Ivan Solas asked Jennifer Egan:

As a fan of cerebral Sci-Fi, I still regard the "Pure Language" chapter of "A Visit from The Goon Squad" as one of the best pieces I've ever read. Your vision of the evolution of language and the increasing difficulty of dialogue between old and new generations feels spot-on. Did you plan the storyline to step into the future from the beginning, or did it come as a realization once you were wrapping up?

Jennifer Egan OMG Ivan, I am just seeing this question!! I guess I checked out of Goodreads for a while...but I will answer now: at the beginning I had NO intention of venturing into the future; in fact I resisted it. I was thrust there by the wish to write about Alex (a character we know is very young in chapter 1, which takes place in 2006), well into his adulthood. What to do? So I imagined forward and found, to my surprise, that it was a lot of fun. In a way that freed me to lean even farther into the future in my new novel, THE CANDY HOUSE, which takes place in the same world as GOON SQUAD. So I'm grateful for that initial necessity. Thank you for reading!!

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