1) Jpod: Enough Already

Book Read:: JPod

Author: Douglas Coupland

Pages:516

Favorite quote: "Dad and Kam Fong began talking shop and drinking heavily, while blousy women in their forties, radiating imminent divorce and sexual despondency, tried to get their attention."

Least favorite quote: Some line about how the main character's mom looked angrier than Mr. Burns. I can't find it now.

Method of Acquisition: My boyfriend received this book for Christmas two years ago. He refused to finish it (for reasons I will explain later) and it has sat quietly on the shelf accumulating dust during this time.

Distraction level: Moderate at first. I'm finally getting into The Wire and was chewing my way to the end of Season 1 while simultaneously reading JPod. As most of you know, it is almost impossible to stop watching The Wire especially once you have reached the mid-season point. You may die or go blind. Bad things will happen. I did my best.

Background: Okay. So like most Canadian people in a certain age bracket, I really like Douglas Coupland. In theory. I read Shampoo Planet when I was seventeen and was like "Oh my God, this is very culturally intense and sophisticated and I will never understand it because I'm young and ugly." Then I read Microserfs a few years later and was delighted that Coupland not only referenced stuff that I was aware of or becoming aware of (Bill Gates, Star Trek, FedEx, Riot Grrls) but he also referenced social phenomena that my friends and I already talked about (i.e. the thin fat person.) Plus, it was wrapped around these charming dorky characters and a story that ended up being surprisingly moving. Plus, he was Canadian. Who knew Canadian writers could be so cutting-edge? Douglas Coupland not only gave me an enjoyable literary experience, but he made me feel like I was IN on a giant generational joke; that I GOT something. It was nice.

So what happens when Douglas Coupland seemingly runs out of new ideas and decides to recycle Microserfs for the Google/Macbook generation? You get JPod.

Plot: JPod is very, very similar to Microserfs. Microserfs was about a group of young people who worked in close quarters as programmers for Microsoft. JPod is about a group of young people who work in close quarters at a gaming company as designers. Both groups of characters are socially awkward and eccentric (in JPod, we're even treated to one character's thesis about how all her co-workers display various degrees of autism.) Both books feature pages of experiments with font, binary coding, prime number patterns, stream-of-consciousness rambles and other visual nods to technology, communication and computers. Both books feature a character named Ethan.

Feelings, Ranting: I have no idea if these similarities were deliberate---I'm sure there's lots of interviews with Coupland about this subject and to be honest, I don't really care to go searching for them. Because JPod sucks.

While Microserfs had characters with hearts who actually seemed to be affected by the events that took places in their lives, JPod is static---even as characters utter rapid-fire witticisms and the plot jumps a mile a minute.
In some of Coupland's other novels, these devices are charming, but the level of cultural awareness amongst the characters in JPod goes beyond savvy or even interesting. It's just numbing.

A lot of things happen in JPod---a character is kidnapped and forced to work in a Chinese sweatshop making fake Nikes, someone builds a hug machine, a mother goes through a string of affairs with seemingly no consequence or reflection and the game programmers invent a violent gore game featuring Ronald McDonald. Out of context, it all seems amusing, but in the book each event is just another blip in a series of seemingly programmed plot points.

Cartoon Conspiracy?: For example, the characters constantly compare each other to the The Simpsons. But it's not the way you or I would quote The Simpsons---in JPod, it's done in this very weird, disembodied way that simply doesn't work. It got to the point where I was like, "What the fuck is with all the The Simpsons comparisons? Is this a special Douglas Coupland book code that I'm supposed to innately understand? Oh my God, I hate you!" It's as if Coupland was searching for a cultural reference that would resonate with the younger audiences reading this book, and chose The Simpsons as an afterthought. It's weird and uncomfortable.

My boyfriend gave up on the book when Coupland himself appeared as a character halfway through the story. Yes, he really does, and yes, it is as much a "what the fuck?" moment as anything you'll read in that insane Bret Easton Ellis biography/horror novel about himself (??) Lunar Park. I kept going because a) I am a masochist and I'm determined to finish every book I start in the competition, no matter how shitty and b) I really had hope things would get better.....

Spoiler Alert: JPod's characters are such blank slates that when the grouchy meta-Coupland offers them a business proposition to help design a multimedia globe that mimics and predicts world conditions (don't ask---just borrow the book from me and skip to the end) you almost breathe a sigh of relief that their meaningless jabbering will be focused on a task with a unified outcome. Also, it signified that the book was almost over.

Final Thoughts: Maybe I'm a giant idiot and the meaninglessness of the book is the point. There are a couple of moments in the book where characters lambast each other for having no real personality. I've also heard that Coupland intended to sacrifice the narrative aspects of JPod to focus on the book's design as a literary version of Web 2.0 and some other garbage about ripping off Marshall Macluhan, or something. Either way, I don't care if this is supposed to be art, or some sort of comment on Google society, or Generation K, or whatever---if I don't care about the characters or the plot, then why should I care about the book's "medium" or especially its message? Douglas, Douglas. You can do better.

Final consensus: Boo-urns.