A Visit from the Goon Squad

榮獲2011年 普立茲小說獎、美國國家書評人獎

　　本書二度擊敗《自由》，暢銷突破40萬冊；
　　不僅是「年度之書」，更譽為21世紀小說的新希望

　　人生如同音樂，時間無情流過，為何他比我美好？

　　愛麗森．布萊克是個十二歲的女孩，他哥哥霖肯有輕微自閉症，喜歡聽搖滾樂曲。霖肯說偉大的搖滾樂曲，經常會出現很棒的停頓，有時幾秒，有時長達數十秒。「有時你以為樂曲結束了，其實沒有。」顯然所有的歌曲都會結束，但當他把每首歌的停頓做成無限循環的樂段重覆播放，愛麗森愛死了這些停頓片段。於是她用PowerPoint將霖肯的音樂研究，寫成『出現很棒停頓的搖滾歌曲』報告。「這些停頓中間究竟發生了什麼事？」就在這裡，她發現了時間的祕密。

　　《時間裡的癡人》一書中有十三個主角，分作十三個章節，作者從一個年華老去的「前」龐克搖滾歌手與唱片公司主管班尼．薩拉查，還有他的助手莎夏開始，展開一段每篇變換主述角色，但彼此環環相扣的故事，讀者在各自獨立的故事中，走過紐約、舊金山、拿波里到非洲，角色和故事始終相互關聯，串成一個長篇，時間長達四十年。書中主角並不全然認識，或知道彼此的過去，但讀者清楚知道，他們的人生有過一連串的交集。回想各人過去的生活，傳達出人生的失落、宿命的無情。

　　《時間裡的癡人》藉由一個搖滾樂的世界，描述音樂與時間的交錯：高峰樂段的神奇停頓、人生的大起大落、沒有絕對的起點與終點。在作者筆下，宿命讓我們與某些人相遇，就算是短暫連結，也足以殘酷地掀起波濤、改變人生。作者使用的風格與語調多變到令讀者喘不過氣來，包括悲劇筆法、諷刺風格，甚至PowerPoint。她精準抓住凡人皆有的自我毀滅欲望，卻又深深渴望救贖；在時間的無情推進下，我們如何瘋狂地在音樂裡尋找這兩股湍流，無能為力地任其沖刷，卻也從中得到淨化。伊根是我們這個時代最膽氣十足的作者，而這是她最狡猾、最驚人、最令人振奮的作品。

　　本書榮獲《紐約時報》、《洛杉磯時報》、《波士頓地球報》、《芝加哥論壇報》、《邁阿密前鋒報》、《歐普拉雜誌》、《出版人週刊》、《舊金山紀事報》、《泰晤士報》、《華盛頓郵報》、《村聲雜誌》、《時代雜誌》年度好書。

　　Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

　　We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life — divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house — and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang — who thrived and who faltered — and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

　　A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both — and escape the merciless progress of time — in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.

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　　★本書中譯版《時間裡的癡人》由時報出版。

作者簡介

珍妮佛．伊根（Jennifer Egan）

　　著有《The Keep》、《Look at Me》、《The Invisible Circus》，以及短篇小說集《Emerald City）。她的小說作品散見《紐約客》、《哈潑》、《老爺》（GQ）、《Zoetrope: All-Story》與《Ploughshares》等雜誌。非文學作品則散見《紐約時報雜誌》，目前與丈夫小孩住在布魯克林。作品《時間裡的癡人》榮獲二○一一年普立茲小說獎、美國國家書評人獎。珍妮佛．伊根因此榮登《時代雜誌》年度百大影響人物，被譽為當代最勇於挑戰創新、最出色的小說家。

　　Jennifer Egan is the author of The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her nonfiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She lives with her husband and sons in Brooklyn.
 
　　Visit the Jennifer Egan’s official website: www.jenniferegan.com