A Visit from the Goon Squad

by Jennifer Egan

The warming-related “adjustments” to Earth’s orbit had shortened the winter days, so that now, in January, sunset was taking place at 4:23.

the decrepit roadie was Scotty Hausmann.

“Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.”

“Only if you’ll take my arm, darling,” he replied, and a ghost version of Scotty Hausmann flickered at Alex from the dregs that were left, sexy and rakish.

And it may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering, as it did at the first Human Be-In and Monterey Pop and Woodstock. Or it may be that two generations of war and surveillance had left people craving the embodiment of their own unease in the form of a lone, unsteady man on a slide guitar.

ballads of paranoia and disconnection

forgotten and full of rage, in a way that now registered as pure.