Douglas Coupland: JPod
Superb review of Coupland's latest novel JPod at 3:AM by Dogmatika's Susan Tomaselli. To quote her quote from the book: "You feel chilled because you have no character. You're a depressing assemblage of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of only the most banal form of capitalism. You spend your life feeling as if you're perpetually on the brink of being obsolete -- whether it's labour market obsolescence or cultural unhipness. And it's all catching up with you."
JPod is billed as "Microserfs for the age of Google" and it sounds like it with teeth. The interview I did with Coupland back in 1996 hints at a lot of what was to come post Microserfs - I never thought he bettered that book, and I gave up reading his stuff after the saccharine hope of All Families Are Psychotic. But JPod sounds like Coupland is back at where he began and, as Susan puts it: "Between Generation X and now, there has been a glut of pop culture commentators, but none as good a curator as Douglas Coupland. JPod is Coupland bringing it all back home, taking back what's his."
Ooh, I feel genuinely excited about reading a novel. Brilliant!
Besides the 1996 Coupland interview I did for Spike, there's also Gary Marshall's review of Miss Wyoming and my review of the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider tie-in that Coupland contributed to, Lara's Book - a real oddity, that one. Ben blogged recently about Coupland meeting Morrissey
