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  1 0 I hadn't thought of it before this question, but taking another look I can see a certain B-sidedness there, especially in the slides and in both stories involving Kitty Jackson; there was at once something darker and more playful in all three of those chapters than in anything in the first half. The Kitty Jackson bits because as much as their subjects were obviously horrifying (attempted rape, genocide), I couldn't help reading them as comic pieces (the indignant tone of the journalist and his page-long footnotes, the general and his hat). And the slides seemed to be bucking the idea of even being a written story (though I think they make the most poignant chapter). So I don't know that it says anything as a unit, but if you were to put together a bunch of singles, sure, I think you might end up with more b-sides from the second half of the book than from the first. Jay Jansheski answered in Book Club- A Visit from the Goon Squad 12 months ago | Report 1 comment by Black Beetles in Amber… 0 0 "if you were to put together a bunch of singles, sure" A decent analogy. If she's primarily a short story writer, there's an art to song order, you don't just cram a bunch of singles together without mixing and working more on transitions, better matching the keys. Black Beetles in Amber commented 11 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  1 0 I don't know that there's a real answer, or at least I can't tell. The story directly preceding that switch is where Scotty asks Bennie "what happened between A and B," and then there's the break to the B section, whose first chapter is called "A to B." So I got kind of excited assuming we'd revisit everyone we met in the first half, somehow adding a sort of B-side note to their story or their personality, or demonstrating how they got from a place in their life we'd heard about to when we saw them last. Instead it just kept on chugging, with the same draw-a-thread-out-of-this-story-and-spin-a-new-one style. I was actually a little disappointed. But hey, I'm not finished yet, maybe there's something more cohesive to come? Don't get me wrong, I'm loving it. I just want to talk to Sasha again, okay? Jeez. annabee answered in Book Club- A Visit from the Goon Squad 12 months ago | Report 1 comment by David Wright… 0 0 I wonder, Annabee, if that desire to reconnect with Sasha - also mentioned elsewhere here in the post about if there is a main character or not - might have been something the author wanted to foster. I recall (spoiler) that I felt a real sense of loss at the end of the book when we realize that there is no getting back (from B to A, if you will) to the Sasha of so many years ago, and that sense that things fall apart, that the past is in the past, seemed one of the most explicit 'messages' I got from the book. None of this would have worked if there wasn't some sense of attachment with Sasha. Of course it is only natural that we invest pretty heavily in the first protagonist of the book, but the author seems to rely on that connection at the end of the book, to give us this feeling of disconnection, or loss, or.... however that final episode felt to you all. David Wright commented 11 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  0 0 "I guess the expected path of a B side of a novel would be that it would be a darker, less poppy, more eccentric version of the A side" When I hear B-Side, I assume "not good enough to include in the album, but thrown in anyway." I mean, with music, wouldn't major thematic/tonal changes just save the songs for another album, if they were good enough to keep? I didn't see any significant theme-change in the book that matches either theory. I mean, the Powerpoint was a neat technique, but disjointed with the rest of the book. I had to enjoy it on its own merits, and it didn't really unify with the rest of the book well. Hopefully the TV series can use a little er, emulsifier to unify the few neat ideas with a more compelling story. Black Beetles in Amber answered in Book Club- A Visit from the Goon Squad 11 months ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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  0 0 I wonder, Annabee, if that desire to reconnect with Sasha - also mentioned elsewhere here in the post about if there is a main character or not - might have been something the author wanted to foster. I recall (spoiler) that I felt a real sense of loss at the end of the book when we realize that there is no getting back (from B to A, if you will) to the Sasha of so many years ago, and that sense that things fall apart, that the past is in the past, seemed one of the most explicit 'messages' I got from the book. None of this would have worked if there wasn't some sense of attachment with Sasha. Of course it is only natural that we invest pretty heavily in the first protagonist of the book, but the author seems to rely on that connection at the end of the book, to give us this feeling of disconnection, or loss, or.... however that final episode felt to you all. David Wright answered in Book Club- A Visit from the Goon Squad 11 months ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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