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Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated CultureGeneration X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture is as relevant today as a Kenny G song. It's also as enjoyable as a read. If Brett Easton Ellis hadn't hit the big time with American Psycho, Coupland wouldn't have had anyone to mirror himself as he chased his own zeitgeist. I suppose he was in the right time and the right place, good fortune smiling down on him in the early 90s when the media picked up on his novel as emblematic of a generation. (Slow news day?)

There is no story in Generation X, nothing to hold on to. The characters are white privileged cardboard figures that ring hollow beneath their self-deprecation and unbelievable dialogue. They worry about the bomb, about their McJobs, about their navels. Some of Coupland's trademark trickiness is found at the bottom of the pages, with dictionary definitions of words meant to define this generation; but most of those words mean nothing today, if they ever meant anything.

So what is Generation X about? Three young people are holed up in the desert (New Mexico?) and spend their time telling stories to each other of the lives and people they left behind. Little do they know that the world is glad to see the back of them.

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Date: 2011-06-23 10:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] millionreasons.livejournal.com
Problem with being zeitgeisty is that the zeitgeist moves on! I adored this when I read it but it was the mid-90s and I was 21. Certainly I didn't like Jpod which seemed out of date by the time it was published. I read The Gum Thief last year and I did enjoy that - I guess it was on more universal themes such as loneliness, weird families and making unlikely connections with people.

You might like All Families Are Psychotic!

Date: 2011-06-23 12:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com
I'll never know if I like them or not because I'm never giving him a chance again!

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