Overview
Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by TheWashington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Esquire, Parade, Teen Vogue, The Boston Globe, Forbes, The Times (UK), Fortune, Chicago Tribune, Glamour, The A.V. Club, Vox, Jezebel, Town & Country, OneZero, Apartment Therapy, Good Housekeeping, PopMatters, Electric Literature, Self, The Week (UK) and BookPage. One of Amazon's Best 100 Books of 2020. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a January 2020 IndieNext Pick.
'A definitive document of a world in transition: I won't be alone in returning to it for clarity and consolation for many years to come.' —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
The prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial—left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.
Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.
Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.
Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.
The author Brontez Purnell’s short story “Early Retirement” focuses on Antonio, a struggling actor who is unfulfilled by his job. One night, Antonio drinks too much and blacks out in the middle of a performance, experiencing a “cool and complete dissociation onstage.” He is booted from the cast the next day.
Uncanny Valley Companies
Uncanny Valley, Wiener’s memoir of several years working in the tech industry—at first in New York, but soon in San Francisco—is a book that shares the in-betweenish quality its title describes. Note: In response to concerns about the coronavirus, area events may be subject to cancellation, postponement or attendance limits. Please contact organizers to confirm event details. Anna Wiener is a contributing writer to The New Yorker online, where she writes about Silicon Valley, startup culture, and technology. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, New York, The New Republic, and n+1, as well as in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017. She lives in San Francisco. Uncanny Valley is. (No.) Anna Wiener is the Joan Didion of start-up culture and then some.' ―Ed Park, author of Personal Days 'Alternately outrageous and outraging. What makes Uncanny Valley unforgettable is not just Wiener's unique take on tech, but the fun of being along on the journey with her. Her immense intelligence and facility with language make the.
Purnell’s story illustrates a common experience of disillusionment in modern-day work culture. As the professor Jeffrey Pfeffer explores in his book Dying for a Paycheck,burnout has become widespread. For Anna Wiener, who wrote the memoir Uncanny Valley about her time working in tech, the feeling crept up slowly. While she was initially allured by the industry’s promise of opportunity and a well-paying job in the aftermath of a recession, she eventually became disenchanted by the broader harm it caused. The writer Yun Ko-Eun’s satirical novel The Disaster Touristfollows a similarly jaded worker, Yona Ko, who works at a company that offers vacationers tours through disaster-ravaged areas. After being assaulted by her boss, she’s moved to a new team, which is charged with creating a man-made natural disaster to bump up business. No matter how unethical the work becomes, Yona continues with it, resigned to her role.
There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job, a novel by Kikuko Tsumura, makes the case against resignation. Feeling drained, the narrator quits her desk job and seeks an easy position—not a meaningful one. Yet it’s exactly this kind of job that brings her fulfillment. She finds her way to a better life through work—just not the kind of work she initially set out to do. By the end of “Early Retirement,” the actor Antonio also seems to have found serenity. After some time away from home working on a farm, he returns to his apartment and feels “that strange and foreign emotion—a stillness and a sense of peace.”
Every Friday in the Books Briefing, we thread together Atlantic stories on books that share similar ideas.
Know other book lovers who might like this guide? Forward them this email.
What We’re Reading
TIMO LENZEN
Recommended Reading
Recommended Reading
“From a distance, the hum of the highway sounded like waves crashing into land. In his bed, he would pull the covers over his head and imagine being in the ocean. Alone and at peace.”
📚 “Early Retirement,” by Brontez Purnell
THEA TRAFF
“Burnout is a problem created by the workplace, and changes to the workplace are the best way to fix it.”
📚 Dying for a Paycheck, by Jeffrey Pfeffer
GETTY
“There are plenty of abuses of power and absurd anecdotes in Uncanny Valley—a manager forcing a job applicant to take the LSAT on the spot stands out—but the strangest thing about the book is how well it makes Silicon Valley look like a mirage that anybody could be taken in by.”
📚 Uncanny Valley, by Anna Wiener
PETER MARLOW / MAGNUM
“Yun [Ko-Eun]’s late-capitalist satire makes the case that the identity we find through work is almost always shaped by how we have been exploited—or how we have exploited others.”
📚 The Disaster Tourist, by Yun Ko-Eun
RAE RUSSEL / GETTY
“One of the pleasures of reading [Kikuko] Tsumura is her focus ... on the care in ostensibly meaningless jobs. She treats boring, unextraordinary people in boring, unextraordinary jobs with an enchantment that many contemporary novels about work seem to actively avoid.”
📚 There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job, by Kikuko Tsumura
📚 Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by David Graeber
📚 Temporary, by Hilary Leichter
📚 The New Me, by Halle Butler
About us: This week’s newsletter is written by Kate Cray. The book she’s reading next is Whereabouts, by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Comments, questions, typos? Reply to this email to reach the Books Briefing team.
Uncanny Valley Anna Wiener Company
Did you get this newsletter from a friend? Sign yourself up.