The best thing about Douglas Coupland is his ability to bring the mundane facets of pop culture, the brand names and logos and catchy jingles, to the forefront of our consciousnesses. How many people actually think about hair care products, plastic toys, pet food or clothes? I mean, how many think about them in great detail, trying to figure out where these things fit into the great mosaic of North American life?

Not many, I would imagine. That’s part of advertising and pop culture’s success, the ability to worm their way into life and stand stock-still in the background like Scooby and Shaggy in rickety suits of armor. There, but not visible, at least not to the people with so much going on in their lives already.

Tyler is ambitious, the son of an aging hippy, a Regan youth with a bathroom full of incredibly specific hair-care products and a collection of globes in his bedroom. It is the early Nineties, and he and his girlfriend spend their days either at school or hanging out in a diner in their Pacific Northwest town, a semi-rural area known for its chemical-processing plants (contracted out to the government, no less) and half-dead shopping mall.

Lancaster, Tyler’s hometown, is where yuppies lay down to die.

Tyler wants to work for Bechtol. Tyler sells imitations of name brand items in order to save up enough money to buy a car and go backpacking across Europe. It is right after his return from his vacation that our story begins.

Watch Tyler interact with his Mother and siblings, deal with his drunken lout of an ex-stepfather, screw up his personal dealings, reconnect with his ambition, experience loneliness for the first time in his adult life and attempt to salvage his future, all against the backdrop of the hyper-comsumptive pre-Y2K years! It’s like gazing upon a psychedelic ant farm blown up into human-sized proportions.

I’ll be honest. To me, this was not as endearing as Microserfs, nor as slick and funny as JPod. I just didn’t find myself as emotionally involved in the characters’ lives. I didn’t have as clear a mental picture of them. They were interesting, but in the same way the characters from 1990s night-time television were interesting. Watching them flirt and stir up drama and grow older and wiser was entertaining, but after an hour, after the credits for the episode came up, I didn’t spend much time thinking about them. At least, not until the next episode.

Not Coupland’s best work, but being Coupland still better than 90% of the books you’ll find in Barnes. A great way to spend a few days sprawled out on the couch, for sure, and the cover art is a minimalist feast for the eyes.

http://alookatabook.blogspot.com/2009... ( )

"Substance" in this book is in the eye of the beholder, and I guess I am one of those who happened to find a lot to like. Great prose, by a writer who is magnificent at capturing a zeitgeist and material culture of a time. The portrayal of the characters and of life as consumption (including foreign travel and experience as a commodity) makes for a sort of anticaipatory, fictionalized version of "Stuff White People Like" however it feels like more than a gimmick here. ( )

This Coupland book was like comfort food for me. Others have commented on his writing, and I have to agree that there are some excellent passages in the book--there were several chunks that I had to read aloud to my wife because I enjoyed them so much.Really, though, I enjoyed the growth and interaction of characters most. I appreciate the way he blends the sort of hyper-consumerism of his characters with personality traits to make them likable hypocrites. Flawed, but not hated. You get the same detached lack of emotion you'd find in a Bret Easton Ellis book, but the added connections between characters, especially where he shows them caring for one another, adds reality. Coupland doesn't judge his characters, he doesn't make them evil. I am most impressed with his ability to make them human. ( )

I love Coupland's witty way with words so even though there's not much of a story here and the characters - including Tyler, his hippie mother, his European fling Stephanie, his post-feminist girlfriend, Anna-Louise and his clueless grandparents who are tricked into a pyramid scheme - are thinly drawn, I still thought it was a fun read and a relevant social commentary. ( )

"Is the hotel Marge? It has to be Marge. I want atmosphere." Marge is Anna-Louise's word describing sad, 1950s-ish diner-type places where the waitresses are named Marge.
"Yes, it's Marge."
"What's the name. The Lucky Puppy? The Plucky Ducky?"
"The Aloha."
"It's Marge." A pause. "Tyler?"
"Yeah?"
"You are my trailer park."
"And you, Anna-Louise, are my tornado." ( )