To Save Time in a Bottle: Confronting the Past and Distorting Reality with Scottie, Robert, and Bennie Anonymous 12th Grade

In her novel A Visit From The Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan addresses the illusion of attaining a falsified variation of reality (a gilded outlook on life's "Point B"), in addition to the impossibility of relinquishing responsibility for a conflicted scenario. The aforementioned inconsistencies are evident in the lives of Scotty, Robert, and Bennie—three individuals whose inability to recapture, let alone reconcile the past, and assemble a sanguine future, is the greatest detriment in their endeavor to move forward.

Bennie, a former punk-rocker turned record executive, struggles to reclaim his sexual prowess characterized during a several-decade period by "the half hard-on that had been his constant companion since the age of thirteen" (Egan 17). Furthermore, he laments past relationships and accidents of seemingly minimal importance. Taking note during discontinuous flashbacks, Bennie's mind "drifted to an awards ceremony a few years ago when he'd tried to introduce a jazz pianist as 'incomparable' and ended up calling her incompetent'" (20). Additionally, he takes subtle maneuvers to spite his ex-wife through "betrayal bonding" (e.g. purchasing his nine-year-old son coffee). Within Bennie lies an inherent apprehension to undo the...