It has been 15 years since Douglas Coupland coined Generation-X and applied it to those who came of age in the 1980's. Coupland's eponymous debut explored the inner lives of three of those individuals whose attempt to escape the era's rampant commercialism involved fleeing to the desert and trading stories with each other.
Fast forward to 1995 when Coupland hit pay dirt with Microserfs, a view into the lives of a group of young Microsoft programmers in the midst of the dotcom boom. Remember Microserfs? You should. Its first incarnation was as a short story in an issue ofWired Magazine, but it went on to become a cult hit, especially in geek/tech circles (go figure). In fact, a 2005 Guardian poll landed Microserfs in theTop 20 Geek Novels.
Since then, Coupland has penned seven more novels, all showcasing his range and his penchant for experimentation: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998) had supernatural elements; God Hates Japan(2001) was a collaboration published in Japanese; and Hey Nostradamus! (2003) which explored darker themes won the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Fiction. With the 2006 publication of Jpod, Coupland returns to his earlier success with Microserfs, once again embracing geek culture.
Fast forward to 1995 when Coupland hit pay dirt with Microserfs, a view into the lives of a group of young Microsoft programmers in the midst of the dotcom boom. Remember Microserfs? You should. Its first incarnation was as a short story in an issue ofWired Magazine, but it went on to become a cult hit, especially in geek/tech circles (go figure). In fact, a 2005 Guardian poll landed Microserfs in theTop 20 Geek Novels.
Since then, Coupland has penned seven more novels, all showcasing his range and his penchant for experimentation: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998) had supernatural elements; God Hates Japan(2001) was a collaboration published in Japanese; and Hey Nostradamus! (2003) which explored darker themes won the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Fiction. With the 2006 publication of Jpod, Coupland returns to his earlier success with Microserfs, once again embracing geek culture.
Microserfs, Part Deux?
Jpod is not an actual sequel to Microserfs, but it is the natural heir of the former novel's readership. The book revolves around five young developers working at a Vancouver computer game company (presumably Electronic Arts) to bring the company's new game to market while they simultaneously sabotage it.
Coupland's followers, particularly Microserfs devotees, will feel right at home with the author's playfully nontraditional devices for revealing character, like having each of the Jpodders write love letters to Ronald McDonald:
Ronald Darling, I've just been transferred into a new game development pod, which is truly the pod of the corn. Part of their tribal lore is that I have to write you this degrading letter, which is so stupid, because how many times have you and I already had online sex - three hundred? They don't even think you're real, which pisses me off no end. And I know if I try to discuss our forbidden love, we'll both be mocked and shunned.
Jpod is not an actual sequel to Microserfs, but it is the natural heir of the former novel's readership. The book revolves around five young developers working at a Vancouver computer game company (presumably Electronic Arts) to bring the company's new game to market while they simultaneously sabotage it.
Coupland's followers, particularly Microserfs devotees, will feel right at home with the author's playfully nontraditional devices for revealing character, like having each of the Jpodders write love letters to Ronald McDonald:
Ronald Darling, I've just been transferred into a new game development pod, which is truly the pod of the corn. Part of their tribal lore is that I have to write you this degrading letter, which is so stupid, because how many times have you and I already had online sex - three hundred? They don't even think you're real, which pisses me off no end. And I know if I try to discuss our forbidden love, we'll both be mocked and shunned.
Despite his ham-handed approach to character development (or perhaps because of it), the characters often become the most fascinating aspects of his novels, and Coupland indulges the reader by exploring the bizarre personality quirks of his key players: John Doe's need to be statistically average in every detail of his life, Evil Mark's proclivity for edible office supplies, and Cancer Cowboy's Robitussin-fueled sex addiction.
Unlike Microserfs, which had a decidedly flat plotline, Jpod no sooner introduces Ethan, the narrator among this band of cubicle-dwellers, than he dumps a dead biker named Tim in Ethan's mother's marijuana "grow-op," making it instantly clear that these Vancouver suburbanites cannot be taken at face value.
Who Loves Douglas Coupland?
Douglas Coupland does. Or so it appears as he blatantly inserts himself into his own novel for no other reason than to allow his characters, the very geeks who put him in the top ten, to revile him for pied-pipering them into the morally-debased and culturally-deficient internet culture. Coupland's existence within the novel is announced in its opening lines:
"Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel."
"That asshole."
Unlike Microserfs, which had a decidedly flat plotline, Jpod no sooner introduces Ethan, the narrator among this band of cubicle-dwellers, than he dumps a dead biker named Tim in Ethan's mother's marijuana "grow-op," making it instantly clear that these Vancouver suburbanites cannot be taken at face value.
Who Loves Douglas Coupland?
Douglas Coupland does. Or so it appears as he blatantly inserts himself into his own novel for no other reason than to allow his characters, the very geeks who put him in the top ten, to revile him for pied-pipering them into the morally-debased and culturally-deficient internet culture. Coupland's existence within the novel is announced in its opening lines:
"Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel."
"That asshole."
But the author-as-character device becomes truly surreal much later in the story when Ethan, the narrator, meets Coupland in the first class cabin on a flight to Shanghai. I won't reveal more than that, except to say that Ethan has a role to play in getting Jpod written and Coupland, the character, is instrumental in resolving the novel's crisis.
Jpod is a light novel in a heavy package. Its 450 page girth is deceptive however as many of the pages are devoted to Douglas Coupland's typographic experimentalism. For instance, twenty pages are devoted to the first hundred thousand digits of pi; several pages display the Chinese characters for such concepts as shopping, boredom, and pornography in a 300 pt. font; and peppered throughout Jpod are pages that appear to quote everything from email spam to commercial slogans to colloquialisms like "nice parking, asshole."
Jpod is a light novel in a heavy package. Its 450 page girth is deceptive however as many of the pages are devoted to Douglas Coupland's typographic experimentalism. For instance, twenty pages are devoted to the first hundred thousand digits of pi; several pages display the Chinese characters for such concepts as shopping, boredom, and pornography in a 300 pt. font; and peppered throughout Jpod are pages that appear to quote everything from email spam to commercial slogans to colloquialisms like "nice parking, asshole."
