Life After Coupland...

Life is dull, but it could be worse and it could be better. We accept that a corporation determines our life’s routines. It’s the trade-off so that we don’t have to be chronically unemployed creative types, and we know it.

If I were teaching an English seminar at a small liberal-arts school in New England, where all my students worshipped me as hip and cool, and would be willing to stand on desks for me to profess their support if given the opportunity (which, could happen, you know...) my course on literature would be a seminar called "Generation Coupland: A study of the world,works, and impact of Douglas Coupland"

My reading list would be as follows:

Shampoo Planet
Microserfs
J-Pod
Generation X
Polaroids From the Dead
Life After God
Generation A
(We would skip the minor works - those written solely because he must have been under contract to write them: Girlfriend in a Coma, All Families are Psychotic, Eleanor Rigby...)

In addition, in preparation for daily class, they would also have the following types of homework assignments:

Find" as many essays and articles written by Coupland under a pen name.
They would also be required to play Atari 2600 video games, and report on how long they played before getting bored.
View Say Anything, and Singles
Make a mix-tape for a girlfriend/boyfriend/ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend
Listen to a Grateful Dead bootleg, and write an essay about it
Google themselves

We would also spend time studying the rise and fall of MIcrosoft, Google, Nintendo, Electronic Arts.
We would read about Silicon Valley - its birth, growth, and effect on the Bay Area.

For the final exam, the assignment would be to find something that Americans are obsessed with, and explain why it has no real inherent value, (like Twitter for instance, or E!), and how it's existence leads to the devolution of human interaction.

***************

Douglas Coupland published his first (but not nearly his best) novel, Generation X, in 1991. It chronicled the lives of young disenchanted post-collegiate kids settling into jobs and life, and finding out it's actually pretty boring. Of course, the book's title gained global recognition, but the book itself...well, most people probably missed it. Coupland himself, while surely appreciating the irony, is a Canadian recluse who until recently gave few interviews, did almost no book readings, and never would have written the book had he known the title would turn into a stereotype. (Or, maybe he would have - maybe that would be the irony)

I first read about Douglas Coupland in the New York Times Book Review, on a Saturday evening while babysitting for my neighbors, the lawyer and his wife, who didn't believe in television, circa 1992. I sat on their lovely leather couch, listening to old Rolling Stones records, digging through their newspaper and magazine piles for the latest treasures... At the time, Coupland's second book, Shampoo Planet was coming out that Fall. The reviewer praised him as a voice of his generation, and did enough to convince me I needed the book. This, however, was not an easy acquisition in 1992: Amazon didn't exist; nor did the Internet, for that matter. And Port Huron didn't have a Barnes and Noble... At the library, the librarians had never heard of Coupland, but offered to research him for me. They later informed me the book "might" come in, six months after publication. I had no way of finding this book, let alone buying it. So, I put it on my Christmas list, in hopes "Santa" could figure it out. Luckily, he did (with what I suspect was important help from my father, an avid reader himself).

After obsessing over the book for a few months, on Christmas morning, I tore open the gift, and read the book cover-to-cover.

Any of my friends who are "readers" have certainly had this experience - where the book you read completely alters the way you think/feel/see the world and people around you forever. (Catcher in the Rye, A Prayer for Owen Meany are others commonly associated with this change of outlook.). For me, Shampoo Planet, literally changed who I was. Or, more accurately, reaffirmed my certainty of who I was and how I felt. And assured me, it was not so strange...not so strange if some Canadian 20 years my senior, could write a book about "my feelings" and articulate them just how I would want to, if I were a talented writer. As I read the book, I heard a voice and tone that felt as though Coupland was reading my mind... Suburban boredom, angst, sense of futility, absence of purpose, unecessary material accessories everywhere, meaningless human relationships with others simply because it was expected of you...

A brief example: before I read the book, I would look at my mothers living room and never understood the collection of Hummels (little German figurines, which I affectionately called her little Nazis)...after reading the book, I felt like someone confirmed I was right. Why did that stuff matter, it's just stuff...yet, to my Mother, they were treasures. While being such a small difference, it is the basis of every difference I have with my mother - she cares about how things look, while I care about how things feel.

Coupland, in Shampoo Planet, and in many later books, examines the connection between humans desire for material goods and advanced-technology, in place of human interaction and relationships...His short stories, Life After God, and his essays Polaroids From the Dead, examine our relationship with a god, and our devotion to things: pets, musicians, abusive lovers, fictional characters, families, media stars, tragedy, childhood memories...and how these all interplay with the "advancing technology" of our age...

His software-specific stories, Microserfs and J-Pod, though satires, are probably his most meaningful works. Microserfs, detailing cubicle dwellers at the early days of Microsoft, and J-Pod, combining eccentricities and post-Google culture of game-developers at EA Sports (or, whatever the phony name he came up with...)

2 things got me to thinking about Coupland today. 1st, I picked up Shampoo Planet last weekend when I was home in Michigan and decided to read it again. I haven't read it since I was in college, and I'm hoping that old familiar feeling of acceptance and inspiration kicks in after finishing it... 2nd, I found out tonight that Douglas Coupland twitters... This seems fitting....Perfect, in fact. And, though I often laugh and tease those who "Twitter," I have never been more excited to know the daily ongoings and thoughts of someone in my life.