The Guardian | 30.04.22 | SATURDAY | 69New tech and
old wounds
The follow-up to
A Visit from the
Goon Squad probes
nostalgia, yearning
and collective
self-surveillance
Beejay Silcox
A
VISIT FROM the Goon Squad , Jennifer
Egan’s 2010 Pulitzer-winning rock ’n’roll
novel, felt like the beginning of
something. It was a tale as gimmicky
and restless as the smartphone era
threatened to be. One chapter was
written entirely in PowerPoint slides; another in
text speak (“if thr r children, thr mst b a f Utr, rt?”).
The cast was a neon collision of kleptomaniacs,
philanderers, It girls, autocrats and a guitar band called
the Flaming Dildos. And the plot ricocheted like a
browsing-addled brain. But if A Visit from the Goon
Squad carried the promise of a grand wave of tech-
inf lected fiction, that literary trend never quite
materialised. In an era of screen-curated selfh ood,
autofi ction surged instead.
A dozen years on, and Egan’s cult novel now feels
like the end of something, a kind of techno-optimist
elegy: a study in time’s “incremental defl ations”, and
the loneliness of hyper-connectivity. It’s this sense of
paradoxical isolation that Egan revisits in her new book.
The Candy House is less a sequel to Goon Squad than a
fraternal twin. Minor characters are thrust into the thick
of things; formerly major characters make Hitchcockian
cameos. As befi ts its title, The Candy House is a novel
of Easter eggs – of hidden in-joke treats. It begs to be
read alongside its more extroverted sibling, and to
consider, in the space between them, the defl ations –
incremental and otherwise – of the last decade.
Egan begins on the sharp edge of an epiphany. Bix
Bouton is a stony-faced “tech demigod”, the founder
o f s o c i a l m e d i a m e g a - e n t i t y M a n d a l a. B y d a y, h e s t r i d e s
about in his trademark leather fedora – his version of
Zuckerberg’s grey T-shirt – busy “ubiquitising” his
empire. By night, he dons a disguise and sneaks into a
discussion group of Columbia University postgrads.
For Bix is bereft of ideas. When he looks to the horizon
of his mental landscape – the place where inspiration
waits – there is nothing.
These night-time debates will vanquish Bix’s great
white emptiness. In their wake, he will create a household
gadget that allows a human mind to be copied (a kindof cortical back-up drive), and a subscription-only
spiritus mundi. Users who agree to upload their brains
w i l l g a i n a c c e s s t o t h e a n o n y m i s e d c o n t e n t o f e v e r y o t h e r
user, living or dead; a great “churning gyre” of memory
and thought. Wondering about the identity of a beautiful
stranger, the grisly truth of a murder, or the fate of a
long-lost frenemy? Just run a face-match on the
CollectiveConsciousness™. Who could resist the lure of
a tangible, search-optimised past? “The collective is like
gravity,” Egan writes, “almost no one can withstand it.”
A g a i n s t t h i s b a c k d r o p o f e s c a l a t i n g d i s c l o s u r e – w h a t
Egan calls the “Self-Surveillance Era” – The Candy
House tells stories of searching. A recovering heroin
addict considers the redemptive possibility of Dungeons
and Dragons. A lovesick programmer collects trinkets,
like a human bowerbird, in the hope they’ll wordlessly
convey his aff ection. A fi lm-maker begins shrieking on
the subway, to jolt his fellow commuters into a moment
of pure sincerity. A former spy worries that her thoughts
are no longer her own. Here, once again, is the novel as
network: each component tale can be traced back to
that New York apartment full of books and big talk, where
Bix is waiting for his lightbulb moment. Connectivity
is more t ha n Ega n’s t heme, it’s her modus opera nd i.BU T FOR A L L EGA N’S form-elasticity – her inventive
peacocking, tech speculation and bricolage – the tales
that work best in The Candy House are the least
fl amboyant. What felt playful in Goon Squad now feels
a little stale: a sustained passage of back-and-forth
emails is too conveniently expository; a treatise on
spycraft is an on-the-nose wallop (“As Americans we
prize human rights above all else and cannot sanction
their violation. When someone threatens our rights,
however, a wider leeway becomes necessary”).
Underneath all the glitz and frippery, there is
something fundamentally old-fashioned about The
Candy House. Egan takes her title from Hansel and
Gretel, and the wicked witch’s gingerbread trap. It’s a
handy metaphor for the dopamine sugar-rush of social
media, and the bargains we too willingly strike to
participate in online life (“Never trust a candy house!”).
But the most ardent searchers in this book are grown
children – the sons and daughters of absent baby boomer
parents. “An entire generation will throw off the fetters
o f r o t e c o m m i t m e n t i n f a v o u r o f i n v e n t i o n , h o p e ,” o n e
bereft daughter explains, as she reconstructs a catalytic
night in her father’s life, “and we, their children, will
try to locate the moment we lost them and worry that
it was our fault.” So many Hansels and Gretels, wandering
alone in the wilderness with their desperate hunger.
It’s this insatiable – and unsatiable – yearning that
The Candy House draws out so tenderly, as those
children tell their feckless parents’ stories as a way to
fi nd their own, scour the great aggregate brain for signs
they were loved, and reanimate a heyday they never
lived. This is a novel of new tech and old wounds.
The near-future America Egan conjures is numbed
and festering: a country full of opioid dreamers and pill
mills. But the most irresistible and dangerous drug of
them all – the ultimate brain-rotting candy – is nostalgia,
even the sly, ironic kind that powers our dreary cycle
of reboots and remakes. “Tongue-in-cheek nostalgia
is merely the portal, the candy house, if you will,” an
ageing rock star muses, “through which we hope to
lure in a new generation and bewitch them.” How hard
it is to beat on, this novel shows, when we’re borne back
ceaselessly into the past.
To buy a copy for £17.40 go to guardianbookshop.comTimes Square,
New YorkThe Candy House
Jennifer Egan
CORSAIR, £20ANDY RYAN/GETTY
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