Know It All

Edward Snowden and the culture of whistle-blowing.

- Jill Lepore

One of Edward J. Snowden’s earliest memories is of sneaking around the house and turning back the time on all the clocks in the hope of tricking his parents into letting him stay up late to watch more TV. Another is of the day his father brought home a Commodore 64 and how exciting it was, that very first time, to hold a joystick. Snowden’s new autobiography, “Permanent Record” (Metropolitan), is the autobiography of a gamer, pale and bleary-eyed and glued to his screen, longing for invincibility. Some people write memoirs; other people craft legends. Snowden, who once aspired to be a model and is in some quarters regarded as a modern messiah, is the second kind. As a kid, he read about King Arthur, and his family name comes from Snaw Dun, a mountain in Wales on top of which the legendary ruler is said to have slain a terrible giant by sticking a sword in his eye. Snowden makes a lot of this Tolkien-y sort of thing—avatars, portents of destiny, signs of greatness.