Skip to main content

Douglas Coupland's GENERATION A

"Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago."
— Kurt Vonnegut


After many years of recommendations and the associated build-up, I’ve finally done it:  I read my first Douglas Coupland book.  Does he live up to the hype?  Well...

Generation A tells a tale of a strange and alternate Earth, one where the bees have mysteriously disappeared.  As such, some of the things that we take for granted now are gone, like flowers and apples and such. 

We are told the story from the perspectives of 5 different people around the world.  There’s Zack, a somehow model-esque redneck farmboy from Iowa.  Harj, a customer services operator based out of India for the almighty, Abercrombie & Fitch.  Samantha, a young New Zealander whose parents declared their new belief in no belief.  Diana, a young dental hygienist with a serious case of tourette syndrome from North Bay, Ontario (!).  And Julien, a university student/geek who lives to play World of Warcraft from Paris, France.

Although all of them are seemingly quite different and diverse, they are brought together after each of them gets stung by the thought-to-be extinct bees.  Who would have thought, that after getting stung by a bee, it would propel you into stardom?  But there is more to their union than meets the eye.  What is the mystery behind the bee stings?  Why in particular were these 5 people stung?

I was quite intrigued by Coupland’s style of storytelling, a good mix of drama and humour.  What made it more enjoyable was the all the pop cultural references that he throws in there.  Like, he takes a few pages to explain the Japanese anime, Battleship Yamato.  Random, but pretty awesome (it even parallels our story).  At the same time, it grounds the book in a certain generation – to ours.  Would the book speak to an audience say 30 years from now?  It’s hard to imagine, unless things like World of Warcraft are still relevant then.

Where the book lost me was in the last third.  The characters begin telling short stories, in a campfire sort of style.  It goes on and on.  To me, just when things started to get intriguing, it grinds to a halt.  I wanted to hear about the story, not necessarily the stories within the story.  I’m sure there is some message behind the sub-stories, but it just wasn’t connecting with me.

For a first Coupland read, it was good, but I wanted it to be great.  But I’m a very simple man.  I was just looking for a straight-up conventional narrative.  I’ve got Girlfriend in a Coma lying on my shelf, so I’ll give him another shot.  Until then, later geeks!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

THE ARTIST!!!!!!!

The Artist is director Michael Hazanavicius ode to the silent films of yesteryear. Not only focus on a silent movie actor and movie making, but it in itself is also a silent movie. The movie follows a silent movie actor named George Valentin through the rise and fall of his career. At the start of the film, we see George as this superstar celebrity; he loves the glitz and glamour of being a famous actor and soaks in all the attention he can get. He loves having his photos taken and being adorned on the front pages of newspapers. He is THAT kind of celebrity. At the premiere event of his latest movie, he bumps into one Peppy Miller – a young woman with big ambitions and dreams in Hollywoodland. The lives of the two intersect and an attraction immediately blossoms. The romance could only go so far as Valentin is a (happily?) married man. George’s superstardom reaches its height at a precarious time. And as the 1920s are ushered out, so are silent movies. The new decade brings w

Finally, the Xbox 360!!

So as I mentioned in a previous post, I received an Xbox 360 for Christmas from my dad. A great present it was! I've had 3 weeks to enjoy it so I guess I can give you my impressions of it now. First the controller. In truth, I haven't felt a controller this comfortable in my gaming life before. As a child who grew up on the 8-bit generation, with just a directional pad and 2 buttons, there was quite a learning curve getting used to using two analog sticks at the same time. You might say, "Hey Lam, how bout the PS2? You have that machine, and that has analog sticks". True, but of the twenty or so games I have for that, all of them used either only 1 analog stick, or allowed the option to switch on to the directional pad. Using 2 sticks at the same time was at first just uncomfortable. This made for all sorts of trouble as I was playing Gears of War . Luckily for me, I had computer controlled teammates that watched my back. I love the Media Center capabilities

DTV Madness: Jack Brooks - M.S. and Gingerdead Man 2

Okay, honestly, I think this will be the last DTV post for a while. One man can only take so much shit. I'm only human, I have feelings too. These two movies pushed my limit. I'm going to be in DTV-detox for the next month or so. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer I thought that with a title like this, it couldn't fail. I thought that with a poster like they had, it couldn't fail. Then I realized something... I failed. I failed in thinking that this movie had any hope. I was expecting some fun horror, mixed with comedy in sort of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer kind of fashion with a bumbling hero and smart quips. I mean, with a title like Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer , was I wrong in expecting a variety of monsters get slayed as the title suggests? It didn't help much that the monsters looked uber cheesy. They looked like something right out of a Power Rangers episode. But to their credit, at least they stuck with practical make-up and effects rather than CG. The mo