Metadata#
- Author(s): Edward Snowden
- Number of pages: 339
- Year published: 2019
- Year read: 2019
Review#
Wow. Very interesting.
This was one of those (rare) books where I am just THIRSTING to read other people’s reviews - because I suspect my feelings are shared - but I kept myself from it, since I wanted to give an unvarnished reaction.
So, I’d give Ed Snowden the whistleblower 5 stars for his clarity of thought, strength of principle, and courage. He did something very important for our civil liberties, and for any hope we might have of averting a real-life 1984 dystopia. He pulled back the curtain on the panopticon, and we should always be grateful for that.
I’d also give the guts of his actual whistleblowing act - particularly since I remember watching it “live” in 2013 - 5 stars for sheer adrenaline. I remember when he made that Guardian video unmasking himself, and when he disappeared off the face of the planet: only to turn up stuck in Russia after a failed escape to Ecuador. High drama!
I give his writing… 3 stars?! Like it’s both unexpectedly good (whoa, he foreshadowed his own life story with a pop 1980s reference that ALSO contextualized his upbringing! bravo), unexpectedly cheesy (boy, can his prose get purple), and unexpectedly - and disappointingly - humble-braggy. I mean, this read like a Tom Clancy novel. It’s this very red-blooded, very American (‘murca!), very 90s, rah rah justice story that seems - like Tom Clancy novels! - to feel so morally basic, so straightforward (and even thin characterizations!). I mean, fair. In a way, it WAS morally basic. The post-9/11 bulk collection/NSA panopticon IS a monster. It just takes guts to point it out, and woke-ness to notice/care. But Snowden paints himself as a hero so thoroughly, humble-brags so much, that I found myself getting pretty annoyed.
It’s actually interesting to compare his authorial voice against the voice of Aaron Swartz, who held a lot of the same beliefs and was (I think?) a greater talent, but took a very different (and tragic) path. Aaron Swartz’s writings revealed a young man who really burned with an inner moral fire - he was almost like a prophet. It made his writings incredibly compelling to read, but also alienating. Snowden, on the other hand, sounds MUCH more down to Earth - but also kinda… vain?! And, like, 90s basic technogeek (fetishizing Japanese culture, for example)? I feel strange criticizing his voice, but his extended digressions on his all-American, all-patriot pedigree jarred me; as did his heroic portrayal of how he really wanted to go to a high risk conflict zone but was “punished” for his uppity intelligence by getting a cushy Geneva job; and just his general portrayal as a heroic, super-smart, righteous hero in the mold of Jack Ryan.
It’s actually funny because the meta of his “voice” - what it could (potentially) reveal about his character - reminded me very much of James Comey and John Dickerson, two other public figures who also first struck me as deeply, admirably ethical, and then that upstanding nobility was sort of complicated with a deeper feeling that they were also strangely vain about that same moral nobility? I remember when Trump called Comey a “showboat”, and how very outrageous that felt at the time, but then several months later, I was like, “you know, maybe he has a point”. Similarly, I love John Dickerson (who can’t!), but I’ve likewise noticed how cultivated that aura of righteous dude is; and how he must relish it!
Which is funny! Because, from what I can tell, Snowden, Comey and Dickerson ARE righteous dudes! They DO embody high ethical standards! I guess I just have complicated feelings when it becomes apparent that THEY hero-worship themselves a bit too. I am, of course, speculating (especially about Dickerson, who seems least “showboaty”).
Other writing stuff: Snowden’s early chapters on his upbringing in 1990s Maryland, as well as his descriptions of the early Internet, the Federal contracting industry, and the rise of social media, were his strongest. I highlighted several passages that were SO insightful (and I was going to give this book 5 stars!). His later chapters, and especially his attempt to weave his relationship with his girlfriend, Lindsay, throughout the rest of the book - felt strangely unbelievable?! Which is funny (this is nonfiction!), but the excerpts from her diaries just felt… very similar to his voice!