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

REVIEW HAIKUS!!!! (#3)

It's time for another edition of Review Haikus; a feature I like to write when I'm too lazy to write out full reviews~!!! The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 Tony Scott schlockfest~! All his movies seem the same. A needless remake. Denzel's a bad-ass. Given up on Travolta. 1 of 2 ain't bad. Public Enemies Well? Disappointed. I expected more from Mann. The pacing felt off. Acting was good though. Man-crush on Depp and Bale. 5 more syllables! Saw VI Yes, another Saw. Harder to tell them apart. Blood, guts, bad story. Why more Saw movies? Each movie makes less and less. End this series now. ====== Later geeks!

Sam Raimi's Dragging Someone To Hell!!!

It's great to see Sam Raimi back in his form with his latest entry Drag Me To Hell . Simply glorious, it is a horror geek's dream. This is the Sam we all know and love from Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness , before he got all caught up in the comic book geek universe of Spider-Man . After 10 years (from the first time I watched Evil Dead 2 ), he has remained my favourite film director... although he did try my patience with Spider-Man 3 . I know this euphoria that I'm feeling now will be short lived, as even as I type this review, Raimi is already at work on the pre-production of Spider-Man 4 (yay?). So what is there to say about Drag Me To Hell ? This is the way a summer movie should be, touching on all those senses that make movie going an actual experience. There were thrills, chills, laughs and cheers; the way things should be! Drag Me To Hell tells a story of a young loan officer named Christine, who in an effort to advance her own career, has to turn down an

Lt. Aldo Raine wants his scalps!!!!!!!!!!!!

I missed The Inglorious Basterds during its theatrical run and it's a shame too because I'm a fool for Tarantino movies. But I finally got to see it this weekend and I'm happy to say that I mostly enjoyed it. I don't think it's his best movie, but it was damned entertaining. The Inglorious Basterds takes place during World War II and tells its story by following three different groups of characters: from Lt. Aldo Raine and his squad of soldiers infamously known as the Basterds, Col. Hans Landa, a Nazi colonel better known as "The Jew Hunter", and from a young Jewish girl named Shosanna, who had her family murdered by Col. Landa. We follow the Basterds in their Nazi killing business (and business is good) as they lay out a plan to take out several high ranking officials all at once. We follow Shosanna as she operates her theater and lays down her own plans in exacting revenge on the Nazis. And of course, the "Jew Hunter" is hot on their trail