JPod: A Novel - Softcover

Coupland, Douglas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1596912332 ISBN 13: 9781596912335

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2006

Synopsis

Trapped in the bureaucratic morass of JPod, on the fringes of a huge Vancouver video-game-design company, Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers wage a daily war with the demands of the company's idiotic marketing department, while Ethan's own life is molded by Hollywood, marijuana operations, people smuggling, ballroom dancing, and China.

About this title

Review:

Already dubbed Microserfs 2.0 by some pundits--a winking allusion to Douglas Coupland's previous novel Microserfs, which similarly chronicled pop-culture-damaged twentysomething misfits flailing, foundering, and occasionally succeeding in the high-tech sector--JPod is, like all of Coupland's novels, a byproduct of its era and yet strangely detached from it. Only this time with a bold and very crafty narrative device: Douglas Coupland, novelist, is a character in Douglas Coupland's novel. Which, when you think about it, makes sense since the type of people Coupland depicts are precisely the type of people who consume Coupland novels. As the once-great comedian Dennis Miller might holler, "Stop him before he sub-references again!" Readers familiar with Coupland's oeuvre know what to expect with the characterizations here. They also know that Coupland on a roll is both savagely observant and laugh-out-loud funny: "Bree was showing someone photos of her recent holiday visiting Korean animation sweathshops. She was bummed because she couldn't get into North Korea: too much legal juju. [She said] 'I just wanted to know what it's like to be in a society with no technology except for three dial telephones and a TV camera they won from Fidel Castro in a game of rock paper scissors.'" Much of the book is like that, built on granular and meandering exchanges between characters about . . . stuff. While JPod's flow is hobbled by some preposterous twists and character traits and by random words, phrases, and numbers splattered gratuitously across successive pages in oversized typeface, it's hard to imagine Coupland fans walking away disappointed. --Kim Hughes

About the Author:

Douglas Coupland is a novelist who also works in visual arts and theatre. His novels include Generation X, All Families Are Psychotic, Hey Nostradamus! and Eleanor Rigby. He lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. For more information, visit www.coupland.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1596912332
• ISBN 13: 9781596912335
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448