Turn the light off!
Dec 17, 2013 2:21:57 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2013 2:21:57 GMT -5
To-day we were approached by a Miss Webb, a courteous young lady, who is concerned about how "Googol" has scanned all the books ever published yet refuses to make them available for consultation! She approaches the question by way of a review of a new book entitled "The Circle," the work of a certain Mr. Eggers (512 pages, Hamish Hamilton).
"Mr. Eggers's new novel," she tells us, "is set in a near-future America, divided between 'openness' evangelicals, living on-line in a state of permanent transmission and exhibition, and a minority of appalled refuseniks, clinging to their reticence and anonymity.
"Eggers's thirteenth book, which begins as a satire on social net-working but develops into something more like a full-blown political dystopia, tells the familiar story of an American no-body, Mae, who claws her way to the heart of power. That power now resides in The Circle, a monolithic inter-net company which controls over ninety per centum of the world's information searches. The company's rapid success has derived from unifying all the net's 'business' and social functions into one account, and adding an application called SeeChange: tiny cameras that allow users access to even the farthest-flung parts of the globe. The effect is to dissolve the barriers between the user, the net and the world into one seamless experience, TruYou - a new self that, as Eggers's alarm bell of a novel suggests, is easy to harness and manipulate.
"This is the second recent criticism of the inter-net from a leader of America's current literary scene, arriving shortly after Jonathan Franzen's 'The Kraus ProJect' (to be reviewed in a future edition of the T.L.S.) in which the author laments our addiction to the 'new infernal machine.' Both writers are just old enough to have a sense of how this technology is changing us and what we are losing as a result. Theirs are rearguard actions, inescapably nostalgic, resistant to the possibilities the net offers for extending the humanity they fear is being eroded. Such a conservative impulse does not, however, mean that 'The Circle' is anything less than urgent, compelling, full of psychological insight and, above all, important.
"When Mae arrives at the campus where The Circle is based, she thinks she has landed in heaven. It seems the opposite of her last 'job' at a utilities company in a brutalist, functional building. Here among the glassy cathedrals and rolling lawns work has become a creative activity, with the best minds of her generation sharing ideas among the amphitheatres, gymnasiums and dormitories. By night, there are fire-work parties, during the day 'musicians, comedians, writers' stroll through halls named Renaissance or Old West: nothing is bound by history and everyone's voice can be heard. The Circle is so inclusive it precludes the need for opposition: even 'alternative comedians' have been co-opted and, glad of the exposure, they work for free: 'Oh god, we don't pay them'.
"The openness is illusory, however: behind the unified operating system lie unchallenged dogma and Orwellian slogans; and behind this, a shadowy élite controlling a commercial machine. As Milan Kundera saw, totalitarian systems begin with 'the dream of paradise, the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith, without secrets from one another', but they move quickly into compulsion, because to make them work everyone has to get on board. Whenever Mae falls prey to shame or obfuscation, she is subJect to corrective lessons that are both up-beat and coercive: 'Sound good?', 'Incredible, right?'. Made to feel guilty, she consents to becoming fully 'transparent', allowing herself to be filmed during a doctor's examination in adherence with the company line that all human experience should produce 'teachable moments', and that exposure increases civility (in the dark, people are able to do bad things).
"When Mae introduces SeeChange into her parents' home, though, they (the parents) sabotage the filming, unwilling to turn her father's illness into an object of study. An old lover is equally resistant, and his desperate attempt to elude The Circle's grip results in Mae chasing him down with drone cameras. At the end of the novel, the creator of The Circle (an obvious avatar for Eggers), horrified at what has transpired from his playful ideas, diagnoses the problem: 'info-communism . . . paired with ruthless capitalistic ambition', the anxiety of uncertainty turned into an absolute insistence on seeing and knowing all. In the face of this, he proposes 'The Rights of Humans in a Digital Age' - primarily the right to anonymity, and the assertion that 'Not every human activity can be measured'. And it is in this manifesto spirit that the novel can best be read.
"What is most interesting about 'The Circle' is that it comes from a writer who understands the value of the 'infernal machine', having established a successful literary web-site. Eggers's scepticism, then, has deeper roots. These concern the easy gratification of net-working, and the neediness it instills, eroding what is left of America's rugged individualism.
"Even more important is the fear that the enlightened, 'solvable future' insisted upon at The Circle endangers fiction. Eggers makes a competing demand: the right to turn out the lights. Because it is here, in the dark, confronting what is unknown, that we are impelled to do what The Circle persuades Mae is wrong: 'to make up all kinds of stories'."
P.S. I would not recommend members to search for much more about Mr. Eggers; if they do they will very soon find too much information, namely 1) he is amercian, and 2) he is obsessed with "rock" whatever that might be. Both of these facts are I am sorry to say almost irretrievably off-putting are they not.
"Mr. Eggers's new novel," she tells us, "is set in a near-future America, divided between 'openness' evangelicals, living on-line in a state of permanent transmission and exhibition, and a minority of appalled refuseniks, clinging to their reticence and anonymity.
"Eggers's thirteenth book, which begins as a satire on social net-working but develops into something more like a full-blown political dystopia, tells the familiar story of an American no-body, Mae, who claws her way to the heart of power. That power now resides in The Circle, a monolithic inter-net company which controls over ninety per centum of the world's information searches. The company's rapid success has derived from unifying all the net's 'business' and social functions into one account, and adding an application called SeeChange: tiny cameras that allow users access to even the farthest-flung parts of the globe. The effect is to dissolve the barriers between the user, the net and the world into one seamless experience, TruYou - a new self that, as Eggers's alarm bell of a novel suggests, is easy to harness and manipulate.
"This is the second recent criticism of the inter-net from a leader of America's current literary scene, arriving shortly after Jonathan Franzen's 'The Kraus ProJect' (to be reviewed in a future edition of the T.L.S.) in which the author laments our addiction to the 'new infernal machine.' Both writers are just old enough to have a sense of how this technology is changing us and what we are losing as a result. Theirs are rearguard actions, inescapably nostalgic, resistant to the possibilities the net offers for extending the humanity they fear is being eroded. Such a conservative impulse does not, however, mean that 'The Circle' is anything less than urgent, compelling, full of psychological insight and, above all, important.
"When Mae arrives at the campus where The Circle is based, she thinks she has landed in heaven. It seems the opposite of her last 'job' at a utilities company in a brutalist, functional building. Here among the glassy cathedrals and rolling lawns work has become a creative activity, with the best minds of her generation sharing ideas among the amphitheatres, gymnasiums and dormitories. By night, there are fire-work parties, during the day 'musicians, comedians, writers' stroll through halls named Renaissance or Old West: nothing is bound by history and everyone's voice can be heard. The Circle is so inclusive it precludes the need for opposition: even 'alternative comedians' have been co-opted and, glad of the exposure, they work for free: 'Oh god, we don't pay them'.
"The openness is illusory, however: behind the unified operating system lie unchallenged dogma and Orwellian slogans; and behind this, a shadowy élite controlling a commercial machine. As Milan Kundera saw, totalitarian systems begin with 'the dream of paradise, the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith, without secrets from one another', but they move quickly into compulsion, because to make them work everyone has to get on board. Whenever Mae falls prey to shame or obfuscation, she is subJect to corrective lessons that are both up-beat and coercive: 'Sound good?', 'Incredible, right?'. Made to feel guilty, she consents to becoming fully 'transparent', allowing herself to be filmed during a doctor's examination in adherence with the company line that all human experience should produce 'teachable moments', and that exposure increases civility (in the dark, people are able to do bad things).
"When Mae introduces SeeChange into her parents' home, though, they (the parents) sabotage the filming, unwilling to turn her father's illness into an object of study. An old lover is equally resistant, and his desperate attempt to elude The Circle's grip results in Mae chasing him down with drone cameras. At the end of the novel, the creator of The Circle (an obvious avatar for Eggers), horrified at what has transpired from his playful ideas, diagnoses the problem: 'info-communism . . . paired with ruthless capitalistic ambition', the anxiety of uncertainty turned into an absolute insistence on seeing and knowing all. In the face of this, he proposes 'The Rights of Humans in a Digital Age' - primarily the right to anonymity, and the assertion that 'Not every human activity can be measured'. And it is in this manifesto spirit that the novel can best be read.
"What is most interesting about 'The Circle' is that it comes from a writer who understands the value of the 'infernal machine', having established a successful literary web-site. Eggers's scepticism, then, has deeper roots. These concern the easy gratification of net-working, and the neediness it instills, eroding what is left of America's rugged individualism.
"Even more important is the fear that the enlightened, 'solvable future' insisted upon at The Circle endangers fiction. Eggers makes a competing demand: the right to turn out the lights. Because it is here, in the dark, confronting what is unknown, that we are impelled to do what The Circle persuades Mae is wrong: 'to make up all kinds of stories'."
P.S. I would not recommend members to search for much more about Mr. Eggers; if they do they will very soon find too much information, namely 1) he is amercian, and 2) he is obsessed with "rock" whatever that might be. Both of these facts are I am sorry to say almost irretrievably off-putting are they not.
