When novelists point their pens at the business world, the results—specifically the plausibility—vary. Some of the more successful in the past few years have included Jonathan Dee and Adam Haslett, whose novels took on the financial crisis from different angles. Last year, Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods depicted, with surprisingly believable hilarity, a man turning his sordid idea for in-office sex escorts into a legitimate national business; Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore depicted the secrets behind a brick-and-mortar book shop in the heart of Silicon Valley. And this year, The Unknowns, a terrific debut novel by Gabriel Roth, focused on a young tech entrepreneur's failed romance during an aimless period after selling his company for millions of dollars.

    Dave Eggers, father of the publishing house McSweeney's (twee and cutesy to some, beloved and celebrated by others, but by most measures a true San Francisco success), these days falls among the "biz curious" writerly ranks. After two books centered on a "cause" (What is the What was a fictionalized biography of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee; Zeitoun reported one family's ordeal during Hurricane Katrina) he has put out two consecutive books concerned with corporate America. The 2012 novel A Hologram for the King beautifully imagined a weary, frustrated American salesman, bruised by the downturn, traveling to Saudi Arabia to land a big wireless technologies deal. The language, in that book, represented a bit of a turn for Eggers: less meandering and whimsical, more terse, utilitarian and clean. It worked wonderfully.

    许多小说家都把笔触伸向了商业界，他们的作品有的荒诞离奇，有的贴近真实。其中最出名的有以下几位：首先是乔纳森•迪和亚当•哈斯雷特，他们的作品从不同的角度描写了金融危机。去年，海伦•德怀特的《避雷针》（Lightning Rods）以极为认真可信的搞笑笔法描写了一个人是怎样把一个龌龊的念头变成现实的——也就是把办公室性服务变成一项合法的全国性业务。罗宾•斯隆的作品《半影先生的24小时书屋》（Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore ）描写了一家在硅谷真实存在的书店背后的故事。去年，加布利埃尔•罗斯的处女作《未知》（The Unknowns）则描写了一名年轻企业家在以几亿美金的价格卖掉自己的公司之后所经历的一段迷茫时期。

    作家戴夫•艾格斯是麦克斯威尼出版社（McSweeney's）的创始人（有些人认为他的作品矫饰过重，但也有不少人非常喜欢他的作品。从大多数标准看，他都是一个成功的作家。）最近他也加入了戏笔商界的行列。之前他有两部书都围绕着“目的”这个主题。【《什么是什么》（What is the What）一书描写了一个虚构的苏丹难民瓦伦蒂诺•阿扎克•邓命运多舛的一生，《泽图恩》（Zeitoun ）则讲述了一个家庭在卡特里娜飓风中的挣扎。】写完这两部书后，他又连续创作了两部描写美国商界的小说。2012年的小说《王者的全像》（A Hologram for the King）用又没得笔触描写了一个身心俱疲的美国销售员在经济危机的打击下，远赴沙特阿拉伯去谈一笔无线技术业务的大生意。这本书的语言代表了艾格斯本人写作风格的转型。这本书的语言少了几分闲散和异想天开，多了几分凝练、实用和简洁，获得了很好的反响。

    The writing style of his new novel The Circle, out this month, is the same, but this book lacks the grace, charm and realism of Hologram. The novel takes its name from a fictional company: The Circle ("the only company that really mattered at all") is a gargantuan, young-but-powerful tech corporation on a giant, sprawling campus in Silicon Valley. Sound familiar? In a prepared Q&A on the press release that went around with the book, Eggers is asked coyly, "Is this book about Google (GOOG) or Facebook (FB) or any particular company?" He responds, "No, no." And yet The Circle has three cofounders: Tom, Eamon, and Ty (hard not to think of Larry, Sergey and chairman Schmidt). Its cafeteria is called "the glass eatery," a space "designed such that diners ate at nine different levels, all of the floors and walls glass. At first glance, it looked like a hundred people were eating in mid-air." Its most revered staffers are the "Gang of 40," which comprises "the forty most crucial minds at the company… privy to its most secret plans and data."

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    Regardless of whether The Circle reminds you more of Google, Facebook, or a different company, after we get through the recognizable early descriptions of the setting, the company no longer resembles any organization that exists or could ever conceivably exist right now. And that's one of its biggest problems. Eggers clearly means The Circle to be a blistering, dystopian satire, but that fails because what happens is so absurdly far-fetched and over the top. It is a book that will make you scoff, not tremble.

    The Circle's protagonist Mae Holland arrives at the company on her first day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager to please. She is our window into the company. But she so swiftly falls prey to the founders' whims that it's impossible to identify with her or even like her. There is no pathos to be found in what happens to her since she leaps at every opportunity for further brainwashing.

    艾格斯于本月出版的新书《圆》（The Circle）也是一本以美国商界为背景的小说，但它却没有《王者的全像》的美感与写实。书名“圆”来自书中作者描写的那家名叫The Circle的公司，它也是书中唯一一家重要的公司。它的规模极为庞大，是一家年轻、但实力极其雄厚的科技企业，在硅谷有一片占地极大的总部。是不是觉得似曾相识？在本书的发布会上，有记者问艾格斯：“本书是不是影射了谷歌（Google）、Facebook或其他哪家特定的公司？”艾格斯答道：“不，不是。”不过书上的The Circle公司有三个联合创始人：汤姆、艾蒙、泰，让人很难不联想到谷歌的“三巨头”拉里、谢尔盖和董事长施密特。The Circle的餐厅叫做“玻璃餐馆”，一共有9层，它的墙和地板都是用玻璃做的。一眼看去，就好像“上百人飘在空中吃饭”一样。这家公司的核心员工被称做“四十人帮”，也是公司最重要的四十名员工，只有他们有权接触公司的核心计划和数据。

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    不管The Circle公司是否让你想起了谷歌、Facebook或其他哪家公司，反正在看过了本书的基本设置后，后面的故事已经很难找到任何一家真实企业的影子了，不过这也是它最大的问题之一。艾格斯显然是要把这本书写成一本反乌托邦的讽刺作品，不过这个目标可以说是失败了。因为书中的故事实在是太过牵强和夸张，是一本能让人嗤之以鼻、而不是兴奋颤抖的书。

    小说的主人公梅•霍兰德第一天走进公司的时候还是一个天真烂漫、不谙世事的少女，急于获得别人的认可。她也是我们看这家公司的一扇窗口。但她很快成了长官意志的牺牲品，渐渐变得让读者难以认同，甚至很难喜欢上她。随着她抓住每个机会一步步往上爬，她也一步步被洗脑，丝毫不能激起人们的同情。

    Early explanations of how they do things at The Circle are believable until they spiral quickly into fantasy. Mae's first gig is in customer service, responding to user queries and getting back a satisfaction rating. When her first customer gives Mae a 99, her superior tells her: "Ninety-nine is good. But I can't help wondering why it wasn't a 100… Now, most companies would say, Wow, 99 out of 100 points, that's nearly perfect. And I say, exactly: it's nearly perfect, sure. But at the Circle, that missing point nags at us." That little rant is funny and one can indeed imagine it coming from the mouth of some zealous exec at a Silicon Valley innovation factory. But soon enough, Mae attends "plankton-inspection time," which her friend Annie (who recruits Mae to The Circle and is swiftly kicked aside as Mae scrambles up its ladder) explains this way: "You know, little startups hoping the big whale—that's us—will find them tasty enough to eat. Once a week we take a series of meetings with these guys, Ty-wannabes, and they try to convince us that we need to acquire them." That series of pitches are broadcast to millions of people once Mae "goes transparent" with a camera around her neck that allows anyone to see everything she sees. Nevermind how ludicrous it is to picture a company letting the public watch it deliberate acquisitions (can you imagine if Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Marissa Mayer created a Vine video, and shared it on Twitter, of her early meetings with David Karp before buying Tumblr?). By now the reader has checked out anyway, as Mae and the rest of The Circle rapidly convinces people all over the world, beginning with politicians, to "go transparent" (Mae gets to turn her camera off when she's in the bathroom, but only for two minutes, lest her watchers worry).

    In one of the book's rare funny moments, Mae sleeps with a guy at The Circle who has pursued her. He is a premature ejaculator but nonetheless he asks her—demands, in fact—to "rate him" based on his sexual performance. She keeps giving him 100s to make him feel good. The rating is really important to him. These are the kinds of people Eggers imagines actually occupy the desks of our hallowed tech companies. Maybe it's more upsetting than funny.

    Regardless, the idea that one of our biggest tech companies could gain too much power and influence is certainly a legitimate fear—like Jonathan Franzen, Eggers, it seems reasonable to extrapolate, is indeed afraid; he does not tweet or keep up a Facebook author page—but inThe Circle, the rest of the world outside the company so quickly embraces "transparency" and sits glued to their screens watching Mae's work day that you begin to wonder if the novel is meant to take place on a different planet. Eggers's sendup of social media is partially dead-on (people at The Circle rampantly send "zings" and give a "smile" or "frown" to status updates) but in his depiction no one in America seems to have any life at all outside the computer. The proliferation of social media notwithstanding, human beings simply aren't as gullible as he makes them out to be.

    The sole voices of reason in the novel are Mae's analog parents and her ex- boyfriend, Mercer, an outdoorsman type who makes chandeliers out of antlers. Whenever she visits her folksy parents, whom she quickly comes to look down on, she also sees Mercer, who has become close with her parents and who is wary of her work at The Circle. "You know what I think, Mae?" he tells her at one family meal. "I think you think that sitting at your desk, frowning and smiling somehow makes you think you're actually living some fascinating life. You comment on things, and that substitutes for doing them. You look at pictures of Nepal, push a smile button, and you think that's the same as going there… Mae, do you realize how incredibly boring you've become?" All of that is true, and Mercer is clearly meant to stand in for us, the reasonable reader. But he also sounds too much like an angry old man complaining about technology to be a fair surrogate for sanity. Mae swiftly writes him off, and this is where the book begins to get boring. Mae's parents are unable to warn her against The Circle because they're benefitting from its healthcare program, so Mercer is left to the task alone. When he writes Mae a letter further explaining his kind concerns, she reads that letter aloud to her millions of "watchers" and we realize Eggers has no intention of creating a believable satire (which would be fine if it were meant to be an intentionally over-the-top parody, but it isn't that—the book is rarely funny) because the people tuned in to Mae unhesitatingly and unanimously mock Mercer for suggesting caution about The Circle's encouraged obliteration of privacy. Eggers would do well to show a few of them piping up in his defense, or even one chorus of, "well, he makes some fair points…" but there is none. The fictional society is as blindly accepting of Big Brother as Mae.

    By the point in the book when millions of people tune in to cheer Mae on as she uses The Circle's mobile cameras to pursue Mercer (for wanting only to live alone, unbothered in the woods) so relentlessly that, inevitably, something awful happens, the plot has grown so far-fetched, and the people so far gone from any semblance of humans we know, that you're well aware of what's coming. And Eggers doesn't surprise or give a twist: instead, he chooses the exact ending we expect.

    The Circle公司初期的行事方式还是比较有可信度的，不过后来幻想的意味很快越来越浓烈。梅的第一份工作是客户服务，主要是回答用户的问题，然后获得用户的满意度评分。梅的第一个客户给她打了99分，但是她的上级对她说：“99分很不错了，但我不禁要想，为什么不是100分呢？大多数公司可能会说，满分100分的话，99分可以说很高了。但是在The Circle公司，这丢掉的1分让我们很不舒服。”这番激昂的演说很有意思，而且让人很容易想象它是出自硅谷某个创新工厂的高管口中。没过多久，梅参加了公司所谓的“检查浮游生物时间”。梅的朋友安妮（安妮是把梅招进公司的人，但随着梅的平步青云，她在公司很快受到了冷落。）这样解释道：“你知道，很多小的创业公司希望像咱们公司这样的大鲸鱼能够吃掉他们。每个星期，我们都和这些家伙——也就是想成为像泰一样的大老板的人开一系列会议，他们则想方设法说服我们收购他们。”梅在这些会议中会一直在脖子上戴着一个摄像头，她在会上所看到的一切都会被转播给几百万人，这就是The Circle公司的“透明”路线。且不说让公众了解企业收购情况的做法无疑是很荒谬的，我们不妨想象一下，如果雅虎（Yahoo）CEO梅莉沙•梅耶尔在收购Tumblr之前也拍了这么一支视频，还把它发到了Twitter上会是什么样子。但读到此处，读者会发现，在梅和The Circle公司其他人的推动下，全世界从政治圈开始，都走起了“透明”路线。（梅只有上厕所的时候才能把摄像头关掉，但时间仅限两分钟，以免让她的观众们担心。）

    书中也有为数不多的几处搞笑情节。比如有一次，梅和公司里一个追求他的男同事睡了。这哥们儿有早泄的毛病，但是事后总是请（或者说要求）梅给他的床上表现打分。为了让他感觉良好，梅每次都给他打100分，他也把分数看得极重。像这位快枪手一样的技术宅大概就是艾格斯想象中科技公司技术员的样子。或许与其说是搞笑，倒不如说是可悲。

    不管怎样，某家科技公司有可能攫取过大的权力和社会影响这个想法绝对是一个合理的担忧。像乔纳森•弗伦岑一样，艾格斯也很担心这一点。艾格斯自己不上Twitter，在Facebook上也没有主页，但是在这本小说中，全世界人民都很快地爱上了The Circle公司的“透明”概念。人们牢牢地坐在电脑屏幕前，目不转睛地盯着梅一整天的工作，不禁令人遐想，这故事莫非是发生在另一个星球上。艾格斯对社交媒体的讽刺有一部分是正确的（The Circle公司的人都非常喜欢在社交媒体上点“赞”，经常在状态更新中发笑脸或皱眉的表情），不过在他的书中，美国人民似乎除了上网就不需要过日子了。虽然社交媒体的确非常普及，但是老百姓其实并不像艾格斯笔下那样好骗。

    书中唯一理性的声音来自梅的父母和他的前男友默瑟。默瑟是一个户外运动爱好者，工作是用鹿角做吊灯。随着梅的职务越来越高，她很快开始瞧不起土里土气的父母。由于默瑟和她的父母走得很近，每次梅回家看父母的时候，她也会顺便看看默瑟。默瑟很反感梅在The Circle公司的工作。有一次吃饭的时候，他对梅说：“梅，你知道我是怎么想的吗？我想，你大概觉得坐在桌子后头，发一个皱眉或笑脸的表情，你就觉得你的生活也挺精彩的。你对事情评论一番，就代替了亲手去做这些事。你看了看尼泊尔的照片，发一个笑脸的表情，就觉得好像跟自己去了那里一样……梅，你知道你的生活已经变得多无聊了吗？”这番话说得都是事实，而且显然是替我们这些读者说的。不过他的口气听起来很像是一个爱抱怨的老头在抱怨现代科技。梅很快和默瑟分手了，而这本书也从这里开始变得无聊起来。梅的父母也不再给她提出任何针对公司的警告，因为他们已经享受上了公司的医保服务。之后默瑟成了唯一一个敢提反对意见的人。一次他给梅写了一封信表达了善意的关心，但她当着几百万“观众”的面把这封信大声念了出来。我们发现，艾格斯并没有故意要写一部具有可信性的讽刺作品的意思（如果是故意讽刺也倒好了，但并不是这样——这本书很少搞笑），因为人们很快一边倒地嘲笑默瑟关于The Circle公司侵犯人隐私的警告。如果有人站出来为默瑟说句话，甚至说上一句“其实他说得也挺有道理的”，可能会显得更有可信性，但艾格斯并没有这样写。在这个虚拟的社会中，整个社会都像梅一样，茫然无视“老大哥”对隐私的侵犯。

    后来书中写道，由于不堪其扰，梅只想远离世事，不受打扰地住在森林里，因此梅开始动用The Circle公司的移动摄像头寻找默瑟。但因为她干得太过火，最终发生了非常不好的事。但此时本书的情节已经发展得过于牵强，书中的人们也变得不像我们所知道的任何人类，你可能也将知道接下来会发生什么事。艾格斯并没有给出令人意外或纠结的结尾，而是选择了大家都期待的结局。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎