A Visit from the Goon Squad

When Bennie Salazar first appears in the novel, he is in his mid-forties and struggling with sexual impotence and anxiety attacks prompted by shameful memories. Bennie is a music industry executive with humble beginnings, who climbs to the top of his industry and then slides into professional irrelevance. Later chapters reveal that, as a teenager, he was rejected by the first girl he loved in favor of his best friend Scotty. At a fundamental level, Bennie is embarrassed by his non-Caucasian background, which he believes prevents him from fully assimilating into the upscale society to which he aspires. Bennie spends much of his life trying to distance himself from Scotty, but eventually experiences a form of rebirth, particularly in his career, when he reconciles with Scotty.

Bennie’s anxieties are largely focused on his body, which he cannot control. While he is successful in producing music, his ethnicity, his sexuality, and his aging, all serve to betray his desires and undermine the successes he does achieve. Bennie’s drive to assimilate into white upper-class New York society, contrasted with his body’s genetic makeup and natural tendencies, create a conflict between his aspirational self and his reality. Bennie embodies the question of identity, how much of one’s identity is created and how much of it is the natural state of the body.

Lou Kline is a music producer who, in his mid-forties, discovers Bennie Salazar. Lou is a successful music producer, whose life of decadence ends with a series of strokes. He has six children with a number of different wives. His son Rolph, who in childhood is Lou’s confidant, eventually commits suicide after a period of estrangement. When we first encounter Lou, he is dating seventeen-year-old Jocelyn, who will introduce him to Bennie. As Bennie’s mentor, Lou represents the extremes that Bennie both admires and fears: the excesses of a successful life in the music industry, and the brokenness of his life in his final days. For Bennie, Lou is both the ideal to which he aspires and the frightful specter of what awaits him once he achieves his desires.

Rhea and Jocelyn are childhood best friends. They are part of the circle of friends that surrounds the band called The Flaming Dildos, of which Bennie and Scotty are members. At seventeen years old, Rhea feels left out when Jocelyn starts dating the much older Lou Kline. Although Lou behaves as if Jocelyn and Rhea are, together, “Lou’s girls” (50), it is Jocelyn who has a sexual relationship with him. They reconnect when they visit Lou, shortly before his death. Jocelyn, who has spent much of her life abusing drugs, is now in recovery from her addiction, living with her mother, and pursuing a college degree. Rhea takes a more traditional path, getting married and having three children.

Scotty and Bosco are two different musicians whom Bennie knows at different points in his career. As teenagers, Scotty and Bennie are band-mates who have a falling-out over a girl. Although their lives go in different directions, Scotty to a life of seclusion and Bennie to a life of affluence, they both experience renewal, both as friends and as individuals, later in life when Bennie tells Scotty, “It’s time you become a star” (333). When Bosco appears in Goon Squad, he is a rock star already faded into obscurity, “obese, alcoholic, and cancer-ridden” (113). However, he is determined to turn his death into a spectacle. Later in the novel, we learn that Bosco does not in fact die at that time, but, as Alison learns from the book Jules Jones writes about him, he “ends up recovering and owning a dairy farm” (257). In the novel, Scotty and Bosco are unrelated, except for their indirect connection through Bennie. Bennie uses Scotty’s words, “I want to know what happened between A and B” (Chapter 6, p. 101) as the title for Bosco’s album, “A to B” (122). Thematically, however, both characters express the central theme of the novel in exactly the same words: “Time’s a goon, right?” (127; 332). 

Rob and Drew represent two facets of Sasha’s life. Her friendship with Rob, who pretends to be her lover, serves as a balm to her troubled past. Because they both have sources of shame in their lives, they can be honest with one another, each taking comfort in the recognition of the other. Drew embodies, both narratively and thematically, the death of Sasha’s past. While he does not kill Rob, he is the provocation that drives Rob into the river. With Drew, Sasha begins to forget about her past. In fact, it is with Drew that Sasha eventually does find a healthier means of expression through her art and through their children.

Dolly Peale is La Doll, a PR consultant in high demand in New York City. Her reputation is destroyed when she organizes an event where a malfunction with a light installation causes the attendees to be burned and scarred. After going through several incarnations, she eventually leaves the city and opens a successful gourmet shop. The character of Dolly provides a satirical view of the world of publicity and celebrity. By putting a ridiculous hat on the head of a malicious dictator, she is able to increase his public opinion ratings. The debacle that cost her her reputation becomes a status symbol, and people like Kitty Jackson choose to inflict scars upon themselves to look like victims of the event. In her life and in her work, Dolly is a dramatization of the power of reinvention and renewal.