That’s when he began singing the songs he’d been writing for years underground, songs no one had ever heard, or anything like them—"Eyes in My Head," "X’s and O’s," "Who’s Watching Hardest"—ballads of paranoia and disconnection ripped from the chest of a man you knew just by looking had never had a page or a profile or a handle or a handset, who was part of no one’s data, a guy who had lived in the cracks all these years, forgotten and full of rage, in a way that now registered as pure. Untouched. How does the author use satire in this excerpt?

The author is mocking man's inability to freely express himself.

Explanation:

Jennifer Egan's "A Visit From The Goon Squad" tells the story of numerous people all related to a record company executive Bennie Salazar. This work of fiction is considered a collection of short stories and even a novel, though it is hard to say which one it really is due to its complicated structure of narration.

The given excerpt is from the 13th Chapter of the story titled "Pure Language". In this section, the omniscient narrator describes the scene when Scotty was able to finally sing aloud the songs he had written "for years underground, songs no one had ever heard, or anything like them". But it was not a real scene, Bennie had 'hired' people to act as fans for Scotty. Through the use of the satire in this description of the passage, the author mocks man's inability to express himself freely. The songs that had been written so many years back represent the pent up feelings, the inner thoughts of the writer who finds no outlet except in writing his songs.