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Found time: Kairos in A Visit from the Goon Squad

2018; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 59; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00111619.2018.1427544

1939-9138

Melissa J. Strong,

Cinema and Media Studies

A Visit from the Goon Squad conceives of time as a brutalizing force. Passing years ravage characters who wonder where time went. Time is central to the story and to the nonlinear way Jennifer Egan tells it, with thirteen chapters alternating perspectives and shifting between past, present, and future. Much of the scholarship on the book to date addresses its negative treatment of time. However, this essay argues that time is not always rough in Goon Squad. Hopeful opportunities emerge during disruptions to linear narrative and challenges to measurable clock time. Approaching the novel through the lens of kairos time—Paul Tillich’s term for the possibility of the eternal—uncovers opportunities for wholeness and healing in a work frequently characterized as hopeless and near dystopian. Kairos fosters human connections, links younger and older selves, and offers possibility to characters who fear time is running out.