Celebrity, Punk, Time, Nostalgia, and the Unpredictable Trajectories of Fame in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad

The paper investigates the pursuit, the pitfalls and the unexpected trajectories of fame in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad (2011). In the novel, celebrity, its pursuit and its loss are crucial in the main plot emerging from the thirteen interlinked storylines that delineate the countercultural context of the punk-rock scene from the 1970s to the present – most of which investigate the forms and meanings of celebrity in the transition towards the dematerializaton of experience with the advent of the new media. What is the relation between art, fame, and real and virtual identities in the transition from the “world of objects and venues” to the iPod era? Can celebrity be part of a countercultural universe, or can it be only a vicarious accomplishment? How are the vestiges of the old celebrity world reshaped in the era of instant fame? To what extent can artistic/aesthetic value shift from its content to its circulation and dissemination? The paper investigates celebrity and its corollaries at the turn of the millennium as depicted in Egan’s novel: the craving for eternal youth and the immortalizing thriving of fame and its symbols; the relation between fame and the celebrity’s body; the forms and fate of authenticity in the new mediascapes and systems of consumption.