Another paradox she thinks about, which drove her to write this book, focuses on the ambiguity of data.
She loves “the centerpiece of a contradiction,” she says, like how the Internet is simultaneously connecting and distancing people. (Seriously.) In the literary world, new novels tap into these ideas too, like The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara.Įgan uses these themes to explore privacy and individual identity. Even Grimes spent her Vanity Fair cover story talking about the possibility of her being a simulated memory for Elon Musk. While the interplay between tech and consciousness has been regular fodder for sci-fi artists, it’s recently resurfaced in pop culture as well, from Severance on Apple TV+ to the recent The Matrix Resurrections, which premiered in December. If this sounds vaguely familiar, that makes sense.
The Matrix Resurrections revives Neo, Trinity, and the sci-fi franchise’s interest in perceived reality. “The thought of all those lives, an infinite number of consciousness, having passed life on the cobblestones on these floors, within walls we can still enter, is so exciting to me,” says Egan, the recent president of PEN America. Egan then traces the lives of characters within this world, including some from Goon Squad like Bix, Sasha’s son, Bennie’s ex-wife, and Lou and his daughters. People archive artifacts like videos and photos but also feelings and thoughts, creating something like a virtual-reality experience when they inhabit someone else’s memory.
The new book starts from the point of view of a tech mogul, Bix, who designed a form of collective memory that can be accessed publicly so that no event or emotion is ever lost. That’s one of these rules I have, that the reader come to know everything I know.” “It felt weird to know things the reader didn’t. “There were characters whose lives and futures I knew, but that I couldn’t put into ,” she says, calling from California. “Goon Squad never really ended for me,” says Egan over Zoom. Yet the world of Candy House has a completely different feel from Goon Squad: celebratory, gleaming, and futuristic, as opposed to the latter’s shady watering holes and bleakly lived-in hotel bathrooms. In the new novel, she borrows characters and storylines from the latter, and structures it similarly, with each chapter acting as a standalone story within a shared universe. Last month, author Jennifer Egan released her seventh book, The Candy House, a sequel of sorts to 2010’s runaway bestseller, A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011.
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