Have you ever been handed a rough draft of a paper by a friend, who says, “I haven’t edited it yet, could you take a look at it?” Translation: “My time is more valuable than your time, so could you complete a task I’ve deemed myself too important to complete?” That sums up how I felt the entire time I was read Eggers’ The Circle. It reads like a desperate attempt to be a modern day Atlas Shrugged, with flat characters who go on long diatribes.
But then I noticed something…
Every time I logged onto Facebook, I felt kind of ridiculous. The ridiculousness of The Circle, that I couldn’t stand, was staring me in the face.
And then, I saw this headline: Dad gets OfficeMax mail addressed ‘Daughter Killed in Car Crash’. (Go ahead, take a moment to read the article.)
I really don’t know how to proceed at the moment. I don’t want to become an off-the-grid radical (and heck, I like blogging!). I know it’s impossible to read every Terms of Service I ‘Accept.’ But clearly I need to be more wary of my privacy than the societally-accepted default.
In the mean time, read The Circle. While it would have been nice if Eggers’ had given his book a second pass, I can forgive him since he gave the world this and this.
One thing that annoyed me, though. Towards the end of the book, Eggers writes:
</p>Then on Friday (the only day the post office still delivered)…</blockquote>Why Friday?? Mail is 99% business-related, so wouldn’t Monday make more sense?