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  1. The New YorkerJennifer Egan12/22/2125 min
    8 reads3 comments
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    The New Yorker
    8 reads
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    • Pegeen
      Top reader this weekReading streakScoutScribe
      2 years ago

      Original, exceptional writing. This would make a really cool movie. Must revisit The Goon Squad.

    • TaosTom2 years ago

      I’ll be checking out “Goon Squad “

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      2 years ago

      Holy SHIT. The sequel to one of my all-time favorite books, A Visit from the Goon Squad, is apparently coming soon and this clearly is an excerpt. (Rolph’s back! I want more Rolph!)

      Long before Readup existed, the short story Safari (itself an excerpt from Goon Squad, also published in The New Yorker before the book was released) completely changed the way I think about reading, writing and life.

      I can’t get enough Jennifer Egan, and reading her this morning is a revelation. Her stories and characters have been living all around my consciousness for the last decade, and wandering around with them - and some new characters too! - feels like some kind of homecoming or long-overdue reunion. Or just a super-fat bong hit.

      The elements of sci-fi and time travel are daring, wonderful, exciting. I’m more than a little bit on edge about that. But what’s really pressing against my temples right now is the thought of these square dudes wandering around the redwoods, stoned, thinking, is this real? and how much that echoes my own life, which started in “the ‘burbs” and progressed through some of the exact same mind-expanding hippie scenes in the magical, fairy-filled woods of Northern California.

      Life is good. Even though we’re all riddled with anxiety and depression and fear and failure, we have writers like Jennifer Egan who can put us deep into the brains and experiences of other semi-screwed-up people. That’s the revelation: when we’re actually in the moment — here, now — its all good. Even when it isn’t, it is.

      We’re all just trying to look normal when we’re handed a weird instrument and told to play. It’s a metaphor for life. Lose the shoes, skinny dip, and for fuck’s sake start strumming and singing before it’s too late, even though it’s already kinda too late, but also there’s no such thing as too late.

      Gahhh, I’m obviously so stoked right now and can’t hold it in. What a great way to feel and what a crazy (magical!) thing that good literature can do that to us.