Book Club Collection: 'The Circle' by Dave Eggers

Set on an idyllic, green-lawned campus in California, the Circle is a place where dreams come true. It’s where nearly all of the world’s information is stored and communicated, and through its remarkable ability to synthesize personal data in one place it has completely revolutionized the way individuals interface online. It’s also where Mae Holland, a young ingenue longing for a job with purpose, lands a prime seat among the Circle’s assiduous, yet aboundingly energetic, team. Although she starts off low in the ranks in the Customer Experience (CE) department, answering floods of email queries from Circle users, Mae quickly assimilates into the Circle’s culture of socializing, product perks, and inspirational messages literally etched into her new surroundings: “Dream,” “Imagine,” “Innovate,” “Let’s Do This.” Compared with her hometown in Colorado, the world of the Circle is endlessly more vast and infinitely better than anything Mae has ever imagined.

Her first several months in CE provide Mae with an incredible sense of hope for what the Circle will bring to society. Everything, from international security—cameras that are instantly available in any part of the world—to a cure for awkward first dates, seems to be on its radar, and the ease with which it implements solutions is astounding. Along with her fellow Circlers, Mae has faith in the vision set forth by the three founders of the Circle, known as the Three Wise Men, who insistent that a perfect democracy among all members of the Circle—employees and users alike—is possible. But on their mission to achieve total transparency—100 percent accessibility to all information for all people—morals, free will, and basic human rights are gradually compromised for the supposed sake of the greater good. Mae finds herself facing truths about her family, her colleagues, and herself that perhaps were best kept unknown, and her shattering conclusion leaves the reader questioning how fine a line can be drawn between private and public, education and indoctrination, and—ultimately—good and evil. 
(Summary provided by the author)

Dave Eggers grew up near Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing (McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern), and a monthly magazine, The Believer. McSweeney’s publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. In 2002, he cofounded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit youth writing and tutoring center in San Francisco’s Mission District. Sister centers have since opened in seven other American cities under the umbrella of 826 National, and like-minded centers have opened in Dublin, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Birmingham, Alabama, among other locations. His work has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France’s Prix Médicis, Germany’s Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. Eggers lives in Northern California with his family. 

Dave Eggers is the author of many books, among them The Eyes and the Impossible, The Every, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, Heroes of the Frontier, A Hologram for the King, Zeitoun, What Is the What, and The Museum of Rain. 

He is founder of McSweeney's, a nonprofit, independent publishing company based in San Francisco that produces books, a humor website, The Believer and Illustoria magazines, and a journal of new writing, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. The magazine has been edited by a long line of brilliant editors, including Eli Horowitz, Jordan Bass, and Claire Boyle. Under their leadership, McSweeney’s has won the National Magazine Award for Fiction three times and has been a finalist nine times. The Executive Director of the McSweeney’s Literary Arts Fund, and the publisher of McSweeney’s, is Amanda Uhle.

Along with Nínive Calegari, Eggers is the co-founder of 826 National, a network of youth writing and tutoring centers around the United States. The whole thing started with 826 Valencia, their original center in the Mission District of San Francisco. Since then, over seventy other organizations, from Louisville to Toowoomba, Australia, operate with inspiration from the 826 Valencia model. 

Realizing the need for greater college access for the first-gen and low-income students served by 826 Valencia, Eggers founded ScholarMatch, a nonprofit organization designed to connect students with resources, schools and donors to make college possible—and to make sure students graduate, and do so without debt. The organization was begun with the help of Miel Allegre, was grown exponentially by Diana Adamson, and is currently run by Karla Salazar. They do great work and need your help. Go here to learn more.

He is co-founder of Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Those books are extraordinary, and we hope you will not be daunted by the words “oral history.” They are rigorous in their research, but are not at all academic or dry. They are riveting, accessible, and provide irreplaceable first-person perspectives on recent historical events. The executive director of VOW is Mimi Lok, and the managing editor is Dao X. Tran.

Eggers’s work as a journalist has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Believer, and the New Statesman. He has covered Trump rallies, life in Gaza under occupation, Ukraine during wartime, and the fragile peace in South Sudan. You can see some of this writing here.

Eggers’s novel What Is the What, about the life of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee from the civil war in South Sudan, gave birth to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, run by Mr. Deng. VADF operates secondary schools in South Sudan. They do great work. Support them here.

Eggers’s books for young readers include What Can a Citizen Do?, Her Right Foot, This Bridge Will Not Be Gray, The Lifters, and The Wild Things, among others. All proceeds from these books go to the Hawkins Project, which distributes the funds to American literacy organizations, starting with 826 Valencia.

In 2018, Eggers co-founded The International Congress of Youth Voices, an annual gathering of 100 extraordinary young writers and activists; their landmark meeting in San Francisco resulted in a youth-written manifesto published by the Guardian.

Eggers is winner of the Newbery Medal, the American Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the TED Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and holds an honorary doctorate from Brown University, a college he applied to when he was 18 and from which he was roundly rejected. Eggers graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in journalism.

Trained also as a painter, Eggers’s artwork and book designs have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Nevada Museum of Art, the Biennial of the Americas, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum at the Smithsonian, and numerous other galleries and art spaces. 

In the 1990s, he and some high school friends, Marny Requa and Dave Moodie, started a magazine, called Might. That magazine was featured in Dave’s memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The other editors of that magazine were Paul Tullis and Zev Borow.

An experimental flight enthusiast, Eggers has attended the Jetpack Aviation Academy in Moorpark, California, but is not yet certified to fly off-tether. 

Born in Boston and raised in Illinois, he has now lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for three decades. He is married to the novelist Vendela Vida, and they have two children.
(Biography provided by the publisher and the author)