JPod

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 From Publishers Weekly Coupland returns, knowingly, to mine the dot-com territory of Microserfs (1996)—this time for slapstick. Young Ethan Jarlewski works long hours as a video-game developer in Vancouver, surfing the Internet for gore sites and having random conversations with co-workers on JPod, the cubicle hive where he works, where everyone's last name begins with J. Before Ethan can please the bosses and the marketing department (they want a turtle, based on a reality TV host, inserted into the game Ethan's been working on for months) or win the heart of co-worker Kaitlin, Ethan must help his mom bury a biker she's electrocuted in the family basement which houses her marijuana farm; give his dad, an actor desperately longing for a speaking part, yet another pep talk; feed the 20 illegal Chinese immigrants his brother has temporarily stored in Ethan's apartment; and pass downtime by trying to find a wrong digit in the first 100,000 places (printed on pages 383–406) of pi. Coupland's cultural name-dropping is predictable (Ikea, the Drudge Report, etc.), as is the device of bringing in a fictional Douglas Coupland to save Ethan's day more than once. But like an ace computer coder loaded up on junk food at 4 a.m., Coupland derives his satirical, spirited humor's energy from the silly, strung-together plot and thin characters. Call it Microserfs 2.0 . (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine Since the early 1990s Douglas Coupland has mined North America's cultural milieu in books including Microserfs , Generation X , Shampoo Planet , and Eleanor Rigby (*** Mar/Apr 2005), among others. Jpod contains the best and worst of Coupland. The novel offers brilliant commentary on global consumerism and Internet culture. Bizarre characters and witty humor captivated some reviewers. But others criticized the bombardment of cultural references, flat characters, meandering action (15 pages of prime numbers double as a game), and self-conscious insertion of the Coupland character. "If it's more difficult to recognize the profundity of his insights this time," notes the New York Times Book Review , "we should still appreciate Coupland for his consistency in making them." Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. From Booklist No, "JPod" is not the next version of iPod; it refers to a group of geeks with last names starting with J cubicled together in a distant quadrant of a giant Vancouver video-game corporation. Coupland revisits the digital kingdom he so shrewdly depicted in Microserfs (1995) in a zeitgeist-trawling satire about twenty-first-century cyber obsession. JPoder Ethan Jarlewski narrates in deadpan geekspeak, reporting on life in gamer land, where he and his fellow designers--each precocious, cynical, oddball charming, and possibly a touch autistic--invent hilariously clever trivial pursuits to avoid work. But Ethan is often distracted from fun with porn sites, math problems, and an evil cyber version of Ronald McDonald by the crazy demands of his off-the-charts family. There's a South Park edginess and surrealism to the frequently violent escapades of Ethan's actor-wannabe father, gun-toting and pot-growing mother, and real-estate salesman brother, who gets them all entangled with the gangster Kam Fong. As both actual and cyber mayhem crest, Coupland, himself a character in this rampaging comedy, reminds us that no matter how seductive the virtual realm is, it is real life that requires our keenest attention. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “To Coupland's credit, the technologically sophisticated but socially alienated universe that he anticipated in 1995 is an even more tangible and complicated entity in 2006 ― a time when people really do speak in regurgitated sound bites from "The Simpsons," and are labeled autistic simply because they are shy, and are granted preposterous job descriptions like being part of a "world-building team" when they possess little control over the world in which they live ― and that gives him license to revisit this territory in JPod.” ― The New York Times “Coupland returns, knowingly, to mine the dot-com territory of Microserfs (1996)-this time for slapstick. Young Ethan Jarlewski works long hours as a video-game developer in Vancouver, surfing the Internet for gore sites and having random conversations with co-workers on JPod, the cubicle hive where he works, where everyone's last name begins with J. Before Ethan can please the bosses and the marketing department (they want a turtle, based on a reality TV host, inserted into the game Ethan's been working on for months) or win the heart of co-worker Kaitlin, Ethan must help his mom bury a biker she's electrocuted in the family basement which houses her marijuana farm; give his dad, an actor desperately longing for a speaking part, yet another pep talk; feed the 20 illegal Chinese immigrants his brother has temporarily stored in Ethan's apartment; and pass downtime by trying to find a wrong digit in the first 100,000 places (printed on pages 383-406) of pi. Coupland's cultural name-dropping is predictable (Ikea, the Drudge Report, etc.), as is the device of bringing in a fictional Douglas Coupland to save Ethan's day more than once. But like an ace computer coder loaded up on junk food at 4 a.m., Coupland derives his satirical, spirited humor's energy from the silly, strung-together plot and thin characters. Call it Microserfs 2.0. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.” ― Publishers Weekly “Bored and zany computer programmers think of themselves as characters in a Douglas Coupland novel. The young video-game designers portrayed here resemble the nerds in Microserfs (1995), and their spokesman-narrator has relatives who recall the eccentrics in All Families Are Psychotic (2001). Assigned to the same corporate pod because their names end in J," the Vancouver six hate the video game they're producing, called "BoardX," use their modest creativity in time-wasting foolery and decide to sabotage the game by encoding in it a crazed Ronald McDonald. Twentysomething narrator Ethan has "respite" from the laborious weirdness of work by tending to his wacky family-a ballroom-dancing father obsessed with having a speaking part in a movie, a marijuana-growing mother whom Ethan helps bury a body, a brother who sells mansions to Chinese gangsters. At one point, Coupland enters the novel as a character and contracts for the rights to the other characters' lives for, ultimately, this novel. The book itself has a game-like quality: Randomly scattered through the text in various formats and fonts are mock advertisements, quizzes, product placements, interviews and lists-many, many lists, including iterations of the number pi and 58,894 random numbers (both sets of lists go on for pages). It's hard to believe there are enough cubicle clones and bored gamers to give Coupland an audience, but it's even harder to imagine anyone else reading more than a hundred pages of this novel. "J" is for juvenile, jaundiced, joyless, jumbled junk.” ― Kirkus Reviews “No, 'JPod' is not the next version of iPod; it refers to a group of geeks with last names starting with J cubicled together in a distant quadrant of a giant Vancouver video-game corporation. Coupland revisits the digital kingdom he so shrewdly depicted in Microserfs (1995) in a zeitgeist-trawling satire about twenty-first-century cyber obsession. JPoder Ethan Jarlewski narrates in deadpan geekspeak, reporting on life in gamer land, where he and his fellow designers--each precocious, cynical, oddball charming, and possibly a touch autistic--invent hilariously clever trivial pursuits to avoid work. But Ethan is often distracted from fun with porn sites, math problems, and an evil cyber version of Ronald McDonald by the crazy demands of his off-the-charts family. There's a South Park edginess and surrealism to the frequently violent escapades of Ethan's actor-wannabe father, gun-toting and pot-growing mother, and real-estate salesman brother, who gets them all entangled with the gangster Kam Fong. As both actual and cyber mayhem crest, Coupland, himself a character in this rampaging comedy, reminds us that no matter how seductive the virtual realm is, it is real life that requires our keenest attention.” ― Donna Seaman, Booklist “The perfect vehicle for [Coupland's] funny and poignant evocations of near-term nostalgia...there is brilliance at work in JPod .” ― LA Times “Zeitgeist surfer Douglas Coupland downloads his brain into Jpod .” ― Vanity Fair “Jpod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away...” ― New York Times Book Review “The master ironist just might redefine E.M. Forster's famous dictate "Only connect" for the Google age.” ― USA Today “a willful, joyful satire that revels in the same cultural conventions that it sends up.” ― Rocky Mountain News “Perhaps it's time to admire [Coupland's] virtuoso tone and how he has refined it over 11 novels. The master ironist just might redefine E.M. Forster's famous dictate 'Only connect' for the Google age.” ― USA Today “Coupland is mining territory that has been largely ignored by the literary set…the novel shows Coupland did his homework.” ― Washington Post “No one has Coupland's ability to spot cultural outliersthe little gems of nonsense that can both jar you and impart joy. Coupland is his generation's most interesting curator.” ― Slate “Hilarious, maddening, overstuffed” ― Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Coupland remains king of the perfectly placed pop-culture detail.” ― MSNBC.com Douglas Coupland is a novelist who also works in visual arts and theater. His novels include Eleanor Rigby, Generation X, All Families Are Psychotic, Hey Nostradamus!, and JPod. He lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Jpod By Douglas Coupland Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Copyright © 2006 Douglas CouplandAll right reserved. ISBN: 9781596911048 Chapter One "Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel.”“That asshole.”“Who does he think he is?”“Come on, guys, focus . We’ve got a major problem on our hands.”The six of us were silent, but for our footsteps. The main corridor’s muted plasma TVs blipped out the news and sports, while xadco-xadworkers in xadlong-xadsleeved blue and black xadT-xadshirts xadoompah-xadloompahed in and out of xadlaminate-xadaccess doors, elevated walkways, staircases and elevators, their missions inscrutable and squirrelly. It was a rare sunny day. Freakishly articulated sunbeams highlighted specks of mica in the hallway’s designer granite. They looked like randomized particle xadevents.Mark said, “I can’t even think about what just happened in there.”John Doe said, “I’d like to do whatever it is people statistically do when confronted by a jolt of large and bad news.”I suggested he ingest five milligrams of Valium and three shots of hard liquor or four glasses of domestic xadwine.“Really?”“Don’t ask me, John. Google it.”“And so I shall.”Cowboy had a jones for cough syrup, while Bree fished through one of her many pink vinyl Japanese handbags for lip gloss – phase one of her xadwell-xadestablished pattern of pursuing sexual conquest to silence her inner xadpain.The only quiet member of our group of six was Kaitlin, new to our work area as of the day before. She was walking with us mostly because she didn’t yet know how to get from the meeting room to our cubicles. We’re not sure if Kaitlin is boring or if she’s resistant to bonding, but then again none of us have really cranked up our xadcharm.We passed Warren from the motion capture studio. “Yo! jPodsters! A turtle! All right!” He flashed a thumbs-xadup.“Thank you, Warren. We can all feel the love in the room.”Clearly, via the gift of text messaging, Warren and pretty much everyone in the company now knew of our plight, which is this: during today’s marketing meeting we learned we now have to retroactively insert a charismatic cuddly turtle character into our skateboard game, which is already nearly xadone-xadthird of the way through its production cycle. Yes, you read that correctly, a turtle character–in a skateboard xadgame.The xadthree-xadhour meeting had taken place in a two-xadhundred-xadseat room nicknamed the xadair-xadconditioned rectum. I tried to make the event go faster by pretending to have superpower vision: I could see the carbon dioxide pumping in and out of everyone’s nose and mouth – it was purple. It made me think of that urban legend about the chemical they put in swimming pools that reveals when somebody pees. Then I wondered if Leonardo da Vinci had ever inhaled any of the oxygen molecules I was breathing, or if he ever had to sit through a marketing meeting. What would that have been like? “Leo, thanks for your input, but our studies indicate that when they see Lisa smile, they want a sexy, flirty smile, not that grim little slit she has now. Also, I don’t know what that closet case Michelangelo is thinking with that naked David guy, but Jesus, clamp a diaper onto him pronto. Next item on the agenda: Perspective – Passing Fad or Opportunity to Win? But first, Katie here is going to tell us about this Friday’s Jeans Day, to be followed by a xadten-xadminute muffin break.”But the word “turtle” pulled me out of my reverie, uttered by Fearless Leader–our new head of marketing, Steve. I put up my hand and quite reasonably asked, “Sorry, Steve, did you say a turtle ?”Christine, a senior development director, said, “No need to be sarcastic, Ethan. Steve here took Toblerone chocolate and turned it around inside of two years.”“No,” Steve protested. “I appreciate an open dialogue. All I’m really saying is that, at home, my son, Carter, plays SimQuest4 and can’t get enough of its turtle character, and if my Carter likes turtle characters, then a turtle character is a winner, and thus, this skateboard game needs a turtle.”John Doe BlackBerried me: I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS And so the order was issued to make our new turtle character “accessible” and “fun” and the buzzword is so horrible I have to spell it out in ASCII: “{101, 100, 103, 121}”• • •Back in our cubicle pod, the six of us fizzled away from each other like ginger ale bubbles. I had eighteen new emails and one phone message, my mother: “Dear, could you give me a call? I really need to speak with you–it’s an emergency.”An emergency? I phoned her cell right away. “Mom, what’s up? What’s wrong?”“Ethan, are you at work right now?”“Where else would I be?”“I’m at SuperValu. Let me call you back from a pay phone.”The line went dead. I picked it up when it xadrang.“Mom, you said this was an emergency.”“It is, dear. Ethan, honey, I need you to help me.”“I just got out of the Worst Meeting Ever. What’s going on?”“I suppose I’d better just tell you flat out.”“Tell me what?”“Ethan, I killed a biker.”“You killed a biker ?”“Well, I didn’t mean to.”“Mom, how the hell did you manage to kill a biker?”“Ethan, just come home right now. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”“Why doesn’t Dad help?”“He’s on a shoot today. He might get a speaking part.”She hung xadup.• • •On my way out of the office, I passed a xadworld-xadbuilding team, standing in a semicircle, staring at a large xadGerman-xadmade knife on a xaddesktop.“What’s up?” I xadasked.“It’s the knife we’re using to cut Aidan’s birthday cake,” a friend, Josh, xadreplied.I looked more closely at the knife: it was clownishly big. “Okay, it’s xadhard-xadcore I tchy & Scratchy – but so what?”“We’re having a contest – we’re trying to see if there’s any way to hold a knife and walk across a room and not look psycho." Continues... Excerpted from Jpod by Douglas Coupland Copyright © 2006 by Douglas Coupland. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Read more