Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

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.com Review An Best Book of January 2020: In her mid-twenties, Anna Wiener left her low-paying but rewarding-ish job in New York publishing and sold her soul to Silicon Valley start-up culture. First she dipped her toe in by taking a job at a books-focused tech company, but soon she made the full plunge, moving West and joining a data analytics company as an early employee. In her debut memoir, Wiener relays firsthand the juxtaposition of the extreme wealth and poverty of San Francisco, most memorably with an anecdote about a homeless man wearing the sweatshirt swag from her company. Her colleague’s response? “I wonder whose it was. We’re not supposed to give away the hoodies.” Wiener is not here to make friends, as she gets pretty dish-y on the highs and lows of tech culture. We see young tech entrepreneurs with low EQ struggle to run a sustainable business, and highly paid boys and girls acting badly in and around the Bay Area. Wiener’s observations and writing are razor sharp; she cleverly doesn’t name any companies (Google is the “search-engine giant down in Mountain View”, Uber “an on-demand ride-sharing startup”), but they are easily recognizable and make the reader feel clever when they uncrack her code. This perfectly named memoir places Wiener on the map as an astute documenter of our time. She’s now married her worlds and is writing about Silicon Valley, startup culture and tech for national publications. —Sarah Gelman, Book Review Read more Review "Extraordinary . . . Wiener’s storytelling mode is keen and dry, her sentences spare―perfectly suited to let a steady thrum of dread emerge." --Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times"[Wiener] is here to fill out our worst-case scenarios with shrewd insight and literary detail . . . Wiener is a droll yet gentle guide . . . The real strength of Uncanny Valley comes from her careful parsing of the complex motivations and implications that fortify this new surreality at every level, from the individual body to the body politic." --Lauren Oyler, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)"Biting and funny . . . Uncanny Valley will speak to you as well as any book about millennial culture. Its humor is a proxy for the despair Wiener feels about tech culture’s predicament and her helplessness at doing anything about it . . .Uncanny Valley ought to be read by policymakers just as closely as any set of statistics. Technology is too often an attempt to attack and exploit our humane instincts; it takes a humane book like this one to drive that point home." --Mark Athitakis, Los Angeles Times "[Wiener] was seen as dispensable; her memoir is anything but. If Silicon Valley had seen her potential, she would not have become one of the finest, most assured writers about the internet today. I read it in one sitting, overcome with the eerie sensation that my own life was being explained to me . . . The seductiveness of Wiener’s writing is the feeling that we’re as smart as she is. This book is proof enough that we are not. But it taps into our lived experience . . . Reading the book is like having [Wiener's] awakening in real time." --Kaitlin Phillips, Bookforum "[An] excellent memoir . . . what makes Uncanny Valley so valuable is the way it humanizes the tech industry without letting it off the hook. The book allows us to see the way that flawed technology is made and marketed." --Charlie Warzel, The New York Times Privacy Project"Uncanny Valley is a different sort of Silicon Valley narrative, a literary-minded outsider’s insider account of an insulated world that isn’t as insular or distinctive as it and we assume . . . Through [Wiener's] story, we begin to perceive how much tech owes its power, and the problems that come with it, to contented ignorance." --Ismail Muhammad, The Atlantic "Wiener has the two talents that every memoir needs: A devastating eye for detail . . . and the ability to map her experience onto a cultural shift much larger than herself . . . I deadened my phone and laptop while reading this so I could give it my Undivided Attention. I’m recommending not only the book but also this reading method." --Molly Young, Vulture "Hyper-self-aware . . . Wiener’s book transcends the model of a tech-work memoir . . .Throughout the memoir, Wiener sustains a piercing tone of crisp, arch observation. It’s revelatory to see her navigate the subjects one generally reads about in newspaper headlines, about sexism at Google or the unregulated forums behind events such as Pizzagate . . . The underlying success of the memoir is Wiener emerging as a writer informed by her years-long employment. I’m glad a lover of literary fiction unleashed herself from customer success management to reporting on technology." --Antonia Hitchens, San Francisco Chronicle"Equal parts enchanting and subversive . . . [Wiener's] account of living inside the Bay Area bubble reads like HBO's Silicon Valley filtered through Renata Adler; Wiener is a trenchant cultural cartographer, mapping out a foggy world whose ruling class is fueled by empty scripts: 'People were saying nothing, and saying it all the tine.' The book's author does the very opposite." --Lauren Mechling, Vogue "Beautifully observed . . . Someone like Wiener makes for a good spy in the house of tech . . . Wiener excels at . . . the texture of life for people in a particular and pivotal time and place." --Laura Miller, Slate"An achingly relatable and sharply focused firsthand account . . .the literary texture of Wiener’s narrative makes it particularly valuable as a primary document of this moment. Her voice, alternating between cool and detached and impassioned and earnest, boasts an observational precision that is devastating. It is whip smart and searingly funny, too . . . a feat." --Kevin Lozano, The Nation"[A] hyper-detailed, thoroughly engrossing memoir . . . At the intersection of exploitative labor, entitled men, and ungodly amounts of money, Wiener bears witness to the fearsome future as it unfolds." --Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire"Absorbing, unsettling, gimlet-eyed." --Laura Collins-Hughes, Boston Globe"Incisive . . . inherently timely, [Uncanny Valley] aims for timelessness and achieves it. Its style is of a part with the dry, affectless writing of the period that Wiener seeks to capture but goes beyond the Sally Rooney-Tao Lin axis to deliver something sharper and more complete . . . I tore through Uncanny Valley, riveted by the wit and precision of Wiener’s observations." --Jennifer Schaffer, The Baffler "The quality of Weiner’s on-the-ground observations, coupled with acuity she brings to understanding the psychology at work, makes the book illuminating on a page-by-page basis . . . [Wiener's] empathy makes the portrait all the more damning . . . Weiner’s book isn’t a warning so much as a lament over the damage done and the damage still to come." --John Warner, Chicago Tribune"Wiener shines when she turns her incisive observations on the many entitled men running amok in Silicon Valley ... an engaging summary of every terrible thing you’ve heard about start-ups." --Ines Bellina, The A.V. Club"Eschewing the caffeinated, self-referential keenness that defined the decade’s online writing, Wiener is cerebral and diagnostic in her observance of escalating corporate surveillance." --Pete Tosiello, The Paris Review"A neat time lapse of the past seven years in Silicon Valley ... The author is a gifted writer and presents a clear-eyed account of her own limitations as a tech employee while offering cultural analysis of the sector . . . Uncanny Valley is an artful contribution to the war on tech exceptionalism." --Elaine Moore, Financial Times "[Wiener] carefully, wryly observes everyday life in the Valley . . . a beautifully relatable and tender account." --Angela Saini, The Observer (London)"A thought-provoking, personal, and often surprisingly poetic critique of the far-reaching influence of the tech world . . . Wiener’s narrative is by turns funny, informative, and a perfect time capsule of a rapidly changing city." --Royal Young, Interview"Nothing short of crucial, a memoir that has crystalized the essential ingredients of what made the digital economy what it is." --Michael Seidlinger, GARAGE"Weiner’s book feels destined to be a key and lasting portrait of a crucial moment in our relationship with tech culture: a perfect blend of humor, shrewd insight, and earnestness." --Stephen Sparks, Lit Hub"Equal parts bildungsroman and insider report, this book reveals not just excesses of the tech-startup landscape, but also the Faustian bargains and hidden political agendas embedded in the so-called “inspiration culture” underlying a too-powerful industry. A funny, highly informative, and terrifying read." --Kirkus (starred review)"[Wiener] is an extremely gifted writer and cultural critic. Uncanny Valley may be a defining memoir of the 2020s, and it’s one that will send a massive chill down your spine." --BookPage (starred review) "[An] insider-y debut memoir that sharply critiques start-up culture and the tech industry . . . Wiener is an entertaining writer, and those interested in a behind-the-scenes look at life in Silicon Valley will want to take a look." --Publishers Weekly"A compelling takedown of the pitfalls of start-up culture, from sexism to the lack of guardrails,Uncanny Valley highlights the maniacal optimism of the twentysomethings behind the screens and the pitfalls of the culture they are building.” --Booklist "I've never read anything like Uncanny Valley, which is both a searching bird's-eye study of an industry and a generation, as well as an intimate, microscopic portrait of ambition and hope and dread. Anna Wiener writes about the promise and the decay of Silicon Valley with the impossibly pleasurable combination of a precise, razored intellect and a soft, incandescent heart. Her memoir is diagnostic and exhilarating, 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 "Uncanny Valley is a generation-defining account of the amoral late-capitalist tech landscape we are fatally enmeshed in. With grace and humor, Anna Wiener shows us the misogyny, avarice, and optimistic self-delusion of our cultural moment, wrapped up in the gripping story of a young woman navigating the blurred boundaries of a seductive world. Insightful, compelling and urgent." ―Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter: A Novel "Like Joan Didion at a startup."―Rebecca Solnit, author of Call Them By Their True Names “A rare mix of acute, funny, up-to-the-minute social observation, dead-serious contemplation of the tech industry’s annexation of our lives, and a sincere first-person search for meaningful work and connection. How does an unworn pair of plain sneakers ‘become a monument to the end of sensuousness’? Read on.”―William Finnegan, author of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life"Uncanny Valley is an addictive combination of coming-of-age story, journalistic memoir, and brilliant social critique. This is a stunningly good book. I loved it.” ―Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love"Uncanny Valley is a sentimental education for our accelerated times, a memoir so good it will make you slow down. Is it too much to say that every sculpted page will be studied by future generations? (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 pages fly. She's generous, quippy, introspective and always self-deprecating. Technophobes have nothing to fear; she employs jargon mainly for laughs." --Katie Weed, Shelf Awareness Read more See all Editorial Reviews