Logistics: How I Made this Site
If you've read A Visit from the Goon Squad, you have some idea of how intertwined and involved its structure is. What follows is an outline of how I took that convoluted structure and tried to make some sense out of it.
Taking Notes
First, while I was reading, I took notes. Fairly obsessive notes. I've explained how I take notes for novels in more detail here, but here's a quick rundown of what I do:
-Start a Pages document. (Pages is the Mac equivalent of Microsoft Word--more on why I use that program in a minute.)
-On the left side of the page, I type the page number I'm reading at the moment, followed by whatever information (character names, images, places, etc.) I think I'll want to be able to reference later.
-Start a Pages document. (Pages is the Mac equivalent of Microsoft Word--more on why I use that program in a minute.)
-On the left side of the page, I type the page number I'm reading at the moment, followed by whatever information (character names, images, places, etc.) I think I'll want to be able to reference later.
Putting it Together
After I finished The Goon Squad, I decided I wanted to chart the characters' timelines. In order to do that, I used the Pages Search function (Pages > Edit >Show Search) to bring up the list you can see on the left edge of the picture above. This function allows me to search for any word in my notes document and shows me every time that word appears. (In the picture above, it's showing all the times "Scotty" shows up.) I haven't found an equivalent function in Word, which is why I use Pages for writing notes.
Next, I went through that list and cut-and-pasted each entry that seemed useful to what I was working on (chronology, in this case). I made sure to copy the story the entries came from, as well as the page number they occurred on. Once I had that condensed, character-specific list, I looked through it (often referring to the book for clarification) and started figuring out which thing comes first.
In The Goon Squad, that's a more complicated task than in most novels. For example, Sasha is the protagonist of the opening story/chapter, "Found Objects," but her earliest timeline event doesn't come up until page 164 of the book.
Since I'm kind of obsessive once I get going on things like this, I also tried to figure out the age of the characters when different events in the book occurred. Sometimes, this was fairly simple. Sasha and Bennie, especially, have a lot of age-markers throughout the book.
Other ages took some more work to figure out. Here's how I determined that Lulu is 23 years old in "Pure Language," the final story/chapter in the book:
-the story mentions that Bennie is 60, and that Lulu is two years younger than Chris, Bennie's son.
-In "The Gold Cure," Bennie is 44, while Chris is 9.
-Thus, if Bennie is 16 years older in "Pure Language" than he is in "The Gold Cure," that means Chris is, too. That is, if he was 9 back then, he is 25 now.
-Since Lulu is two years younger than Chris, that means she is 23 years old.
In case anyone is still reading this far down, I'll give you a little Easter egg: The last event chronologically in the entire book comes in the fourth story, "Safari." Check the end of Lulu's timeline to see what it is.
Next, I went through that list and cut-and-pasted each entry that seemed useful to what I was working on (chronology, in this case). I made sure to copy the story the entries came from, as well as the page number they occurred on. Once I had that condensed, character-specific list, I looked through it (often referring to the book for clarification) and started figuring out which thing comes first.
In The Goon Squad, that's a more complicated task than in most novels. For example, Sasha is the protagonist of the opening story/chapter, "Found Objects," but her earliest timeline event doesn't come up until page 164 of the book.
Since I'm kind of obsessive once I get going on things like this, I also tried to figure out the age of the characters when different events in the book occurred. Sometimes, this was fairly simple. Sasha and Bennie, especially, have a lot of age-markers throughout the book.
Other ages took some more work to figure out. Here's how I determined that Lulu is 23 years old in "Pure Language," the final story/chapter in the book:
-the story mentions that Bennie is 60, and that Lulu is two years younger than Chris, Bennie's son.
-In "The Gold Cure," Bennie is 44, while Chris is 9.
-Thus, if Bennie is 16 years older in "Pure Language" than he is in "The Gold Cure," that means Chris is, too. That is, if he was 9 back then, he is 25 now.
-Since Lulu is two years younger than Chris, that means she is 23 years old.
In case anyone is still reading this far down, I'll give you a little Easter egg: The last event chronologically in the entire book comes in the fourth story, "Safari." Check the end of Lulu's timeline to see what it is.