a freak aberration from natural laws, or was it normal -- a thing they should have seen coming? Had they somehow brought it on?

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 131

She was thinking of the old days, as she and Bennie now called them -- not just pre-Crandale but premarriage, preparenthood, premoney, pre-hard drug renunciation, preresponsibility of any kind, when they were still kicking around the Lower East Side with Bosco, going to bed after sunrise, turning up at strangers' apartments, having sex in quasi-public, engaging in daring acts that had more than once included (for her) shooting heroin, because none of it was serious. They were young and lucky and strong -- what did they have to worry about? If they didn't like the result, they could go back and start again.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 113

How better to mark success than by going to a place where you didn't belong?

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 106

They were huddled up against each other, looking haggard and sexy the way young people can for a little while, until they just look haggard.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 92

There was a picture of Bennie receiving some kind of award, looking out of breath and a little cross-eyed -- one of those frozen, hectic instants you just know has a whole happy life attached.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 91

I tilt my head at the roof. Rolph and I sat up there a whole night once, spying down on a party Lou was having for one of his bands. Even after the noise stopped, we stayed, our backs on the cool tiles. We were waiting for the sun. It came up fast, small and bright and round. "Like a baby," Rolph said, and I started to cry. This fragile new sun in our arms.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 86

Some mornings, the sun looks wrong outside my window. I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: It's finished. Everything went past, without me. Those days I know not to close my eyes for too long, or the fun will really start.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 85

We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 56

People will try to change you, Rhea, Lou goes. Don't let em.

But I want to change.

No, he goes, serious. You're beautiful. Stay like this.

But the freckles, I go, and my throat gets that ache.    

The freckles are the best part, Lou says. Some guy is going to go apeshit for those freckles. He's going to kiss them one by one.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 50

And Jocelyn goes, What about the mosquitoes? and Lou goes, I've never seen a blacker sky or a brighter moon, and I realize that I'm beginning my adult life right now, on this night.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 48

I remember every hug I've given him. I learn one thing each time: how warm his skin is, how he has muscles like Scotty even though he never takes his shirt off. This time I find his heartbeat, which pushes my hand through his back.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 46

Ricky Sleeper fell of the stage at a gig, Joe Rees of Target Video is making an entire movie of punk rock, two sisters we always see at the club have started turning tricks to pay for heroin. Knowing all this makes us one step closer to being real, but not completely. When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 42

Even though Scotty is magnetic, with bleached hair and a studly chest that he likes to uncover when it's sunny out, his mother died three years ago from sleeping pills. Scotty's been quieter since then, and in cold weather he shivers like someone is shaking him.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 41

Scotty is magnetic. And I say this as someone who does not love him.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 41

On warm days, Scotty plays his guitar. Not the electric he uses for Flaming Dildos gigs, but a lap steel guitar that you hold a different way. Scotty actually built this instrument: bent the wood, glued it, painted on the shellac. Everyone gathers around, there's no way not to when Scotty plays.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Pg 29

Hearing the music get made, that was the thing: people and instruments and beaten-looking equipment aligning abruptly into a single structure of sound, flexible and alive.