#168 / The Circle

Pictured is Dave Eggers. I trust this is a familiar name and face. 

Did I tell you yet how much I liked The Circle, Eggers' latest book? I did? I do remember that. You can click the link to find out what I said. 

Famous author Margaret Atwood likes The Circle, too. At least, that is how I interpret her review of The Circle in The New York Review of Books, as published late last year. 

The title of Atwood's review is "When Privacy is Theft." The main character in The Circle makes a claim, at one point, that a quest for personal privacy is a kind of stealing from the community, or communities, to which we all indubitably belong. I don't believe that Atwood sees it that way. I know I don't. 

The cautionary message of The Circle, in fact, goes in exactly the opposite direction. By what amounts to a cleverly concealed confusion about what is really happening, our quest for community (online version) is resulting in the theft of our privacy.

As Atwood says, we are complicit in the crime ourselves, and the punishment is our own confinement. 

A "solitary confinement" as Atwood names it.

Her review is worth reading.

Image Credit:

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