pageclot's Full Review: Douglas Coupland - Generation X: Tales for an Acce...
The curse of Generation X is that, as a group, they're aware of the futility of everything, but further, that they suspect that they're using this as an excuse to be lazy.
Did Douglas Coupland coin the term "Generation X?". If he didn't, he certainly gave a rocket-boost to its popularization, and Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture might be the history of its epistomology. Douglas Coupland is perhaps most widely known for this book, released in 1991.
At once social commentary and social model, Coupland posits Generation X as a reaction against the excesses of the previous decade, and also shows a possible way out of this consumerist wasteland. A very self-aware man, Coupland is obviously conscious of and more than willing to exploit the incredibly rich opportunities for irony devolving from a plot involving hyper-educated yuppies dropping out of the mainstream to form a sort of anti-consumerist utopic environment. This makes for pretty enjoyable reading, on the whole. It's serious literature under the guise of an extended magazine-type article. For people with low attention spans, there are campy definitions, cartoons, illustrations, in the margins tangentially referred to in the text of the book, but are amusing if you happen to flip through the book in a bookstore. Having read the cartoons and definitions, you'll buy the book, bring it home, and possibly read the actual story, and perhaps be nonplussed. "Wasn't this supposed to be about making fun of yuppies?" you might ask yourself.
It is not.
It is far more sympathetic than you might think, at first read. Sure, there are the obligatory whacks at hyper-aggressive corporate types, disaffected youth, aging hipsters, and baby boomers with bumpersticker thought patterns. There is the sense that, viewed a certain way, all modern existence is just too too absurd for words. But beyond this veneer of cynicism, there are three extraordinary characters who have seen the dark side of consumerism, and experience mild despair, trying to connect to people they love who are still rushing headlong towards that dark side. It is this despair that ultimately redeems Andy, Claire and Dag, and lets us like them. (Liking fiction characters is not required, you understand, but let's face it, it's kind of nice when you don't have to approach reading with dread).
So it's a good read, and Gen X is shot through with references, some clever, some banal (but no less comforting in their banality).
Coupland is very concerned with placing his generation in context, probably because there's no singular event around which to rally the troops. No JFK assassination, no Vietnam conflict, peace marches or race riots. The most we have is the 1972 Summit series. There are many specific references to other decades and years, ("1974, the year before emission controls made tinkering with engines too difficult"), and the people living now, lacking anything concrete to align themselves with, are always comparing themselves to other generations. Yuppies, baby boomers, Post-WW2 parents, Vietnam Vets, are all used as markers for our heroes, who are searching, perhaps, for something more concrete than their own lives to gauge themselves against.
Is it mobility that breeds rootlessness, or rootlessness that breeds mobility? Borders seem transparent for this generation. People work in Japan on magazines, in Toronto for marketing agencies, in New York City, live in Palm Springs, in Mexico. The world is their underground theatre stage, and like most underground theatre, the audience is made up of family members. This generation is more mobile, and more jaded than any other. They are indulgent of themselves, but retain a core belief that maybe there's something more interesting going on that they're not a part of, and this is where the anxiety part comes in. Coupland's people are either totally absorbed in the "me" culture, or reacting against the "me" culture, but still demonstrably "of" it. It's like the servant who through a combination of luck and fortitude, who makes it big, and decides that he wants to have a house just like the one he was a servant in. He's only demonstrating the power his servitude had over him, not his ultimate triumph over it. (I think I stole that from The Fountainhead) With similar motivations, Andy, Dag and Claire tell each other stories of their escapes from or immersion in the horrible and faded culture they left behind when they dropped out.
You get the sense that these people, and most of those they come into contact with, (Elvissa, their landlords, their employers) have given up any vestiges of hope that they'll make a difference in the world, and are hoping to make a difference in their own lives. Maybe there's still hope.
Generation X is a field guide to and for the vast generation born in the late 1950s and the 1960s--a generation that has been erroneously labelled pos...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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