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Jpod
its impossible to walk accross a room with a knife in your hand & not look psycho...
Couplands JPOD
ok, maybe this book has been discussed on this site already. i dont know. im new & too lazy to check. i found it in an airport bookshop (sandwiched between a bunch of danielle steel novels) & felt obliged to rescue it. so i did. read it in one sitting. laughed my ass off. fucking brilliant.
anyone else read it?
"caribou"
I have very strong and confusing feelings for Doug, I wanna cuddle him and give him a chinese burn all at once. But JPod had by far the DORKIEST first lines to any book, ever, and then it just seemed to get even cheesier from there.
I don't remember them exactly, so maybe one of you guys should correct me or whatever, but wasn't it something like,
"I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel."
"That asshole"
Argh! I love him, that silly bastard!
EDIT: This edit is just to say that I actually bought one TWO limited edition signed copies of his books as they always seem to be released right around my birthday when I am at my most frivilous and decedant. Yeah that's right, TWO.
I read jpod on the plane ride down to florida and finished it before i went to bed. I absolutely loved everything about this book, its so nerdy and self aware of its nerdyness that you just have to smile(because as rediculous as the characters are you know people like this). All the characters are awesome and the strange ronald mcdonald moments had me laughing so loud that people on the plane shot me and my family dirty looks the entire way down.
The closest thing i have to a complaint is that i could not visualize the hugging machine.
I havent read it yet, is it as good as Hey Nostradamus? That was my favourite so far.
Dark past, bright future, living abroad, well read. You're like the reincarnation of James Dean, hopefully with better driving skills ( Tomstrong on me, best compliment I ever got! )
I havent read it yet, is it as good as Hey Nostradamus? That was my favourite so far.
its on the whole other end of the coupland spectrum. Very light,silly & fun.
dating proposals to ronald mcdonald,inventing an autistic hugging machine, douglas coupland appearing in the book and hassling ethan, motherly drug deals, a vicious asian buisness man who befriends ethans dad due to their mutal love of ballroom dancing.
even a death threat somewere in there from ronald mcdonald.
Its now moved to my Must Read shelf. Thanks for the help Phleg.
Dark past, bright future, living abroad, well read. You're like the reincarnation of James Dean, hopefully with better driving skills ( Tomstrong on me, best compliment I ever got! )
yes, unfortunately i had to put it down when the school year started, but the first hundred or so pages I have read are pure Coupland. I kind of really want to see the canadian miniseries too, but there's no chance we'll get that in Texas
It was kind of disappointing in all honesty. It tried way too hard. I kept watching it hoping it'd get good, it didn't really, other than the design of the show was really cool and some of the characters from the book still maintained their charm despite an often crappy script and some irritating actors.
It was kind of disappointing in all honesty. It tried way too hard. I kept watching it hoping it'd get good, it didn't really, other than the design of the show was really cool and some of the characters from the book still maintained their charm despite an often crappy script and some irritating actors.
I watched I think like eight or ten episodes of it, and I have no idea why, because it was not very good at all. (I perhaps secretly have a thing for Alan Thicke maybe).
For some reason I really want to like Coupland, but anything I've read or seen of his has yet to do much for me. Microserfs came the closest, though. Should I try JPod the book, regardless of its tv show spinoff?
know what you mean about wanting to like coupland but having a hard time with it... i remember picking up gen x with the expectation that it'd be a sort of grungy green river album on paper, & then it wasn’t & I was bummed. But then it clicked...I got it. gen x suddenly made sense. i think i read in a david foster wallace interview, not a big fan, but anyway, he said he hears 'clicks' when he reads...things that resonate with you on some level... with gen x it was that one big click that sorta made the book make sense...a sort of retrospective appreciation for it...with jpod i found a lot of those clicks on multiple levels...mainly, cos ive encountered perfect Xerox versions of those characters in real life, but also probably cos i've learned to read coupland... then again, got my scriptwriting class to look at some dialogue samples to explore different varieties of narrative logic...picked the funniest bits, & maybe two of them appreciated it...
"caribou"
That reminds me I will read Microserfs first then Jpod just to see how he progresses. Hey Nostradamus was my first Coupland and I loved it.
Dark past, bright future, living abroad, well read. You're like the reincarnation of James Dean, hopefully with better driving skills ( Tomstrong on me, best compliment I ever got! )
I loved Jpod. It was my first Coupland book, and at first when he referred to himself I thought it was ridiculous, but then later on through the book I thought it was funny. I read Microserfs after that, and once I got into it I loved it. Soon after I read Eleanor Rigby, which is quite different to the other two, but still a great read. I'm now reading Shampoo Planet, but I think I've overdosed on Coupland because I'm finding it hard to get into.
I think I've overdosed on Coupland because I'm finding it hard to get into.
Im at the same point right now with coupland
After reading jpod, Generation X, Hey Nostradamus! & Polaroids From the Dead..i had an overwhelming urge to punch anyone who remotely resembled a slacker in the head.
I like coupland alot he is simple and very straightforward, one of these days i am going to pick back up were i left off in All Familys are Psychotic....it was very good.
*Spoilers* (Do you put that for books? I don't know)
I cannot stand this book. I don't understand the appeal at all. If it were just a workplace satire then maybe it would be fine, but from the first moment his mother entered the story, I hated it. Everything with her - killing the biker, nonchalantly approaching it and guns and shooting things/people, etc., etc. - is all absurd. The dialogue from older characters, ie his parents, is usually awful - the exact way you see in a children's cartoon. Gives too much credit to The Simpsons as the sole cultural focus of today, to the point of one person's favorite video game being one based on The Simpsons. No one's favorite video game is based on The Simpsons. China, everything to do with Steve, the smug way Coupland is inserted into the book as a character...
I just do not like this book.
JPod was good. It was also my first Coupland novel and I was really hoping that what I read in JPod was his typical style. I went to All Families Are Psychotic after, and I didn't care much for that one. JPod was a fast read with a lot of funny parts. Definitely not something to take seriously. The writing style gets switched up constantly with the different essays the characters are writing and then the full page rants that take place three or four times throughout the novel, and on the inside covers, so it sets a fast pace which is always good for a funny novel. Coupland appearing in the novel seemed to fit the rhythm. Amazing things were happening one after another, almost like Coupland was cheating to make the novel entertaining, coming up with bizarre scenarios to fill the novel out a bit, but JPod was all about being a fun read so it's foregiveable.
His method of introducing the characters was smart: Having Ethan write up a quick charactorial analysis of everybody. I like characters being introduced and described in fresh ways, like Palahniuk in Survivor having Tender describe himself over the phone. It beats a mechanical narrarative.
I thought some of the dialogue was weak, especially near the beginning. The part where somebody, I think Evil Mark, knocks over John Doe's Tom Clancy novels. That was an obvious bridge to get Ethan writing his analysis of the characters, and it seemed plastic; it happened too fast and seemed almost unreadable. I think it was half a page of nothing, no mood or joke or story, and then we were on to another topic. That half page brought nothing to the novel. It reminded me of something I would write and then delete before getting frustrated and going for a walk.
John Doe was an excellent character, though. Pretty much anything he said from inside his cubicle was funny--those little snibbets he put in while the story was evolving without him.
I don't know about Coupland, though. What kept me going in All Families Are Psychotic was that every few chapters he would say something that I really thought was brilliant. Just a sentence or a metaphor that fit together perfectly and put a lot of life into the novel, which made me want to try Generation X or one of his more serious novels, to get a bigger dosage of that part of his style. He is definitely talented, but I feel the same about him as I do about Irvine Welsh. Both authors I feel are indisputably good, but the most they have given me is hilarity. There are much more important novels to be reading.
I don't know about Coupland, though. What kept me going in All Families Are Psychotic was that every few chapters he would say something that I really thought was brilliant. Just a sentence or a metaphor that fit together perfectly and put a lot of life into the novel, which made me want to try Generation X or one of his more serious novels, to get a bigger dosage of that part of his style. He is definitely talented, but I feel the same about him as I do about Irvine Welsh. Both authors I feel are indisputably good, but the most they have given me is hilarity. There are much more important novels to be reading.
Read Hey Nostradamus! its the entirely whole other spectrum of coupland..Fuckin brilliant...I was slack jawed and sad through Cheryl's part of the book.
I think to accurately get a feel for coupland i think one must read Jpod, Polaroids from the Dead, & Hey Nostradamus!
Polaroids from the dead isnt mindblowingly good but the second half is very insightful and chock full of Couplands own borderline brilliant observations.(i say borderline because i am not sure if they are brillaint observations or intellegent observations worded brillaintly).
one line allways sticks out in my head but i am terrible with quoting things...the general idea is that the idea of Cilvized life isnt something that just exist naturally we as a collective put it in place to separate us from the animals (shit i wish i could remember the wording it sounded fucking amazing).
one line allways sticks out in my head but i am terrible with quoting things...the general idea is that the idea of Cilvized life isnt something that just exist naturally we as a collective put it in place to separate us from the animals (shit i wish i could remember the wording it sounded fucking amazing).
Fucking hell this bugged me all day at work today, so i dug out my book and here is the quote
I told the German reporter that he had seen day something i had always suspected but only recently articulated: That as humans we are always on the brink of wilderness= that we are always animals first-that civilization is an act of political will, and not a given right. That middle class peace is something to be cherished, not mocked, because without it, we are lonst, and we are only animals and never anything more.
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