How to Coup

I just finished yet another hilarious novel by the Canadian author, playwright and visual artist Douglas Coupland. I’ve been a fan ever since I read the age defining Generation X. His novels are always highly entertaining with vibrant characters and vivid plots making them the perfect piece of brain candy.

All Families are Psychotic has your run of the mill soap opera plot which enables you to read it with the speed of lightening. The Drummonds are your typical dysfunctional family: there’s mom, dad, dad’s trophy wife, the now-married eldest brother who slept with said trophy wife, the middle sister NASA astronaut with one hand thanks to thalidomide, the youngest mullet-headed suicidal sibling and the woman he’s knocked up who I might add, has no vowels in her name. Half the family has AIDS and is also plagued by financial disaster and felonious activities. They are forced (by a series of ever more fantastic occurrences) to attempt to deal with each other. All of pop culture's plagues are represented: AIDS, cancer, addiction, domestic violence, divorce, adultery, and so much more. Everyone's got something wrong with them which often is the case. Throw in some clever observations, earnest feelings, stylistic quirks and you’ve got one juicy novel.

Another one of Coupland’s brilliant books is Microserfs about the lives of coworkers in the software industry and the effect of their work on their relationships and lives. Here he tries (for the first time) to create a bridge between the art and literary world by using bold and unusual typography in a lot of the book’s page layout reminiscent of Pop Art and Text Art. This idea is expanded in the sensational and wacky Jpod which also deals with more or less the same subject matter. This is a novel filled with black comedy and Coupland’s trademark plot twists that also investigates life inside an amoral culture bombarded with too much information. Another recommendation is the stunning Hey Nostradamus which sucks you into an emotional roller coaster as the impact of a high school shooting is dissected.

Much of Coupland's work explores the unexpected cultural shifts created by the impact of new technologies on North American culture. Reoccurring themes include the conflict between secular and religious values, difficulty in aging, adulthood, an ironic attitude in response to intense media saturation and an aesthetic fascination with pop culture and mass culture. Coupland is constantly exploring how the human mind and soul function within the generally static realm of middle class suburbia. He writes with tabloid sensationalism, which he then undermines with ironic self-awareness.

His new novel The Gum Thief will be released this winter.