jon_chaisson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jon_chaisson) wrote2008-02-28 11:49 am
jon_chaisson) wrote2008-02-28 11:49 am
Book Report: Douglas Coupland
Okay, so I've been meaning to post this for some time now, so this may take awhile...
First off, I've been reading two books at the same time on average lately, and one of the things I've been doing is reading Douglas Coupland's stuff in chronological order. I've read some of his stuff before, and have always liked it, but after awhile I'd stopped reading them (usually due to reading other stuff) but still buying them when they came out. And not including some of his rarer stuff (like City of Glass, School Spirit, Terry, and the Japanese-language-only God Hates Japan), I believe I have everything of his, almost all of them first editions. Sometime late last year I read his Souvenir of Canada books, which were, of course, VERY Canadian in mindset and fun to read. And recently I picked up Life After God and Postcards from the Dead, both of which I thought I had but apparently did not.
So I figure, why not start a Book Report series here on RTS? I might move these to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
die_joncswerk later, but for now I'll keep them here...
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
The book that started it all. A lot less annoying and a lot more realistic than the tripe Bret Easton Ellis and that group were coming out with. Although I have to say that, at the time, I was a bit frustrated that this new breed of hip novel that focused on a generation close to my age always seemed to focus on A)hipness, B)drug culture, and C)LA (or its surrounding areas) or NYC. Because of this, I always felt distanced from these books, enough that I thought they were okay, but I could never quite see myself in them.
When Generation X came out, there was a lot of positive coverage over it, partly because it decidedly wasn't about drugs, LA, or NYC. A bit of hipness, sure, but Coupland ended up using it as a way to show just how shallow trying to be hip can be. Dag, Andy and Claire (the three protagonists) were living in a once-hip-now-nowheresville Desert Hot Springs, working at jobs they didn't exactly like (yes, this is the book that created the term "McJob"), and had absolutely no clue what they really wanted to do with their futures. Upon first read back in the day, I didn't quite catch the nuances of this, but during current read, they jumped right out at me. Each character had made their own attempts during the book to do something with their lives--Dag by losing himself in Nevada for a few weeks, Claire by blindly following her Euro crush in NYC, and Andy by...well, not doing a damn thing and waiting for something to come to him. It wasn't until his fateful Christmas vacation with his family (or at least those who made an effort to show up) that he saw in them what he didn't want to see in himself--making do with what he had and not attempting to better himself at all. It all ends on a somewhat ambiguous note with Andy driving down to Baja California, apparently to visit Dag and Claire, who have decided to start a hotel down there. We never find out what happens next, only that Andy's finally getting somewhere, and he feels alive for the first time in his life.
THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK:
It's obviously a "first book" for Coupland, and it shows. There's a lot of snarkiness, a lot of quickly written-out but not elaborate scenes, a lot of dialogue with people doing little else but sitting around (although there is a reason for it). Still, it's a fun, quick read, and I enjoyed it this time around. It is a bit dated, but for the most part it still holds up well.
ETA: As for the theme, this is very much in the same vein as my Belief in Fate/Decline and Fall when I wrote it back in 1989-1991, that slice of time where one doesn't quite know what to do with themselves. Added to the fact that in general, we were out of the self-absorbed 80s and trying to figure out what the 90s were going to be like. It did grab a lot of people in this respect, especially since I and people like me were part of that newer generation that were trying not to be their parents but not knowing where to start. It's a good slice-of-life for that time period, something Coupland did really well with a lot of his early books.
COMING NEXT: Shampoo Planet
First off, I've been reading two books at the same time on average lately, and one of the things I've been doing is reading Douglas Coupland's stuff in chronological order. I've read some of his stuff before, and have always liked it, but after awhile I'd stopped reading them (usually due to reading other stuff) but still buying them when they came out. And not including some of his rarer stuff (like City of Glass, School Spirit, Terry, and the Japanese-language-only God Hates Japan), I believe I have everything of his, almost all of them first editions. Sometime late last year I read his Souvenir of Canada books, which were, of course, VERY Canadian in mindset and fun to read. And recently I picked up Life After God and Postcards from the Dead, both of which I thought I had but apparently did not.
So I figure, why not start a Book Report series here on RTS? I might move these to
die_joncswerk later, but for now I'll keep them here...Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
The book that started it all. A lot less annoying and a lot more realistic than the tripe Bret Easton Ellis and that group were coming out with. Although I have to say that, at the time, I was a bit frustrated that this new breed of hip novel that focused on a generation close to my age always seemed to focus on A)hipness, B)drug culture, and C)LA (or its surrounding areas) or NYC. Because of this, I always felt distanced from these books, enough that I thought they were okay, but I could never quite see myself in them.
When Generation X came out, there was a lot of positive coverage over it, partly because it decidedly wasn't about drugs, LA, or NYC. A bit of hipness, sure, but Coupland ended up using it as a way to show just how shallow trying to be hip can be. Dag, Andy and Claire (the three protagonists) were living in a once-hip-now-nowheresville Desert Hot Springs, working at jobs they didn't exactly like (yes, this is the book that created the term "McJob"), and had absolutely no clue what they really wanted to do with their futures. Upon first read back in the day, I didn't quite catch the nuances of this, but during current read, they jumped right out at me. Each character had made their own attempts during the book to do something with their lives--Dag by losing himself in Nevada for a few weeks, Claire by blindly following her Euro crush in NYC, and Andy by...well, not doing a damn thing and waiting for something to come to him. It wasn't until his fateful Christmas vacation with his family (or at least those who made an effort to show up) that he saw in them what he didn't want to see in himself--making do with what he had and not attempting to better himself at all. It all ends on a somewhat ambiguous note with Andy driving down to Baja California, apparently to visit Dag and Claire, who have decided to start a hotel down there. We never find out what happens next, only that Andy's finally getting somewhere, and he feels alive for the first time in his life.
THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK:
It's obviously a "first book" for Coupland, and it shows. There's a lot of snarkiness, a lot of quickly written-out but not elaborate scenes, a lot of dialogue with people doing little else but sitting around (although there is a reason for it). Still, it's a fun, quick read, and I enjoyed it this time around. It is a bit dated, but for the most part it still holds up well.
ETA: As for the theme, this is very much in the same vein as my Belief in Fate/Decline and Fall when I wrote it back in 1989-1991, that slice of time where one doesn't quite know what to do with themselves. Added to the fact that in general, we were out of the self-absorbed 80s and trying to figure out what the 90s were going to be like. It did grab a lot of people in this respect, especially since I and people like me were part of that newer generation that were trying not to be their parents but not knowing where to start. It's a good slice-of-life for that time period, something Coupland did really well with a lot of his early books.
COMING NEXT: Shampoo Planet