She makes mention of identity crises she frets about her stance and status. Wiener recognizes the problem, or fragments of it. Wiener, who lived within yet strains to see from without, is never sure where she stands-an irresolution that’s less Didion at a startup and more the ditherings of an upstart. Didion prized her vantage as a social observer, the neurotically perceptive outsider. What it does do, unfortunately, is expose the book’s foundational wobble. Wiener is a rock-solid writer, which Solnit’s miscalibrated, publicity-oriented blurb doesn’t change. Uncanny Valley is her chronicle of that period, written with the kind of piquant ambivalence that triggers a salivary response, followed by spitting cries of Didion’s umpteenth coming, in so many modern readers. For more than four years, between 20, she toiled and lounged in customer support roles, first at a data analytics company and then at GitHub. The victim of the quasi-praise is Anna Wiener, who moved to San Francisco at age 25 for a job in tech and lived to write about it.
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