Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Eganis an American novelist and short story writer who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 September 1962
CountryUnited States of America
thinking way want
I think ethical ambivalence is a kind of innoculation, a way of excusing yourself in advance for something you actually want to do. No offense.
writing opposites way
That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.
reading writing way
We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.
way metaphor
There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.
way circumstances tolerate
Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.
fascinated interested love ways
I'm just interested in serialization in fiction. I'm fascinated by it. I love the 19th-century novels. I'm interested in ways to bring that back to fiction.
both built individual liked music numbers plot record side sounds structured terms uses
Proust, my big inspiration for 'Goon Squad,' uses music a lot in his novel, both in terms of plot and structure. I liked the idea of doing the same thing, which is one reason I structured 'Goon Squad' as a record album, with an A side and a B side, that's built around the contrasting sounds of the individual numbers in it.
came define degree kids later listened mom music ourselves people placing punk songs themselves
People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had 'The Who' and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the '80s had other songs and bands. It's a way of placing ourselves culturally and temporally.
I've never been that confident. I don't tend to think, swaggeringly, 'I'm going to ace this.' It's just not who I am.
current forgot overnight plane pulled scared utterly
I was on a very bumpy plane ride, an overnight flight. I was so miserable, and I pulled out 'David Copperfield,' and I forgot how scared and tired I was, and I thought, 'This is what reading should be.' I'm utterly transported out of my current situation.
accepted francisco marriage obsessed proposal roger san shows
I was obsessed with The Who. I would have accepted a marriage proposal from Roger Daltrey on the spot. I went to all of their shows in San Francisco and some in L.A. That was as close as I got to being a groupie.
felt figure fit hard time trying unhappy
When I first had a child, I really had a hard time trying to figure out how it was all going to fit together. Because I felt like, when I was with him, I wanted to be writing and I should be writing. And when I was writing, I felt like I should be with him, and wanted to be with him. So I was unhappy a lot.
constantly experience explicitly last online state surrounded thinking
My last novel, 'The Keep,' was very explicitly technological, about the quality of living in a state constantly surrounded by disembodied presences, and I was thinking very much about the online experience.
almost aspect blowing came closest element extremely fantasies futuristic including invented pass terrorist trade
The book that is the closest genetically to 'Goon Squad' is 'Look at Me.' It has the futuristic element - although, freakishly, almost every aspect I invented has come to pass in some way, including the terrorist who fantasies about blowing up the World Trade Centre. That was extremely uncomfortable. The book came out on the week of 9/11.