Scala Radio Book Club: The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
A new novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Last updated 17th Aug 2022
In the Scala Radio Book Club this week (Thursday 28th April 2022), Mark Forrest chatted to American author, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan, on her brand-new novel The Candy House.
It's 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He's forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalising" memory. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, Own Your Unconscious - which allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others - has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.
In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of styles--from omniscient to first-person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House.
Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game. Egan takes her "deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology-driven, image-saturated culture" (Vogue) to stunning new heights and delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption.
Mark asked, ‘There are various characters that we will meet in this book who were either at the centre or in the periphery of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Why did you want to bring back some of those characters and explore their natures and their lives?’
‘Some of the characters I explore in The Candy House are people we've only heard by name in Goon Squad,’ said Jennifer. ‘So usually curiosity is my entrée, and what sparks it is a sense of not knowing someone either because we haven't met them, or because they seem very opaque. Both books are so open-ended. Each chapter is about a different person. Each chapter stands completely on its own, and each chapter has a different mood and tone and vibe. Each person is the centre of their own universe, and that leads to a whole host of other possible characters for me to get curious about.’
Mark was intrigued to know Jennifer’s opinions on social media companies. ‘Now you've created a social media entrepreneur who may be quite a good guy. We don't know enough about him. How much do you think it matters, in the real world, who owns these social media platforms?’
‘Oh, I think it matters gigantically,’ said Jennifer. ‘Engagement is all about getting people to react and to be involved in the platform, and anger is one of the things that does that most efficiently. I think it's very problematic to have companies that profit from our anger and fighting. If we look at my tech creator, there's a kind of poignant aspect to his story in that he invents this technology with the best of intentions, as frankly, I think most people do. People tend to think they're making the world better with the work they do. But he ends up being very pained by a sense that he has actually harmed the culture with his invention in ways that he never intended.’
Mark finished the interview by asking, ‘How much did winning the Pulitzer Prize change your life?’
‘It was a really big deal. We are a nation as Americans who love brands, and the Pulitzer is the brand that really means something. I feel very aware of the randomness of that, having helped to judge prizes, and knowing the kind of messy process of making these decisions. It's sort of shocking to see how iconic it ends up feeling when you receive it, even though it's just good luck, frankly. However, having good luck in this life matters a lot. I can say that it was revolutionary in terms of my career. I found a number of readers that I never would have had access to before. It's a gift to have anyone care about anything I do. I really mean that.’
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