THE CIRCLE by Dave Eggers (McSweeney/Knopf), 491 pages, $34 cloth. Rating: NNN
Dave Eggers’s satire is so timely, so ripped from quickly changing reality, it’s almost miraculous that it’s already in print.
After spending $235,000 on her college education (a credible sum given that tuition at Harvard now costs more than $36,000 a year), Mae has come to work at the Circle, a mammoth techno monopoly corp that runs the fictional equivalents of Facebook, Twitter, Google and everything else digital. It’s even created a lollypop-size camera that can be hidden anywhere in the world – from Tahrir Square to the local variety store – so everyone’s comings and goings can be “transparent.” Worldwide digital domination is definitely in the works.
None of this can happen without a populace wholly willing to participate. Eggers brilliantly expresses the ideas/slogans for advancing the Circle’s agenda: secrets are lies, privacy is theft, and anyone who doesn’t participate in the Circle’s definition of community is selfish.
Mae thinks her new work environment is heavenly – despite myriad off-hours activities that aren’t exactly mandatory and 18-hour workdays. She has just enough ambition to make her way up the corporate ladder, but Mae might have to betray her ex-boyfriend, who thinks the Circle is bullshit, take down Annie, the old friend who hired her, and sacrifice her family.
Like many satires, this one has smart social commentary but no characters we care about. Mae is a mysterious cypher, and we learn nothing about why she has no inner core. And characters like Annie go through changes that are hard to fathom. That’s because Eggers is too busy creating a credible corporate cosmology.
Still, The Circle does manage to be both funny and terrifying.
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