
Dave Eggers's 'The Circle' Takes Vengeance on Google, Facebook - RockyMcNuts
http://online.wsj.com/article/the_game.html
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Apocryphon
Upton Sinclair wrote the The Jungle as a call for socialist action, and it was
only because of the public's disgust at the very unsanitary conditions of food
production that the FDA and food purity laws were created. This novel seems to
be depicting a totally fictional and exaggerated environment for satire. Not
the same thing as The Jungle at all.

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dredmorbius
The irony is that Sinclair was advocating for worker's rights. He wanted a
Department of Labor and workplace safety. The public saw tainted food and
demanded improvements. They got an FDA.

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angersock
I believe the line goes something like, "Sinclair aimed for the public's
heart, but instead hit its stomach."

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dredmorbius
Quite.

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kmfrk
Apropos theft, Eggers may have "appropriated" the work - and life - of Kate
Losse for his book:
[https://medium.com/p/bf1a7c77873b](https://medium.com/p/bf1a7c77873b).

[http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/09/did-
dave-e...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/09/did-dave-eggers-
rewrite-kate-losses-book/69631/)

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andrewljohnson
Can we stop listening to her after she admits she didn't read his book? That's
pretty ballsy to libel Eggers without even cracking the spine.

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benastan
Did you read her book? Her point is not that Eggers plagiarized her wholesale,
rather that the themes, characters, and plot are uncannily similar to those of
her book. But his work receives buzz and hers is passed over. Somehow a
hyperbolized book of fiction written by a famous white man is worthy of
attention and lofty comparisons while a memoir by a woman who experienced 'boy
kings' firsthand, dealing with identical themes, is overlooked.

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IvyMike
I just pre-purchased this book and used the Amazon feature to "share this
purchase on facebook."

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base698
I read "A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius", a book partly about the
death of his parents, after my mom died as a recommendation--it was fairly
insufferable to say the least. I couldn't empathize with it at all. I'm very
interested in social commentary on tech and social, especially given my trade,
but I doubt it will be anything but hype. The Amazon comments are pretty
funny.

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rhizome
Do you have to empathize in order to like it? Have you read "Lolita?"

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base698
No, but i would have expected empathy given the proximity to my moms death. It
was so self absorbed even that wasn't enough for me to like it.

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lmg643
I'm struggling with how we can have any real commentary on a book which has
not yet been published.

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cinquemb
The accolades the writer of the article gives makes me wonder: Was 'The
Jungle' hyped up by the media before or after its release?

I don't mean to take away from the subject at hand, but If people haven't
changed their behavior after NSA's doings went mainstream, what makes one
think a book will be the straw that breaks the camels back, and do people need
to be prodded into doing the Right Thing™? That would seem no more sincere
than muse of the book…

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ams6110
In today's culture I don't think a book will do it. People don't read books
for pleasure or information like they did when _The Jungle_ was published.

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moocowduckquack
If anything, a larger percentage of people read books than they did in 1906.
Around ten percent of the population of the USA was illiterate back then.

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angersock
"Can read" is different from "do read".

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moocowduckquack
_" Overall, the number of book readers in late 2012 was 75% of the population
ages 16 and older, a small and statistically insignificant decline from 78% in
late 2011."_

[http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/12/27/e-book-
reading-j...](http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/12/27/e-book-reading-
jumps-print-book-reading-declines/)

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pfortuny
"Privacy is theft," that is a good one, really.

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andrewcooke
i guess in sinclair's time it would have been the letter pages of the press
where people would say how the work was nothing but hype, or plagiarism, or
something much less important than whatever it was being compared to.

you've come so far, hn.

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TruthElixirX
Paid plug.

~~~
svantana
You think so? How about this quote from the article:

> As it is, "The Circle" is not great literature.

Personally, I wouldn't pay for such a plug.

