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.
3/5
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