![]() ![]() “They were so young when ‘Goon Squad’ came out that I think they somewhat regarded me as a failure,” she said. Her sons, Manu and Raoul, have grown from toddlers to teen-agers. In that time, Egan has published two other books, “ The Keep” and “ A Visit from the Goon Squad,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, in 2011. The book was “ Manhattan Beach,” Egan’s latest novel-her fifth, if you’re going by its October publication date, though it has been in progress for close to fifteen years. “I thought very, very seriously about abandoning it, because I just thought, Hell-the distance between this and something anybody is ever going to want to read is too great for me to span.” But that’s normal.” Then she wrote a second draft, and despaired. ![]() “I did one draft that was absolutely unspeakable. “The book was bad,” she told me recently. None of it helps when you find yourself back at the beginning, confronted with your own unredeemable prose, convinced, as Jennifer Egan was not so long ago, that you’ll never produce a decent chapter again. Readers may love you critics may praise you you might win a big prize. Writing four novels is no guarantee that you’ll complete a fifth. ![]()
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