Books: Generation A by Douglas Coupland

We’vebeen called Generation Y Me? Uploading our lives to the interwebs anddownloading more pop culture into our spongy brain matter than we careto sort through, we’ve become a nation of Twits, Twi-hards,thumb-twiddlers. We’re plugged-in: to news, events, our iPhones, butwe’ve also tuned out. From words, books, stories. Each other.
Enter Generation A, Douglas Coupland’s newest novel. Gen A picks up where Coupland’s Generation X left off: in an entirely imaginable future where bees are extinct and the drug du jour keeps people from fearing their lack of connectedness.
Thestory begins when five characters, strangers to each other and oceansapart, are stung. Weaving together their stories–an inspired feat, nodoubt–Coupland peppers the narrative with his trademark, LOL popculture humor: Zack, the pretty-boy farmer from Iowa, is stung whileetching cock-and-balls into his cornfield that can be seen via GoogleMaps; the Sri Lankan Harj, arguably the most well-written character ofthe book, works for an Abercrombie call center and wants nothing morethan to wear a sweater and visit Connecticut; Julien, the residentFrench cynic, is permanently removed from World of Warcraft.
Typical of Coupland’s novels (JPod beingmy favorite), his characters feel isolated from a world that doesn’tunderstand them, that is increasingly isolating to it’s billions ofinhabitants. The characters, each with a Wikipedic knowledge of allthings cultural, are witty, warm and easy to identify with; they alljust want to “fit in,†whatever that means anymore. By being stung,they all become part of something, and as the novel progresses,Coupland fills you in on what that something is.

Gen A isa call to action, a treatise on the wonders of storytelling, of oralcommunication. Coupland makes this all too clear. As much as I agree,and as much as I love the idea of a world where people actually connectrather than overshare, the last tenth of the book is too obvious,lacking in what would otherwise be a nuanced commentary of our times.
At the very least, you’ll be glad you put down your phone, if only for a little while.

Generation A by Douglas Coupland, $16.32 on Amazon