I was sent a link on Facebook about this new bar that opening up in Chinatown called the Keefer bar. The link was sent to me by a Vancouver DJ who I befriended so that I keep updated on local shows and events. I checked out the website and the bar is actually a part of a new collective of local residences. Needless to say, it looks INCREDIBLE. Stylish, aesthetically pleasing, modern, and classy.

Three features that I find particularly interesting are the bar aspect of the residences called The Keefer Bar, Douglas Couplands’ artistic contribution to the building, and the glass bottomed pool!!

1. The Keefer Bar is mainly influenced by the residences’ location in Chinatown. The bar will offer Asian inspired appetizers and creative cocktails that utilizes ingredients found in the neighbourhood. I can’t wait to visit this place and get me an Asian inspired dirty martini or lychee flavoured cocktail of some sort!

2. The fact that Douglas Coupland is going to offer his artistry to the Keefer is pretty neat as well. The Vanouver-based Coupland is mainly known for his clever and quirky novels, however few know about his contribution to the art world. I’m excited to see the kinds of works that will be available for viewing.

3. GLASS BOTTOM POOL. This feature doesn’t need much explaining except that it’s a GLASS BOTTOM POOL. I wonder if it will be available to the public? Would love to take a swim in that baby.

I visited The Keefer Bar website and noticed that Radiozero has provided the site with a mixtape. We all know how I feel about Radiozero and DJs (AWESOME). Unfortunately, I need to free up my hard drive for more space before I can take a listen. I bet its just as sweet as all their other mixtapes, though. I wouldn’t expect anything less.

[EDIT: THE MIXTAPE IS FAN-EFFING-TASTIC. Lucky for me I already have the podcast, so my hard drive can be used for more useful things - like this 15 page paper I am currently supposed to be work on. Anyway, favourite track would have to be Something in Common by Free Energy, but it sounds spectacular as whole. Tyler Fedchuk, you are one cool dude.]

Article from SCOUT magazine

The Keefer Bar

The Keefer also has its own Facebook page with a photo essay and information.

Apparently it is set to open up in November 2009, but who knows. Regardless, I’m totally excited to check this place out.

Will “The Curse of the Three” play out at tonight’s Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize announcement?

No writer nominated for all three of Canada’s top book awards in one year has ever taken home a prize at the end of awards season.

In 2008, Rawi Hage was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for Cockroach. No cigar for Hage.

The year before, MG Vassanji’s The Assassin’s Song was a triple nominee that failed to nab any of the prizes.

This year, Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean shot up the “must-read” list when it was nominated for all three. The Giller was won by Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man. The Governor General’s Award was awarded to Kate Pullinger for her book The Mistress of Nothing.

Lyon’s debut novel is in contention alongside Douglas Coupland’s Generation A, Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness, Nicole Brossard’s Fences in Breathing (translated by Susanne de Lotbinier-Harwood) and Andrew Steinmetz’s Eva’s Threepenny Theatre.

The judges, 2008 winner Miriam Toews, Marina Endicott and RM Vaughn read more than 140 months in 6 months as part of their duties.

Alice Munro was also originally nominated for all three prizes, but withdrew her name from the running for the Giller in August, to the disappointment of her publisher, as well as literary pundits looking forward to an Atwood-Munro showdown.  Munro’s official reason was to leave the field open for younger writers, given that she had won the Giller twice before.

Unofficially, maybe she was avoiding the Curse of the Three?

By Douglas Coupland, 2009.

“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 favours 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, Syracuse University commencement address, May8, 1994

Zack, Julien, Samantha, Harj, and Diana are five people from different parts of the world who are stung by bees. This is a big deal because bees are believed to be extinct and the authorities are all over it, but also because video footage related to the stings goes viral on youtube, making them “The Wonka Children”.

Generation A is a very contemporary novel coming from the perspective of digital life that explores the cultures of reading and storytelling that it is supposed to be at odds with. It is lovely to read a novel that engages in a real way with technology and how it changes us instead of portraying it as the end of culture or showing a dystopian future, never mind a novel that manages to be smart, intellectual, funny, serious, and trivial all at once … a mash-up in print!

I love that Douglas Coupland writes about generations after him in a way that is fair and truly engaged (he was born in 1961). He is also an artist, screenwriter, playwright, actor, and New York Times blogger who lives in West Vancouver.

http://www.coupland.com/

Douglas Coupland

This is the first Coupland novel I have actually read. I’ve picked up his books in bookshops and looked at them, then put them back down again, then wandered off and bought something else. They’ve always seemed so promising and alluring for some reason and I guess I didn’t want to risk disappointment. I think it’s because the covers of his books have always impressed themselves upon me whenever I’ve taken a stroll through Borders and the like. There’s the hot pink cover of Generation X that warps your eyeballs, remaining burnt into your retinas for the next ten minutes; and there’s the elegant, Lego man stylings of JPod, which was, for some weird reason, in the non-fiction section when I saw it last and I thought it was one of those social commentary books about consumerism, globalisation and the youth of today.

Anyway, I happened across The Gum Thief thanks to Amazon.com who very kindly suggested I might like it considering what I’d been looking at recently. It sounded pretty good so I thought I’d risk it and give it a try seeing as I’ve always been a fan of the epistolary novel. Five minutes later, after a quick search on eBay, I managed to secure a copy for only $8 Buy It Now.

It’s the best $8 I have ever spent. On a book anyway. Now Douglas Coupland is my new Favourite Author and I’m happy to discover that he’s alive and well and constantly adding to his oeuvre. I love it when there’s loads to go.

The Gum Thief consists of letters and journal entries between 40-something, alcoholic divorcee and wannabe writer, Roger, and 20-something goth-girl pariah, Bethany, who are both struggling with their dead-end jobs stacking reams of paper and ballpoint pens for an office supplies superstore. The pair have hardly exchanged a word between them when Bethany discovers Roger’s journal in the staff tea room and finds that he has written an entry about what it’s like to be her. He has it spookily accurate and so Bethany begins a correspondence with him. Kindred spirits united by their gloomy, dispirited view of the world, Roger and Bethany form an unlikely friendship where they slowly open up to each other and share their deepest secrets and creative writing exercises written from the point of view of a piece of toast. Also included in the text are chapters of Roger’s novel, the brilliant yet bizarre Glove Pond, which in all its meta-fictional glory reflects the events of the novel proper; at one point we even find ourselves reading Coupland writing as Roger writing as Steve reading Kyle writing as another character, Norm. (Glove Pond, I’ve since discovered, has become a bit of a cult favourite in its own right. Type it into Youtube and you’ll see what I mean.) It’s the extracts from Glove Pond that are the highlight of the book; a sort of Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? meets John Cleever that is at once tragic, funny and profound.

The Gum Thief is obliquely told, with other characters getting involved through their own letters and the reader often has to make a little bit of an effort to piece the puzzle together. But it’s not rocket surgery and it’s well worth the effort. If you like an unusual structure and aren’t afraid of a little literary trickery, then The Gum Thief could possibly be your introduction to the wonderful world of Douglas Coupland. Oh, and the picture on the cover of a piece of chewing gum stuck to a security camera makes perfect sense once you read the book.

a man with reddish, receding hair, combed straight back.

.. is how he is described in the book.  And Coupland and Gibson are mates.  So p-helix at the official forum posed the question.  Aaaand here’s Mr Coupland …

People come to BC not just because of the pretty mountains. They come here because they expect a place where society is both different and better. Haven’t you noticed that when you say ‘Vancouver’ to people, their eyes light up? For foolish short-term reasons we’re killing that light, and all the money in the world can’t buy it back once it’s gone. We become a parking lot with mountains and it doesn’t have to happen.

British Columbians and Canadians speak out
against the BC arts cuts here.

Advertising works...at least on me.

With two days off last week, a weekend trip to see some old friends get married, and a new Douglas Coupland novel hitting the shelves, I was hard pressed to imagine how the week could get any better. Enter the Paper Tiger.

Paper Tiger Coffee (on the corner of Evergreen & Grand) reminds me of a miniaturized version of Albina Press on Hawthorne, but with more character–not to mention a 1940s cash register. It’s quirky, humble, and personable which means its the kind of place I’ll go when I have a lot of work to do and need to be distracted from doing it. Adding to the character are a manual typewriter, used books for sale (I picked up a copy of Miles at a bargain-bin price. Let’s call that a win), and hand-labeled bags of beans personally roasted by the owner. Of course, they have the essential NW trifecta of chalkboard menus, free WiFi, and local artwork on display, but missing one of those things would be like having no front door.

Oh, and the cappuccino was a thing of beauty.

My project for today was a bit strange. See yesterday the Spinning Platters staff got an email asking us to come up with 3-5 albums to submit for our Top 10 of 2009. What you may not know is I have a horrible memory. I don’t know what came out this year, what came out last or what technically hasn’t been released.

I decided the easiest way to do this was to look up what came out this year, other top whatever lists, figure out if some of the albums I liked had been released this year, then make a list of anything that would be a possible candidate and download anything I didn’t have. So that’s what I spent doing this morning. My list of about 20 got whittled down to currently 8 7. Sad thing is a lot of old favorites got kicked off, and some new stuff got on.

Now I’m in the process of listening to them to try to figure out which three can go and what needs to stay. So here’s my list so far:

• His Orchestra- Field Guide to the Wilds
• Florence & the Machine- Lungs
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs- It’s Blitz!
• Au Revoir Simone- Still Night, Still Light
• The Veils- Sun Gangs
• Camera Obscura- My Maudlin Career
• Emmy the Great- First Love
• Arctic Monkeys- Humbug

In other news, some more stuff actually happened yesterday after I finished writing my post about the cookies.

As I was eating my cookie, I checked on Twitter and noticed my friend Marie posted that Douglas Coupland was doing a book signing that night in the Marina. It’s a good thing I never have plans for a Friday night! So off I went dragging Edgar with me with the promise of deserts from Miette before the reading since it was a block away and I had wanted to go.

(Ok confession time. Part of why I started this blog was because I was reading the Black Apple’s Blog and realizing she was doing what I wanted to do. She’s being creative and dresses with style, and is a bit geeky- in that awesome excited sort of way- anyway, and she mentioned going to Miette when she visited San Francisco, and I wanted to go.)

So first, Miette: it was super cute and my cupcake was very delicious. Here’s a couple of pictures, including my favorite packaging for German chocolate called Cat Tongues (seriously).

Edgar keeps pointing out the cats look so sad- it's like they know we are about to eat their tongues.

Delicious boob cupcake... next time I'm getting a pair.

After this went to wait for the Douglas Coupland reading of his new book Generation A. Marie and I ended up giving him a chocolate bar I had bought at Miette for Marie, that had bees carved into it since they factor prominently in the book. Here is a picture of the signed book as well as of me with Mr. Coupland.

It says "thanks for the bee bar".

So, I know it’s kind of 90’s and juvenile of me (like saying Catcher in the Rye is your favorite book), but Douglas Coupland* is my favorite fiction author of all time. I just found out that he has a new book conveniently coming out in in time for Christmas. I want to read it immediately, but since I am having a hard time thinking of things I actually want/need for presents this year, I’m trying really hard to not buy myself these things once they occur to me… So, no copy of Generation A for me till December 25th.

From what I can gather, the book takes place in the near future when all the bees have died (you’ve heard about how that’s happening, right?). A few young people become famous when they are stung by miracle bees that somehow survived the extinction. I’m a little confused by the next plot point, but apparently they are then rounded up by the government and brought to a secret island and forced to tell stories or something. I’m sure it will make sense in that absurd Coupland-esque way.

For now, I’m just enjoying some of the teaser video’s on youtube that his publisher has put up. I especially like the following one where Coupland is locked in a room and forced to answer questions from an unseen robot lady. There are unfortunately these stupid fake commercials scattered throughout the interview which I recommend just ignoring….

*never heard of him? I immediately order you to go out and read the following four books:

1.) Life After God

2.) Girlfriend in a Coma

3.) All Families are Psychotic

4.) Miss Wyoming

Which do I read first?

Stephen King’s new novel, Under the Dome?

or

Douglas Coupland’s new novel, Generation A?

How to choose? How to choose?

The King novel is over a 1,00o pages but I don’t really find that very daunting. In fact, I’m quiet undaunted by it, very much eager to read it. Perhaps because the plot is similar to The Simpon’s Movie — small town in Maine gets trapped under invisible forcefield dome and chaos and conflict ensue. Also reminds me a little of The Stand, my favorite King book. Perhaps because they are both, in their ways, about societal collapse, a theme that has intersted me, well, ever since I can remember really. I’ve always suspected that has, at least in part, something to do with growing up under the threat of nuclear annihilation via a conflict between Russia and the United States. That and seeing Night of the Living Dead when I was pretty young.

Of course, King is a Boomer but I think his work has been important to Generation X. It has been to me anyway. Maybe he’s of significant to Boomers, I don’t really know and don’t really care. It’s arguable whether his work is “serious” or can be labeled “Literature.” In fact there was a time when I refused to even consider the possibility that he was anything but a pulp horror writer, a good one to be sure but nothing more legit than that. But I’ve since fallen off that high horse. There’s stuff of King’s that I like and King stuff  that I don’t like. Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, Misery — I like. Tommyknockers, Dolores Claiborne, Duma Key — not so much.

Still, my anticipation for the Coupland novel has been greater and existed longer. Not just because it is Coupland, although unlike with King I will read anything Coupland produces. Speaking of which, some of the reviews I’ve read about Generation A have been mixed at best, which is why I stopped reading them. In any case, I like the set up of Generation A, which is also in a way about societal collapse. All the bees have died, or so it seems.

I’ve begun Under the Dome so for now I will stick with it. But I’m willing to chuck it if it ceases to tickle my fancy. As I’ve gotten older (41 and counting) I’ve lost my patience for books that don’t “do it for me.” I’m not wasting the time.

Also, Coupland’s from Canada and I’m an American dammit. And there’s nothing more American than Stephen King-eque carange not to mention odd phrases like “happy crappy.”

Det här är en så kallad utmaning jag fick av Emelie på Facebook. Tyckte den verkade lite kul.

Mycket Fritt Översatta Regler: Tänk inte för länge. Femton böcker du har läst som alltid kommer att finnas med dig. De första 15 du kan komma på på max 15 minuter. Bjud sedan in dina vänner att göra samma sak.

Fast jag kom bara på 11! Sparar 4 till senare. Ingen inbördes ordning. Varning för mycket fantasy och långa serier!

The Wheel of Time av Robert Jordan (serie, Sagan om Drakens återkomst i svensk översättning)
En lång jävla oavslutad fantasyserie som jag har läst flera gånger och både hatar och älskar. Handlingen är alldeles för invecklad för att förklara. Men det är typiska fantasyingredienser som några vanliga ungdomar som kommer ut i stora världen och hamnar på upphöjda positioner, ett antal profetior (som uppfylls), en ondskefull makt med ondskefulla underhuggare, ett magikersällskap, osv. Utmärkande för den här serien är dock att den har fler intriger än Desperate Housewives, alla oavslutade, löst hängande i luften, och kanske ett dussin huvudpersoner varav hälften är kvinnor och precis lika viktiga för handlingen som alla män. Det är inte vanligt i fantasy, tänk på stackars Eowyn. Som en liten extra twist på alltihop har författaren gått och dött, så serien, som för närvarande omfattar tolv tegelstenar (det dubbla på svenska) håller nu på att avslutas av en annan författare. Spännande.

Narnia-serien av C.S. Lewis
Det första fantasyrelaterade jag läste, fastnade direkt. Vid omläsning kan jag irritera mig på alla moralkakor och illa dolda kristna budskap, men det är fortfarande en bra serie. Och jag antar att det inte bara var jag som letade efter portaler mellan världarna och icke-existerande garderobsväggar efter att ha läst dem?

Mästaren och Margarita av Michail Bulgakov
Minns typ ingenting förutom att den var humoristisk, skruvad och handlade om djävulen. Och det kan ju räcka! Dags för omläsning.

Girlfriend in a Coma av Douglas Coupland
Handlar om en ung kvinna som hamnar i koma, vaknar upp en herrans massa år senare och har då fött en dotter. Sen typ går jorden under och en handfull människor blir de enda överlevande. Låter helt bisarrt och det är det också. Ännu ett omläsningsobjekt. Han har skrivit en massa andra bra böcker också. Speciellt jPod rekommenderas.

Vampyrkrönikan (En vampyrs bekännelse med fortsättning) av Anne Rice
Jag har aldrig gillat när vampyrer porträtteras som monster som bör utrotas, så jag är glad över den nya vampyrvågen med Twilight och liknande böcker/serier/filmer. Grunden till denna våg lades av Anne Rice med böckerna om Louis, Lestat och grabbarna. Här är vampyrism sex, sex, ångest och sex. Som det ska vara.

Borta med vinden av Margaret Mitchell
Världens bästa bok? Läste den första gången på mellanstadiet, läste om den häromåret och var lite orolig för att den inte var så bra som jag mindes, men den var om möjligt ännu bättre! Handlar om bortskämda 16-åriga plantageägardottern Scarlett O’Hara som tvingas lära sig leva i verkligheten när inbördeskriget kommer och vänder hennes värld uppochner. Och hon är så sjukt, sjukt bra på det! Hon förför män, hon driver affär, hon plockar bomull, hon stjäl sin systers fästman, hon förlöser barn, hon flyr undan en brinnande stad, hon dubbelspelar, och allt hon gör, gör hon för sitt älskade Tara. Dessutom hinner hon med att vara olyckligt förälskad, föda barn, bli änka och gud vet allt.

Sagan om Belgarion av David Eddings
Som jag älskade den här serien när jag var liten. Fruktansvärt stereotyp fantasy, men lättläst och passar perfekt i mellan- och högstadieåldern, som inkörsport till tyngre grejer.

Harry Potter-serien av J.K. Rowling
Jag älskar bok 3, 4, 6 och 7. Ettan och tvåan är för barnsliga och femman är en depressionsdipp. Det är fantasy, det är tonårsproblem, det är dödsfiender med attraktion, det är sex i omklädningsrummet…eller vänta nu, det var nog fanfiction förresten. Men älskar karaktärerna, de går att bygga sjukt mycket storys på. Och sista boken är ju en enda stor blinkning till fanfictionscenen. Gillar att det blir mer allvar ju längre serien går också. Folk dör liksom.

Lilla huset på prärien-serien av Laura Ingalls Wilder
LOVES IT! Läste den hundra gånger när jag var liten, och den håller fortfarande. Om någon har missat, så handlar det om en nybyggarfamilj i USA, mer specifikt dottern Laura, och alla deras flyttar och “äventyr”. Delvis självbiografisk. OBS! Bättre än TV-serien!

Egalias döttrar av Gerd Brantenberg
Omvända världen, könsmässigt sett, där kvinnorna har chefspositionerna och våldtar, och pojkarna heter saker som Petronius, använder PH (penishållare) och så småningom skapar en manskamp mot matriarkatet.

San Fransisco-liv av Armistead Maupin
Det här är en såpa i bokform. Handlar om ett gäng ungdomar i San Fransisco som råkar ut för olika saker. Intrigerna är många, invecklade och oförutsägbara. (Typ en svart kvinna visar sig vara född som vit, en kvinna visar sig vara någons pappa, osv.) Sjukt roligt. Första boken heter Ett annat liv.

Ceci est pour la personne qui a tapé “pelleteuses caterpillar photo” et est arrivée sur ce site …
Ceci étant fait, nous pouvons passer à d’autres choses.

Le film My suicide de David Lee Miller a l’air vraiment tout bon, et en plus Tony Hale joue dedans.
Le pitch : Archie Williams, 17 ans, media-obsessed geek, se retrouve soudain au centre de toutes les attentions quand il annonce qu’il va se suicider (et filmer ça) pour un projet de cours. Du coup, des tas de gens essayent de le sauver. Archie, lui, filme toute son expérience high-school sans rien en cacher (sexe, drogues, violence, …), quitte même à choquer le petit monde qui l’entoure. Le film a d’excellentes cotes et a déjà décroché de nombreux prix, donc on ne peut que vous le recommander.

Le site du film : mysuicide.net
Un critique du film sur Cinematical

Le twitter de Simon Pegg est très cool à suivre, mais Twitter ça devient galère quand vous suivez trop de personnes, et que certaines twittent “énormément”. (Cela dit, grâce au twitter de Nora j’ai appris que le nouveau Douglas Coupland (Generation A) était sorti, ainsi que le dernier Chuck Klosterman (Eating the dinosaur). Evidemment, quand on ne suit pas tout ça de près parce qu’on lit des livres comme The Road Movie Book, on a tendance à vite perdre le fil.)

Et voici quelque chose pour Elixie, si elle ne l’avait pas encore vu (elle a sans doute autre chose à faire à Portland, mais qu’elle en profite, les celebrity ne sont que dans Itunes Canada & USA) : les celebrity playlist podcast d’Adam Goldberg et Drew Barrymore.

Merci Google pour ce retour en enfance avec Rue Sésame, grâce à vous j’ai regardé de vieilles vidéos avec mon neveu et nous avons même été dans le grenier pour en sortir un vieux circuit de voitures électriques. Et Kate est rétablie, merci pour vos petits mots.

I hadn’t realized before but hulu does that amazon thing where they suggest other shows you might like based on whatever show you happen to be watching. Same way amazon does with books, although I have to say I often find amazon’s suggestions suspect, at least for my taste. Anyhoo… one of the suggestions associated with Green Wing, a show that I’m still watching obsessively, is Spaced,  a half-hour comedy. (Do the call them sit-coms in England?) And I figured, oy, why not give it a go, then.

[this is where the video of the first episode of Spaced via hulu.com would appear if I could just get it to work - dammit!]

Glad I did.

Spaced is about two twenty-something Londoners. Tim (Simon Pegg aka Shaun from Shaun of the Dead) and Daisy (Jessica Stevenson, who has a bit role in Shaun as Yvonne) who both suddenly find themselves in need of new lodgings and decide to pose a professional couple so that they can rent a nice flat, clearly an allusion to the 70s sit-com Three’s Company.

The show is chock-full of pop culture references, especially TV and movies. And, a la Scrubs, it employs fantasy sequences to great effect (or is it affect?). Also like Scrubs it is a single-camera show, but I don’t know how unique that is to British TV.

Other GenX-ieties  include: Tim is a skateboarding graphic artist who wants to work for a comic book company but is currently working part-time at a comic book shop; while Daisy is a journalist who is on the dole.

Simon Pegg does much of the writing and the director is Edgar Wright, who collaborated with Pegg to make Shaun of the Dead. Also, Nick Frost, who plays Shaun’s best friend Ed in the romantic-comedy-zombie flick plays Tim’s best friend, Mike, who is described as a “weapons expert.” Much of what appears in Shaun of the Dead was first portrayed in Spaced. Some of it practically verbatim.

Another treat for me is that the character of Brian, the quirky, twitchy, semi-reclusive artist who lives upstairs from Tim and Daisy, who is played by Mark Heap, the actor that portrays the wonderfully pompous Dr. Alan Staythem in Green Wing.  Clearly Heap has a talent for infusing his characters with all kind of interesting traits and foibles that make them a little creepy and endearing at the same time, no small accomplishment.

At this point I can’t say which show I like better. It’s difficult to decided. Green Wing has way more swearing and sexual references. But Spaced has loads more pop culture stuff. In the end it hardly matters. What I can say is that I’d like to own both shows on DVD. I think Spaced is available for Region 1 where as Green Wing still is not.

In any case, both shows are more than valid GenX vehicles. Spaced is about younger GenXers, of the kind featured in Douglas Coupland’s novel, Generation X. While Green Wing is about older GenXers who have matriculated into the workforce.

And both shows are funny and sarcastic and surreal and ultimately very touching and human.

Amazonlink: Gabriel García Márquez – Hundert Jahre Einsamkeit
Sprache: Deutsch
Genre: Familensaga
Seitenzahl: 467
Erstanden: bei Ebay

Klappentext: Irgendwo in den Urwäldern Kolumbiens, “am Ufer eines Flusses mit kristallklarem Wasser, das dahineilt durch ein Bett aus geschliffenen Steinen, weiß und riesig wie prähistorische Eier”, liegt das imaginäre Dorf Macondo, gegründet und beherrscht von der Familie Buendía. Von den vitalen Männern und klugen Frauen dieser Familie, von den Höhepunkten und Katastrophen ihres Lebens über Generationen hin erzählt Gabriel García Márquez, und von diesem Dorf, dennen Bewohner nach einer langen Zeit der Isolation in den Kampf Lateinamerikas um Freiheit und soziale Gerechtigkeit hineingezogen werden. “Macondo” ist zu einem Symbol für den phantastischen Realismus in Lateinamerika und zum Spiegel des Lebens auf diesem Kontinent geworden. Sein Schöpfer hat mit diesem Buch Weltruhm erlangt.

Erster Satz: Viele Jahre später sollte der Oberst Aureliano Buendía sich vor dem Erschießungskommando an jenem fernen Nachmittag erinnern, an dem sein Vater ihn mitnahm, um das Eis kennen zu lernen.

Amazonlink: Douglas Coupland – Girlfriend in a Coma
Sprache: Englisch
Genre: Tragikkomödie
Seitenzahl: 281
Erstanden: bei Tauschticket

Klappentext: What did Karen see that December night? What pictures of tomorrow could so disturb her that she would flee into a refuge of bottomless sleep? Why would she leave me?

It’s 15 December, 1979, and Richard’s girlfriend Karen has entered a deep coma. She only took a couple of valium washed down with a cocktail, but now she’s locked away and suspended animation, oblivious to the passage of time. What if she were to wake up decades later – a 17-year-old girl in a distant future, a future where the world has gone dark.

Erster Satz: I’m Jared, a ghost.

Microserfs is the first Doug Coupland book I have read. I have Hey Nostradamus! sitting on my bookshelf which was loaned to me by my boyfriend’s room-mate months ago. I don’t know why I haven’t got around to reading it, but it will be next on my list (the “Coupland List“) after JPod.

Microserfs‘ Daniel Underwood explains, in a journal entry style, how he comes from being an employee of Microsoft and experiencing the god like pedestal that “Bill!” is placed upon to literally getting a life. He surrounds himself with loving friends, a woman he falls in love with, and asks all of the questions about the world that he should. Together they start a project and become closer as time moves forward in the book. It’s a story of a mid-20’s man learning to finally search for himself along with those doing the same around him.

My goal is to read all of Douglas Coupland’s books. Fiction and non—fiction. If I could read Japanese, I’d be all about trying to read God Hates Japan but, unfortunately, I don’t have that ability. I even added the dude on Twitter after I read one of his Tweets that was all about a zit in his beard. He has his hate on for leaf-blowers, too. The guy is awesome, and I am disappointed in myself for not checking him out sooner.

“‘What’s wrong?’

‘Your father and I have decided that we don’t believe in anything any more.’

‘You what?’

‘What I just said.’

‘Jesus, Mum, you phoned me up on a Monday morning to tell me you don’t believe in anything.’

‘Yes.’

‘You mean, like, God? And religion?’

‘Both.’”

— Generation A, by Douglas Coupland

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Douglas Coupland books: disliking them on one hand for their often sloppy writing style and overblown plots and loving them on the other for their consistent ability to posit integral questions about the modern world in a quirky and funny manner. My last stab at a Coupland release, JPod, epitomized this characteristic and, after reading it, I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t buy any more of his novels again. Now, with Generation A, I find myself putting my foot right into my mouth because, quite simply, it is a great book with all of Coupland’s strengths and only trace amounts of his weaknesses.

The name of the novel is taken from a collegiate graduation speech quote by Kurt Vonnegut, renaming Generation X as Generation A and explaining that each generation is as equally full of possibility and tragedy as the last. Coupland chooses the tribute well, acknowledging an author that he has no doubt been inspired by while simultaneously addressing his groundbreaking 1991 novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. While the title is certainly meant to evoke Coupland’s best known book, the writing itself also accomplishes the same effect by utilizing the same framed narrative approach and the viewpoints of a handful of archetypal characters.

Generation A revolves around five individuals from across the world (Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and France) that are all stung by bees, an insect that has gone instinct in Coupland’s near-future. The ensuing plot tackles not just environmentalism however but instead addresses the deeper ramifications of a homogenized world (not unlike our own) with instant digital communication and a culture dictated primarily by Western ideology. The five characters begin telling one another stories that reflect the concerns of the modern generation, dealing with the significance of issues including fame, the pharmaceutical industry, mass-media, religion, individualism, cultural hegemony and even the meaning of death and love within this context.

It may sound lofty but it’s not. Coupland’s greatest strength has always been his ability to impart intellectualism to any audience, fulfilling the goal of literature without making knowledge of post-secondary theories and criticism a prerequisite. Generation A performs this job better than any of his novels and fails to drop into the pitfalls of the author’s similarly important books which often placed the importance of end results over overall writing quality. Although the prose does become a bit uneven by novel’s end, Generation A is still the best written work by Coupland since Girlfriend in a Coma, offering all of the commentary while still hosting fully realized characters and a style that draws on his strengths and rarely becomes choppy. Ultimately, Generation A reads like a novel by an author that is truly passionate about the subject matter and the writing demonstrates how careful Coupland and his editors were to produce a work that didn’t have its importance weakened by poor or uneven prose.

While Margaret Atwood may receive more CanLit praise for her (supposed) ability to channel the near-future, 2009 alone has shown just how out of touch  the author of The Year of the Flood has become in comparison with the less lauded Coupland. With Generation A Douglas Coupland has demonstrated why he became famous in the first place and, more importantly, why we should continue to care about his novels in the years to come.

— Reid

MTV er blitt 28 år, og nærmer seg 30-årskrisen. Vi gjør som kanalen: glemmer musikken og ser på kanalens generelle innflytelse innen film, tv, litteratur, videokunst og mote.

(Denne teksten er skrevet for Dagsavisen i forbindelse med MTVs 20-årsjubileum i 2001.)

- MTV har alltid ligget langt etter når det gjelder det musikalske. Kanalen måtte presses til å spille Michael Jackson, var ekstremt redd for hiphop og var også veldig trege i forhold til elektronika. Men kanalen har ligget langt framme på den visuelle siden, mener forfatter John Erik Riley.

Riley hadde sin første MTV-opplevelse da han bodde i USA som barn, og ble raskt fanget. Gjennom 20 år har snart to MTV-generasjoner vokst opp med kanalens formspråk, og Riley mener noe av det viktigste MTV gjorde var å snu opp ned på tradisjonelle fortellerformer og fremme det rent visuelle.

- Tidligere tilhørte ikke-narrativ billedkunst elitesjiktet, men MTV gjorde det folkelig.

Kjappe klipp
Fjernsynsapparatet har «skylden» for å føre Vesten fra en tekstkultur over til en mer visuell kultur, og ingen har trukket dette lengre enn MTV. For der tradisjonelle fortellerformer fortsatt regjerte i film, tv og reklame, brøt musikkvideoene på MTV alle regler.

- MTV har lært folk å se film og bilde på en helt annen måte enn tidligere; med kjapp klipping, nonlineære fortellerformer og store mengder kompleks visuell informasjon. En musikkvideo kunne godt ha fire parallelle handlingsforløp, og Quentin Tarantinos filmer hadde ikke eksistert uten MTV, mener Bård Torgersen, redaksjonssjef i Kreativt Forum.

Han støttes av forfatter Tore Renberg:

- Følgen av MTV er at min generasjon og de etter leser bilder på en helt annen måte enn tidligere. Vi er blitt sykt flinke til å tolke visuell informasjon, og ville trolig fått strålende karakterer i kunsthistorie. Men vi er blitt ditto dårligere på å lese tekster.

Litterær zapping
Renberg ble selv sammenlignet med MTV da han debuterte med Sovende floke i 1995.

- Begrep som «zapping» og «klipping» gikk igjen i anmeldelsene, og flere anmeldere ga uttrykk for at de syntes det gikk for fort. Flere forfattere bruker i dag høyt tempo, klippeteknikker og hyppige sceneskift – virkemidler vi kjenner fra musikkvideoer.

John Erik Riley ser også MTV-innflytelsen i innholdet i flere nye romaner.

- MTV har klart hatt en tematisk betydning for litteraturen, som uttrykk for en livsholdning. Mange forfattere skildrer folk som ser på MTV, som en passiv kontrast til det oppjagede 80-tallet. For eksempel har Douglas Coupland et kapittel som heter «MTV, Not Bombs» i Generation X.

MTV er blitt kalt postmodernismens triumf, og det er ikke vanskelig å være enig i kritikeren Andrew Goodwins definisjon:

* Godtar ikke kulturelle grenser.

* Gir opp de store fortellerstrukturene.

* Lån av andre tekster, intertekstualitet.

* Tap av fortid, nåtid og framtid i et potpurri av bilder.

* Skapelsen av et nihilistisk, amoralsk univers.

- MTV benyttet seg fra starten av alt som ble kalt postmoderne i akademia på 70- og 80-tallet. MTV er blitt tv-ens avantgarde på godt og vondt. Men i dag er MTV mest frampå i humorprogrammer som «Tom Green Show» og «Jackass». Måten Green lagde tv-show av sin egen testikkeloperasjon på, gjorde i alle fall meg helt målløs, sier Riley, som også påpeker at MTV var tidlig ute med virkelighets-tv.

«The Real World» – om en gjeng mennesker som delte leilighet – startet allerede i 1992, og siden har kanalen fulgt opp med flere lignende prosjekter.

Fritt og alternativt
Tore Renberg mener MTV er mer fantasifull enn det meste av norsk kunst og litteratur, og da mener han spesielt de første årene.

- MTV var sinnssykt alternativt da det kom, men er blitt mer streit og mindre spennende med årene. Men egenreklamen og flere videoer er fortsatt svært eksperimentelt, og det er ekstremt inspirerende for meg å se friheten kanalen opererer med. Jeg synes det er mer inspirerende å strekke meg mot MTV på sitt beste, enn den mindre fantasifulle norske kunsten. Norsk videokunst har jo så godt som mista sin berettigelse som følge av MTV.

Riley beskriver musikkvideoene som visuelle mediers svar på poesien, mens Renberg beskriver de som en øyeblikkelig kunstform – overflatisk, men går rett i magen.

- MTV har i det hele tatt ført til en mye sterkere fokus på det visuelle. Jeg tror trangen hos folk til å bruke piercinger, tatoveringer og sterke farger er en følge av dette, massekulturen er blitt mer visuell, mener Bård Torgersen.

Også motejournalist Hilde Marstrander mener MTVs innflytelse de siste 20 årene er umulig å komme utenom.

- MTV har vært en budbringer og prosjektør for mote, musikk og andre trender for hele verden. Uansett hvilken trend man snakker om fra midten av 1980-tallet og framover, så har MTV hatt mye å si.

Utseendekrav
Men Marstrander er ikke redd for at MTV har innført noe skjønnhetstyranni.

- MTV har sluppet fram mange som verken er strømlinjeformet eller spesielt billedskjønne, se på Supergrass, Eminem og Macy Gray. Og samtidig har kanalen hatt en del å si for kvinnefrigjøringen ved å fronte sterke og tøffe artister som Madonna, Spice Girls og En Vogue – som nok har betydd mye for mange jenter.

Bård Torgersen ser saken fra en noe annen side:

- Artistenes utseende blir bare viktigere og viktigere. Tidligere holdt det med én karismatisk frontfigur; nå må alle medlemmene i et band se godt ut, kle seg godt og vise fram kroppene sine. Selv et rockeband som Crazy Town står fram i lettkledde positurer og fleksende muskler, mens vakre jenter og gutter i stadig større grad brukes som rekvisitter i videoer. Folk på MTV ser kort sagt veldig bra ut, synes Torgersen.

- Men hvor går MTV? Har kanalen noen framtid eller har den utspilt sin rolle?

- MTV har nå dreid rock, indie og alternativ musikk over i MTV2, mens hovedkanalen mest handler om homogen pop som spiller på sex og kropp – noe jeg synes er kjedelig, sier Torgersen.

- MTV var råere og mer amoralsk tidligere. Nå er det snart over. Kanalen har vært svært viktig for kunsten, men i dag er den ikke det lenger, synes Renberg.

- MTV kjøper opp ungdomskulturen, og personlig klarer jeg ikke å bli kvitt Nirvana-erfaringen – en følelse av at det man liker plutselig blir brukt til å selge Pepsi. Min bursdagshilsen til MTV er som følger: Jeg har hatet deg og elsket det, men du har alltid vært med meg, sier Riley.

- Jeg håper MTVs storhetstid er forbi, og tror ikke det er en kanal folk føler de må ha lenger. MTV utfordrer ikke seg selv lenger, og tar ikke sitt kulturelle ansvar helt alvorlig, mener Marstrander.

Sagt om MTV

«MTV betraktes i dag som talerør for den oppvoksende slekt».
Kabelselskapet UPCs hjemmesider.

«Det er vårt ansvar å fortelle ungdommen hva de skal like».
Brent Hansen, adm. dir. i MTV Networks Europe.

«MTV er isolert sett den sterkeste kraften i popmusikken, men også den mest ødeleggende».
Musikkanmelder Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune.

«I dag holder MTV på med et slags ekkelt monopol der de fire-fem største artistene spilles hele tiden. Den opprinnelige ideen om å være et forum for musikk som vanligvis ikke spilles på radio og tv, er borte. Nettet har tatt over friheten og kraften».
Videoregissør Jonas Åkerlund.

«I MTV bruker de ikke stil for å trenge inn i noe. De gjør det alltid for stilens egen skyld».
Filmregissør Darren Aronofsky.

«Jeg blir oppgitt over mange av videoene på MTV. De er ødeleggende. Bare bikinier og kropp. Simulerte samleie-, orgasme- og orgiescener. Det er nesten så man vil mane til kamp».
Carola Häggkvist.

«I de fleste menneskers hoder er globalisering blitt ensbetydende med verdenssuksessen for Nike, Gap og MTV».
Salman Rushdie.

«Foreldre bør sette seg og se på MTV en lørdag formiddag, for å vite hva barna blir fôret med».
Sosiolog Trond Blindheim.

«Musikkmoten og videoene på kanaler som MTV har stor betydning. Barna vil gjerne ligne på stjernene».
Anne Brit Haug, rådgiver ved Likestillingssenteret, Dagbladet.

«MTV, if you read this, YOU’RE A BUNCH OF SELL-OUTS TO POP CULTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!»
Flame Boy på nettsiden Antimusic.com

Bonus: Min kommentar om ZTV vs MTV

Hva er forskjellen på popmusikkdekningen til tv-kanalene NRK og ZTV? Bare én av kanalene satser på å spille musikk.

I sommer fikk vi endelig et seriøst tv-program om popmusikk på NRK. Lydverket har misjonsiver, originale innfall, givende reportasjer og vilje til å ta popmusikk seriøst, men det er fortsatt noe viktig som mangler på NRK: Musikk.

For jeg var ikke blant dem som tørstet så voldsomt etter kritisk musikkjournalistikk på tv; det kan jeg lese nok av i blader og aviser. Jeg vil tilfredsstille enklere lyster: Jeg vil se videoer med favorittene mine og oppdage nye artister. Og her henger NRK fortsatt sørgelig etter, for musikkvideoer er fortsatt forvist til listeprogrammer, og brukes som fyllstoff i rene ungdomsprogrammer. Et mer nisjebasert videoprogram med klare redaksjonelle valg savnes dypt.

Slikt har vi jo MTV til, sier du kanskje? Og jo da, MTV spilte en viktig rolle i min musikkutdannelse. For i tillegg til strømmen av hits, var MTV også hjem for flere smale programmer. Jeg husker fortsatt da Paul King introduserte Nirvana på sensommeren 1991 i MTVs alternativ-program “120 Minutes” – for ikke å snakke om da The Fall spilte live i studio. Og “C.R.E.A.M.” med Wu-Tang Clan så jeg bare en gang på “Yo! MTV Raps”, men husker videoen fortsatt. Og hvem kan glemme Vanessa Warwick, programleder for metalprogrammet “Headbanger’s Ball”?

Men MTV hjalp ikke akkurat på min forståelse for det som skjedde i norsk musikk tidlig på 90-tallet, for norske musikkvideoer var det svært sjelden plass til. Slik er det fortsatt, og når artister som Equicez, Paperboys, Satyricon, Palace Of Pleasure, Beezewax og en rekke andre i dag lager videoer, er det med forsvinnende lite håp om at de skal settes på rotasjon noe sted.

NRK prøvde i 1998 å lansere ambisiøse nisjeprogrammer som “Poptv”, “Jazz og heavy”, “Klubb 7″ og “Oppgang B”. Det ble for dyrt for ledelsen, som ønsket seg billige videoprogrammer isteden. Det nektet U Musikkredaksjonen, og det kan i etterkant trygt kalles en gedigen tabbe. For isteden fikk vi en NRK-virkelighet der “Da Capo”, “Topp 20″ og “Beat” ble de eneste musikkprogrammene.

Det er ikke gratis å lage musikkvideoprogrammer. Du må betale Tono-avgifter, og selv om du kutter ut programlederen, er noen nødt til å velge ut videoene og sette sammen sendeflaten. Men det er heller ikke spesielt dyrt, og derfor satser en av de fattigste norske tv-kanalene på musikkvideoer for å skape seg en identitet.

ZTV var tidligere kjent som søppelkanalen Viasat Plus, som stort sett sendte gamle TV 3-serier i reprise. Det gjør den i og for seg fortsatt, men ved nyttår fikk kanalen en ansiktsløftning som gleder et musikkhjerte. “Z” med programleder Henriette Bruusgaard er kanskje ikke like journalistisk profesjonelt som “Lydverket”, men byr på mer musikk og mindre prat. Og 30. oktober starter “ZTV Spesial”, som to ganger i uka skal sende intervjuer og konsertopptak.

Men enda viktigere er det at ZTV har tatt opp ånden etter mine gamle MTV-favoritter. For i tillegg til mer hitlistebaserte programmer som “Hits” og “Party”, er det også rom for smalere musikk. “Metal”, “Betong” og “Crossfade” spiller hardrock, numetal, indie, r&b og hiphop.

ZTV gjør også et viktig redaksjonelt valg ved bevisst å satse på sjangere som numetal, r&b og hiphop, som blir sørgelig oversett i norsk musikkpresse generelt. Det er ungdomsvennlig, samtidig som det viser en vilje til å ta ungdom seriøst ved å ha troen på at de er åpne for nye impulser – og ikke bare vil f«res med listefyll og kritikerrost rock. Hadde jeg vært 19 i dag, er det liten tvil om hvor jeg hadde fått mine viktigste musikalske impulser fra.

People come to BC not just because of the pretty mountains. They come here because they expect a place where society is both different and better. Haven’t you noticed that when you say ‘Vancouver’ to people, their eyes light up? For foolish short-term reasons we’re killing that light, and all the money in the world can’t buy it back once it’s gone. We become a parking lot with mountains and it doesn’t have to happen.

- Douglas Coupland, writer, author of Generation X, and visual artist, Vancouver

COME TO THE CABARETS, OLD CHUMS: The Canwest Cabaret Festival, returning to the Young Centre this coming weekend, promises 60 intimate

JOHNSON: cabaret queen

concerts in five intimate clubs. And as usual the musical menu is dazzlingly eclectic. Obvious highlights include The Leonard Cohen Songbook with Brent Carver, Andy Maize, Patricia O’Callaghan, Mike Ross and Elizabeth Shepherd; a tribute to Danny Kaye by Don Francks and Albert Schultz; and solo turns by Ms. O’Callaghan, Jackie Richardson, Molly Johnson, DK Ibomeka and more. Don’t miss a beat — go to the source right here.

LITERATI: Because Douglas Coupland made such a big splash with his 1991 bestseller Generation X, I assumed his new novel Generation A was a sequel.

COUPLAND: alphabet soup?

Wrong. Coupland took the title for his new book from a commencement address delivered to Syracuse University graduates by fellow novelist Kurt Vonnegut. Said Vonnegut: “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.”

Incidentally, Generation A is set in the near future, where bees are extinct, until one autumn when five people are stung in different places around the world — a shared experience that unites them in a way that only Coupland could imagine.

FUNNY STUFF: Big winners at the 10th annual Canadian Comedy Awards in St. John, New Brunswick were stand-up guys (and gals) Jeremy Hotz, Debra

HOTZ: award winner

DiGiovanni and Nathan MacIntosh, TV laugh-getters Jon Dore and Wendell Meldrum, and big-screen stealers Peter Oldring (Young People Fucking) and Samantha Bee (Coopers Camera.) Longtime comedy manager Lorne Pulmutar picked up this year’s Chairman’s Award and This Hour Has 22 Minutes creator Mary Walsh added a Dave Broadfoot Award to her ongoing collection. Biggest bonus for CCA founder Tim Progosh was a request from Deputy City Manager Andrew Beckett to bring the comedy fest back to St. John next year. (Well, okay, the Gemini nomination for his 2008 CCA Best of the Fest Variety Special hosted by Shaun Majumder didn’t exactly hurt his feelings either.)

OUR TOWN: Four Seasons Centre architect Jack Diamond talks with Toronto Star business columnist David Olive about architecture that works,

MAJUMDER: Gemini nominee

tonight at 7 pm in The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library … Toronto casting director Jason Knight (Chloe, Cairo Time, Away From Her) guests at ReelWorld’s monthly mixer tonight at Harlem Restaurant … and the third CP+S (Creative Places & Spaces) opens today with Sir Ken Robinson and Richard Florida headlining more than 60 high-profile speakers including Peter Munk, Sara Diamond, Gerry Flahive, Joe Rotman, Allyson Hewitt and outgoing Toronto mayor David Miller. This year’s theme is The Collaborative City and moderators for the 72-hour think tank include Ralph Benmergui, Matt Galloway and Ana Serrano. Should be a very lively three days.

TOMORROW:

Get out your calendars. We’ve got

sneak previews of some becoming attractions.

Wordfest Blog 10, October 27^th 2009

By Noah Richler

If ever you’d expect a Canadian author to forego the book in its present form then surely it would be Douglas Coupland, who was WordFest’s 2009 Banff Distinguished Author. Don’t hold your breath. Memorably, I once interviewed Coupland after he had spent the morning chewing the pages of previous editions of his books so that he could turn them, quite literally, into papier-mâché wasps’ nests to be returned to the outdoors from which their paper pages had originated. But, in truth, the Vancouver novelist, sculptor and occasional screenwriter has even toyed with writing graphic novels for cellphones—far too much work, he once told me—remains utterly enamoured of the book as it is. Enough so that, in Banff, Coupland explained the origins of the thought process that had led to a passage of what Margaret Atwood would choose to call ‘speculative fiction’, that he chose to read from his new novel, Generation A, in which the evolution of human thought is tied to extraterrestrial meddling through the mechanism of the book. Prior to the new novel, Coupland had written a short treatise about that great but latterly troubled thinker Marshall McLuhan that was published earlier this year as part of the Penguin Canadian Lives series. Coupland would have identified, certainly, with the way in which McLuhan was forever tied to, and even shackled by the neat phrases that became the monikers of McLuhan’s forward thinking: ‘the global village’ and ‘the medium is the message’, in particular. (Substitute, for instance, ‘Generation X’ or ‘McJob’, just a couple of those that Coupland made famous in his debut novel, Generation X, some twenty-odd years ago.)

McLuhan, Coupland explained to an audience that was half made up of youths who were in diapers when he was on their way to becoming their literary icon, went on to conceive of even more revolutionary eventualities, more than ideas, the most outstanding of these being his anticipation of the Internet and its effects on human thinking. For this observation alone, tiring of the hollow corporate predictions of Don Tapscott and the like, I shall now read Coupland’s biography of McLuhan, something that I have not done yet. (Once I do, or should you do, note, the book’s ‘long life’ will have been extended by another human one.) Coupland was also particularly interested—and this was the substance of the playful passage that he read from his most recent novel—in the ways that novels have shaped human thinking, and specifically how they fostered the notion of individualism in our conception of ourselves. Thoughts that ancient societies often believed were put into our heads (or, if you were Greek, the heart) by gods and goddesses we now generally believe to be our own—unless, of course, you are a bona fide evangelist. The printing press allowed the dissemination of ideas in a fashion that encouraged dialogues that, in another session of the festival, Monique Proulx described as occurring in private and in silence. It was possible, then, if only for an interval of 500-odd years (William Caxton’s printing press was invented in 1476) to believe that one existed intelligently, and almost singularly, as it was no longer as necessary to head to the church or the town square or, if you were lucky, to the school for instruction.

Coupland believes that this period is being brought to an end by Facebook, Twitter and all the other publicly lived social networking sites of the Internet that depend on and propagate associations of like-minded people—that return us to behaving and living as members of tribes, effectively. Recently some scientists have identified genes that they argue make their hosts more likely to behave as members of tribes—a lot of the research done in less developed countries, inevitably—but this strikes me as the modern equivalent of 19^th century phrenology, in which the skulls of criminals were measured and all sorts of dubious conclusions drawn. I accept Coupland’s explanation more easily wondering, as many do, if the last half of the twentieth century as it was lived in Canada especially, was a golden moment for many things—for democracy, for non-conflictual thinking and, dare I say it, for Jews (one tribe that has always fared rather badly at the hands of others). Maybe we are headed into another period of tribalism, unrestrained by the positive effects of reading upon our character that we may have taken for granted and assumed would be gifts to everyone.

But I would be interested in this aspect of what Coupland is saying—and, I suspect, likely to explore further for his Massey Lectures next autumn—as I am one of many who is particularly interested in story and how the forms of story that we indulge in exist almost independently of us but also throw light on our habits of perception and how we interact with the world. At the moment, we are living in anxious times, enough so that fear and what I would describe as an atavistic pattern of ‘epic’ thinking thrives.

Note that I use the word ‘epic’ here, to mean not long, as in an ‘epic poem’, but to describe a form of story in which good and evil exist as absolutes and it is possible to condemn, often to death whole other groups because in such a story there is no reigning idea of our common humanity and the Other is perceived of as not human and therefore expendable. Think of the Orcs in Lord of the Rings, or of the language that is used in war—America as ‘the Mother of All Evil’, or Iraq as part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ etc; these are terms in stories that are explicitly designed not to encourage our sympathy for the enemy but to want to destroy them. This is a far cry from the sort of thinking that the novel encourages—a form of storytelling that promotes our sense of being individual, such as Coupland was invoking, but never without forgetting the bond of our ‘common humanity’ and of the ‘universal experiences’ that we believe the best novels elucidate and comment on.

Web bonding, Coupland believes, will abnegate all this—and certainly there are many sociologists who point to the numerous ways in which the web creates constellations of the like-minded that support his view. I am less certain. I am meeting more and more people who spend hours on the ‘net that in prior times would have been spent reading, but I am also meeting more and more people who understand the reasons why they like, not prefer, books and keep buying them. Old people are now buying e-books and readers because the font can be enlarged without adding a couple of hundred pages to a physical book that then becomes an advertisement for the reader’s diminished sight—embarrassing to many in a society that venerates youth and seems to at least hope that a little more science can make the state permanent. Others, however, continue to buy paper books because they want them, or because as a gift it is much more idiosyncratic than e-mailing a file or leaving it at some website to be downloaded.

So the physical book, I believe, shall continue to have a ‘long life’ and furthermore, exist in many forms. This last detail is important, because it also denotes the junction at which I part ways with my pal Coupland (who is, however, at the mere beginning of a journey of thinking, as much was easy to recognize at the Banff talk and exciting for that reason: we lucked in to being at the beginning of the journey with him, rather than hearing an author just plug his last book). For I believe that creation stories and romances and epics and novels are forms of story that co-exist in us, and that a novel is more than something that is “written, in prose form and long”—a standard definition. I believe that novels can be oral, printed electronically, or conveyed in film—and that it is exactly their message of individuality and our common humanity that distinguishes them. This message is contained in the leap of the imagination that first an author, and then a reader makes; a leap that is made on the back of the assumption that a person’s experience in, say, Afghanistan under the Taliban (as in Deborah Ellis’s The Breadwinner trilogy), a New York magazine under an Anna Wintour (Lauren Wesiberger’s The Devil Wears Prada) or England’s Tudor court (Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker winner, Wolf Hall) can be understood exactly because we are fundamentally alike.

This is the distinguishing characteristic of the novel—not, as many argue, its investigation of the interior life or its attention to detail, etc. It is this extraordinary and progressive idea that makes it the highest expression not just of our literary but also our political selves. And as it exists on pages, but also on the radio and in film—movies that are just not very good or ambitious should not deter from the novelistic powers of better ones—and, yet, on the Internet. These are early cyber days; video games, Facebook, or the now no longer talked about ‘Second Life’ and other ways of storytelling shaped by that technology as the printed book was by Caxton’s 1476 invention, are but early forays into the storytelling that is possible over the web, and there is no scientific reason why the laws of story that have shaped the way we narrate our lives in other media would not apply to this one,

So, yes, we may, in these anxious, strife-ridden times, find ourselves relapsing into tribal thinking—and noticing it more. But the novel and all it has taught us cannot disappear. The book, and the individualistic thinking it has encouraged—in non-fiction texts and treatises, but also in novels—has a long life. Let’s pay attention to how it unravels.

*          *          *

Books have a long life and their authors and readers too—or at least it can seem that way at times. Coupland read, after Generation A, the concluding chapter of Generation X, the novel of another set of anxious times that made the fella famous. It was poignant, hearing him do so, and for this reader too, as—what, twenty-three years ago?—I had traveled to Universal City in Los Angeles to interview the author, then not yet widely known—who dressed at the time in fifties suits we now associate with the television series, Mad Men, and who would not get out of bed or draw the curtains of his hotel room because he was himself so anxious then. I interviewed him anyway, was struck by his gift and so took the peculiarity in stride. In Banff I thought, have we really known each other that long? And aren’t I the luckier for it.

I leave you now, until next year’s WordFest, I hope. It was a fun ride. Thanks to Anne Green, Anne-Nicole Pilkey, Jocelyn Hebert, and Amanda and Antony and Don and all the other great volunteers, and to photographer Kathie Stell. What a super festival.

Best,

Noah Richler

So I’ve been rereading “Microserfs” by Douglas Coupland. I never actually finished the book, but I got close. I’m excited about making it all the way through this time Anyway the book has a lot of pages full of random words. Here is the reason why:

So this got me thinking…what if machines do have a subconscious of their own? What if machines right now are like human babies, which have brains but no way of expressing themselves except screaming (crashing)? What would a machine’s subconscious look like? How does it feed off what we give it? If machines could talk to us, what would they say?

So I stare at my MultiSync and my PowerBook and wonder…”What’s going through their heads?”

To this end, I’m creating a file of random words that pop into my head, and am feeding these words into a desktop file labeled SUBCONSCIOUS.

I thought this would be a fun thing to do on my blog for today. Here are my random words. Feel free to add your own!!!

———————————————————————————————–

Typhoon

Rain
Cold and Sun
and Warm

Mixed Bag                                                            Jumble

Clown                                                                     Tops

Withold

“When the music is flowing through me.”

Q: What do you want to do when you grow up?

A:………………………………………………………….