These are the brief portraits Egan initially provides of her flawed characters. Bennie, now an aging music executive, is attempting to salvage the deal to sign one of his similarly waning artists but is hampered by his “shame memories,” memories that extinguish the creative spark he so desperately hopes to re-create later in life. Sasha, recently let go by Bennie, is on a date and indulging in the kleptomania that has left her both unemployed and living in a tiny apartment filled with random, useless objects. Both Bennie and Sasha narrate in the present day to allow the reader a first-person account of when they knew one another intimately. The first chapters of the novel alternate between their two points on view. Meet music mogul Bennie Salazar and his young personal assistant, Sasha. That is the idea, at least, behind Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD. But no matter the inevitability of time’s march, it is life’s twists and turns that afford each of us the opportunity to grow and impact our surrounding world. This thinking is frequently applied to aging sports legends, veteran employees, and fading musicians. The saying goes, “Father Time is undefeated,” and the meaning is pretty straightforward: as a person ages, their potential for significance (whether in an athletic or a creative capacity) ultimately dwindles.
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