Jennifer Egan clearly tried to make a very postmodern and interesting book. The story “Great Rock and Roll Pauses” is an example of her attempted ingenuity. Overall, the slide format was annoying and unnecessary. It is obvious that she thought it would be a modern way to tell a story, however, the format was unenjoyable and a pain to read. The slides seemed like an outline or a summary of the story, rather than developed emotions, scenes, and situations. Egan failed to create a new, interesting and enjoyable format.
“Great Rock and Roll Pauses” told the story of the character Sasha, from the first story in the book, her husband Drew, and her two children Ally and Lincoln. Egan created a cliché story about an adolescent girl who is frequently annoyed with her mom. The story also focuses on the boy, Lincoln’s, extreme interest in pauses in rock songs. Lincoln enjoyed the pauses because they made the listener question whether the song was over and feel relief when the song continued to play. Once again, Egan tried very hard to create an interesting element in the book. However, I think this metaphor is overly stretched and uninteresting. Overall, Jennifer Egan’s constant attempts at modern storytelling are bothersome and pretentious.
I actually thought the slides format was really interesting. I wasn't a huge fan of the story itself, though. This whole theme of marriages all being miserable and everyone hiding their terrible pasts from their children is getting tiresome. And I agree that her attempts at modern storytelling can get sort of pretentious at times. In half the stories, they work. In the other half they just seem like gimmicks.
ReplyDelete