Category Archives: Manic

2013, Book, Fiction, Manic, Novel, Prophetic

The Circle (2013)

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From Wikipedia:

A young college graduate named Mae Holland unexpectedly gets a job at The Circle, a powerful tech company that serves as the novel’s Google analogue. The Circle is an internet and social media company specializing in Internet-related services and products. Mae is impressed by the trappings of corporate life on The Circle’s California campus, and devotes herself wholeheartedly to the company mission. A chance encounter with a mysterious colleague, however, introduces an element of doubt into Mae’s experience, even as her role at the company becomes increasingly high-profile.

Reading this novel caused me to delete my Facebook account.

Remember the novels “1984” and “Brave New World”? You should probably add “The Circle” to this list of books that imagine a not impossible and decidedly unpleasant future.

Do you think privacy is important? Do you have any secrets? Then you would not want to work for the company called “The Circle”. Perhaps I should call it a cult.

You will be guided throughout the entire novel by Mae as she submerges herself deeper and deeper into the company culture and philosophy. Read quickly as you experience all the minutiae of her various positions in the company. But you need to relive those details so that you feel like the smartphone automatons we see all around us in this year 2013. If you think Facebook can consume much of your time, just try and keep up with Mae’s work life.

What would happen to you if your smartphone, pad, and social web sites all disappeared? Would your world collapse?

What present day company is the model for “The Circle”? Is it Google, or Amazon, or the NSA? Does any of this make you feel a bit paranoid? Smile, some camera is watching you.

After you have raced through this nightmare (it is OK to race, this is NOT great literature) and have reached what was for me a wonderfully written ending, please let me know your reactions to Dave Eggers’ viewpoint.

Book Review, Clever Use Of Words, Manic, Novel, ShortStories

Ghostwritten (1999)

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Currently (2010) David Mitchell is the “it” author. There have been many articles about him, especially one in the New York Times Sunday magazine section. He is said to have re-defined the novel. You can read about him in the Wikipedia article.

Mitchell’s novels are as follows:

  • Ghostwritten (1999)
  • number9dream (2001)
  • Cloud Atlas (2004)
  • Black Swan Green (2006)
  • The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)

If you like T.C. Boyle (especially his short stories), you will also enjoy David Mitchell.

Let me tempt you with “Ghostwritten”, his first novel. Each chapter is a somewhat self-contained short story, but not really. The chapters eventually wrap around to where they started. But the fun “trick” is that each chapter after the first contains within some sly reference back to the previous chapter. If you did not read that previous chapter carefully then you might just miss the reference in the succeeding chapter. I’ll give you a hint for chapter one, namely, “telephone call”.

To tempt you a bit more I’ll describe chapter one. All chapters are written in the first person as I recall. In chapter one the speaker is the Japanese cult fanatic who personally released the sarin gas in the Tokyo subway. In the entire chapter while he is fleeing the scene and hiding in some remote guest house he is ruminating about his cult under the leadership of someone always referred to as “His Serendipity”. He interprets each and every event in the unwavering context of someone so completely brain-washed that he is deceived about everything.

Mitchell has a clever and often witty way with words. I do worry that his choice of words may be trendy enough that his book might some day be outdated.

Some chapters are manic (think Thom Jones), but not all. There is a somewhat poignant chapter in which a brilliant woman scientist tries to retire to her beloved small Irish (Celtic) island in order to escape being forceably employed by the CIA. This chapter relates to a following chapter about a nighttime radio talk show in an astoundingly clever way.

1993, Book Review, Manic, Sexual Episodes, ShortStories

The Pugilist At Rest (1993)

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Pugilist 1 Pugilist 2 Pugilist 3

For background on the author Thom Jones see the Wikipedia article.

If you read nothing else from this set of short stories, you must read the short story entitled “The Pugilist At Rest” for which the book is named. The above photos are different views of a Roman copy of the Greek original “Pugilist At Rest” attributed to Apollonius which copy is found in the Palazzo Massimo, Rome, Italy.

It helps if you read each of Jones’ short stories quickly as if you were having a manic attack because that’s fairly close to the author’s reality. Note that he suffers from temporal lobe epilepsy and diabetes. As noted in the Wikipedia, he has two more collection of short stories: Cold Snap (1995) and Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine (1999).

I just finished “Cold Snap” and I assure you it is just as manic as “Pugilist”. There are some wild and very explicit sex scenes. There is a lot of drug use. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Enjoy the roller-coaster ride!