Jennifer Egan's Fiction and Visions of the Future | Hacker News Reader

Jennifer Egan's Fiction and Visions of the Future

newyorker.com

34 pointsmitchbob13 comments

While she's certainly a highly accomplished writer of her own accord, a weird bit of trivia is that she dated Steve Jobs for a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Egan

While I'm here dropping off-topic trivia, another interesting one is that accomplished writer Mona Simpson is Steve Jobs's sister, though they didn't know each other until later in life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Simpson

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but will do this evening. Thanks for posting it!

Even more off-topic: Mona Simpson is the name of Homer Simpson's mother - named after the writer Mona Simpson by her husband, Richard Appel, who was a Simpson's writer.

It feels worthwhile pointing out something others may miss: you aren't using "sister" in the colloquial sense here at all. Simpson and Jobs shared BOTH parents.

The couple were not yet married, or even really a stable couple, when Jobs was born in 1955. His birth mother gave him up, but then ended up marrying his birth father after all and subsequently having Simpson.

Well, that’s quite a vote for nature over nurture.

Really enjoyed her "Visit from the Goon Squad". Highly recommended.

Egan is one of those writers who sees tech and the online world, and then tries to fold it into her work without really understanding it at all.

I find her work pretty banal and superficial as a result. Her hamfisted choices in Goon Squad mean I won't bother with the new book.

Off-topic, but "Egan" makes me think of "Greg Egan", the Australian Hard SF writer whose works are enjoyed by a subset of HN people.

I enjoy Greg's work, and am a huge fan of hard SF.

Fair point for sure, but the topic is explicitly about a different Egan.

What "hamfisted choices in Goon Squad" are you referring to?

She may not "understand it" in the same way we do but in terms of how we experience and are shaped by it as a culture I think she's very astute. I read goon squad recently and was surprised it's more than a decade old so rather than engaging with recent changes from technology she was more predicting them.

I think it would have read as very cynical to me in 2011 but reading it now it's clear that was warranted.

I wouldn't use Egan talking about it because there is a very excellent Australian science fiction writer named Greg Egan that totally redeems the last name.

Finished Candy House recently and found it fairly mediocre. She seems to prefer writing about people than thinking through the consequences of the technology she introduced, and as a result, the Sci-Fi aspects feel awkwardly bolted on to the story, rather than having any real consequences to the people in it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com