Dave Eggers' "The Circle" - thread for the book and the inevitable film

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-fiction.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10356248/The-Circle-by-Dave-Eggers-exclusive-extract.html

What is the greatest threat to our freedom today?

Our feeling that we’re entitled to know anything we want about anyone we want.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/10356543/Dave-Eggers-interview.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2013/11/03/google-wants-the-governments-data-on-you/

This looks bad. It probably is bad. It is written by Dave Eggers.

I'm always wary when 'literary' authors take diversions into SFish concepts. There are plenty of dedicated SF authors who write very well, why would I read something by a moonlighting 'proper' writer instead of them?

Guys, this is a book by Dave Eggers.

margaret atwood liked it: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/nov/21/eggers-circle-when-privacy-is-theft

I basically loved every last exaggerated, overdone caricature and untenable speech in this book. Even at the end, when the setups for the metaphors become so topheavy and mechanistic that you can't believe the whole thing isn't falling over, you take them in and realize that's exactly the only thing that could have happened. It's common wisdom now that the one thing Orwell quite predicted was our complicity, that we'd gleefully be turning the cameras on ourselves. This book manages that update beautifully.

It's getting pushed so hard (NYT Magazine using an excerpt from a fiction book for its cover story is kind of crazy) that it's a natural reaction to want to hate it, and there's no shortage of online backlash pieces. It's tempting to arm yourself with those before reading it, but they've all got pithy, derisive plot spoilers cynically designed to spoil everyone's experience, so I invite you to be wary of things like that Wired piece ("What the Internet Looks Like if You Don’t Understand It").

Haven't read anything by Eggers since the very early daily posts of the McSweeney's website. Haven't made it past his book titles, frankly, so I can't tell you whether or not he's reformed the tendencies that bug people (all the other ILX threads on him are hatefests). But as a fan of the most paranoid era of 1970's conspiracy / science fiction filmmaking, there's no way I wasn't going to read this, and probably no way I wasn't going to love it either.

the excerpt reminds me a little of tom wolfe. who i also hate.

that atwood review is lol terrible. half of it is on some undergrad name analysis shit, cmon lady.

the nonstop hatefests are weird to me. you shall know our velocity wasn't very good but all of his other books are very good.

Isn't Atwood also best known for writing a sophomoric dystopia?

I never actually read her so I'm kinda trolling here.

she is best known for that book (which is good) and also some other books (which are good)

I liked some of the ideas in Oryx and Crake but found the actual execution irritating.

never read a word of Dave Eggers.

about equally entertained and irritated by a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, but thought it wound up less than the sum of its quirks. plus too self-congratulatory by half. read most of a collection of his short stories a couple years back. some quite good ("up a mountain coming down slowly"), some annoying. haven't been tempted to return.

he's always a lot more obvious and less original than he thinks he is being. I guess he has a knack for very easily and digestibly spelling out the zeitgeist.

and also, just look at his douchey face
http://assets.nybooks.com/media/photo/2013/10/30/atwood_1-112113.jpg

his store on Valencia does good stuff, I'll give him that

"Yeah, I'm not even gonna shave for my author photo. Not even gonna trim my fugly, can't-grow-a-beard Wooly Willy facial hair."

hurting you almost made me snork hot tea

discount franco

apropos of nothing, the title dude in zeitoun is a recurring character in new orleans local news as he like, tries to hire people to kill his wife whom he beats in public.

i dont dislike eggers but this goes p badly off the rails in the last 1/4 or so; the inevitable film will be really dreadful, its p impossible to see it any other way

the ny times mag excerpts are, smartly, prob the best sections of the entire book imo

Posted: November 4, 2013 at 10:26:22 PM
about equally entertained and irritated by a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, but thought it wound up less than the sum of its quirks. plus too self-congratulatory by half. read most of a collection of his short stories a couple years back. some quite good ("up a mountain coming down slowly"), some annoying. haven't been tempted to return.

Can I just say LOL at criticizing a book titled "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" for being too self-congratulatory

It's common wisdom now that the one thing Orwell quite predicted was our complicity, that we'd gleefully be turning the cameras on ourselves. This book manages that update beautifully.

I"ll go along with this. Really enjoyed it.

I haven't read a book in like 5 years. It would be funny if this was the one I decided to read.

i hated this book. #1 source of loathing: how eggers made the 'go along to get along' protagonist a dumb WOMAN who had zero identity of her own

lol yeah basically she just wanted to get fucked hard by a completely anonymous bot, right.

My mother read this and the first-person depiction of the female lead was a deal-breaker for her as well. She asked me if i actually knew anyone here in san francisco who was that disgustingly shallow, because she took it personally as a gender insult. As I read the book, there was plenty of mortifying misanthropy to go around but as its all told from the inside of her head, I understand how the fact that she's a vile cartoon keeps the contempt framed on her.

So that did reframe my opinion of the book a bit after that conversation, though my answer to my mom about whether or not people like that actually existed in san francisco was that valencia street sure has changed a lot in the last four years

I haven't read this yet but yeah, that type is practically the majority in the bay area these days (both sexes)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(2016_film)

first book to literally jump the shark