“A Visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan: Pulitzer Prize novel begins with joke and metaphor inadvertently suggestive of multiple personality

What does the title mean? Since a character says “Time’s a goon” (1, p. 96), it seems to mean that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

How can this novel be relevant here? Based on its title and the reviews I’ve seen, I do not expect it to be intentionally connected to multiple personality.

However, it may have inadvertent connections, such as multiple personality jokes and multiple personality-related metaphors.

In Chapter 1, there is this joke: “…here in N.Y.C.: you have no fucking idea what people are really like. They’re not even two-faced — they’re, like, multiple personalities” (1, p. 10).

Chekhov said: "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun

Something must have made the author think of multiple personality, but no review I’ve seen suggests there will be anything about it in the novel. (I am now less than halfway through.)

However, there has been a character who is nonpsychotic and hears a voice in her head. If a character says this without elaboration, it may be only a conventional metaphor. But if the character describes and personifies the voice, and especially if the voice is quoted, it is probably the voice of an alternate personality:

“…Dolly’s relief was so immense that it almost obliterated the tiny anxious muttering voice inside her: Your client is a genocidal dictator. Dolly had worked with shitheads before, God knew; if she didn’t take this job someone else would snap it up; being a publicist is about not judging your clients—these excuses were lined up in formation, ready for deployment should that small dissident voice pluck up its courage to speak with any volume…” (1, p. 105).

Assuming that this character will not be revealed to have multiple personality, then her hearing a personified, quotable voice is simply something the author had thought of as ordinary psychology.

Why would the author think that? Most people don’t hear voices. But most novelists—and other normal people with multiple personality trait—do.

1. Jennifer Egan. A Visit from the Goon Squad. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

Added 8:22 p.m.: I had difficulty following what was going on in the rest of the novel and stopped trying.