Rating: 
Summary: ok reading
Review: this was not a great novel, but then again this was coupland's first work. as such, it's pretty good in character presentation, style, and observations. it's a quick read, and one can definitely finish it within a day, although it took me several days as it wasn't a page-turner and i'd pick it up every once in a while.
my initial attitude was one of pessimistic doubt: so this is the book that started the whole generation x thing? that's a lot to live up to. when not judged accordking to that high bar, it's a decent work written by a first-time novel writer. the prose and chapter illustrations have flair, and coupland evinces some funny deadpan irony. i wouldn't say that the characters here epitomize generation x, although they definitely display some of the qualities/morals that generation x-ers hold.
i could take him or leave him, but i lean more towards checking out his other works.
Rating: 
Summary: Do Not Waste Your Time
Review: This book is absolutely horribe in every aspect but the style. The style of the book is great, and even reminds me of the great writer Vonnegut, but the story is horrible. It is about three losers who just whine and complain all the time. The book is so boring that I could only bring myself to read a small portion at a time. I'm not just writing this to just write it, I am writing it in hopes that someone else will not waste their time to read this book, unless it is REQUIRED.
Rating:
Summary: Trendy, ephemeral trash
Review: One of the worst books ever written. Self-promoting huckster Coupland, who was already in his 30's by the time this rococo abomination polluted bookstores, can only create characters who are reflections of the most passing trends. It's a bit like a '50's writer using hoola hoops to attempt a self-important treatise on spiritual malaise. A trite tale designed to stroke the egos of uppper middle-class white kids, its cultural poverty and soullessness reflect only the outlook of the author , not the generation he so ineptly tries to capture. Anyway, attempts to pigeonhole an entire generation are worthless as literary endeavors. They only serve to temporarily elevate the snake oil salesmen behind them to the level of pundit. Coupland, now a has-been, got media attention because he could package contrived generational divide into news mcnuggets palatable to cynical admen looking to convert a generation of gullible youngsters into consumers. If you're familiar with Jeff Koons, you may find his literary counterpart in Coupland: both conceal their complete lack of ideas with audaciousness and pretension. Luckily, new, better writers--who were able to be serious, knowledgeable and still comment on the changes of the world--sprung up to replace Coupland in the book-buying public's fancy: Wallace, Eugenides, Moody and even Eggers who, despite his deficencies, is ten times the writer Coupland could ever be.I keep this book on my shelf only to remind me of my own stupidity and inability to resist trends. I was 16 or so when I bought it, but there's no excuse for finishing a book this terrible and troublingly empty.
Rating: 
Summary: a forward-looking critique
Review: Douglas Coupland coined the term "Generation X" with this novel. Though the term itself became a horrible fad, Coupland captured the zeitgeist and the spiritual problems of the post-boomer generation with unparalleled aptitude. This is my third Coupland book, and with it he has secured a place as my favorite fiction author. The story is of three friends, Andy, Dag, and Claire, who have rejected consumer-culture and the cubicle-bound rat-race. They live out in the desert, work low-pay, no-future `McJobs', drink, and pass time telling stories. These `bedtime' stories are one of the most fascinating aspects of the book. Nuclear annihilation and a fantastical asteroid-world forever stuck suburban 1974 both play a role, as well as true stories no less strange and disturbing. The book is surely critical of contemporary culture, of the drudgery of office jobs and the corporate rat-race, of consumerism, of the values and meanings inherited from the previous generation. Though it does this quite well, this wouldn't be enough for a great book. But the book is also forward-looking, and this is probably its strongest point. Andy, Dag, and Claire are in a sense rebuilding culture for themselves out in the desert. Coupland's gift for disarmingly touching moments and optimistic vision not only match his cultural critique, they are the things that will stick with you.
Rating:
Summary: Applicable To Today
Review: From: not one to be labeled So where did the term "Generation X" come from? Before it became a buzzword fad? Before it became a label, oversimplified and over-generalized marketing term? Unwittingly and not by choice, from Douglas Coupland, who authored this unique book, which was written and published in 1991. The chapters of this book say a lot about the theme and the mentality of the characters in "Generation X." Here are some of the chapter titles: I Am Not a Target Market, Dead at 30 Buried at 70, Shopping Is Not Creating, Purchased Experiences Don't Count, Define Normal, MTV Not Bullets, Quit Your Job, Our Parents Had More. There is an "individualist" tract in this book within the confines of the circumstances that this cohort (age group) is culturally and economically confronted with. How does this cohort (age group) accept, reject, or redefine its values living under this paradigm and these circumstances? Conditions which will continue throughout their lifetimes? Sometimes latent consternation and cynicism appears between the lines with these characters more than they are presented in an explicit way. But I don't think it is "angst" or "angst of a new generation" because that concept is another marketing term, and can be applied to the previous generations of the 1960s, 1920s, and throughout the annals of history. Who created that (marketing) angst label, I don't know. But people who use it have been reading, and definitely WRITING too many of the modern-day pop rags like "Rolling Stone," and watching too much T.V. In the dialog and story the characters display some form of cross generational material envy, but they don't always project a complete rejection of materialism in this book. However, I don't see sour grapes either. Make sense? Like many others, I added too many outside influences of my own perceptions and experiences into this book. This is a story. Characters. Their stories, their lives and philosophies, are in this book. It's not about a generation, but I believe it is about a particular sub-culture that exists within a generation. To stereotype millions of people born over a several year period and pigeon-hole them into what they allegedly think, buy, feel, like and dislike is to paint with too broad of brush.
Coupland never intended to do this, but those who absconded with his title for this book, certainly did. For those of us who read "Gen X" years after it was released in 1991, our minds have already been diluted and our thoughts and perceptions have been influenced by the progression of the 1990s decade and the media representations of it. Today in 2003, with the massive exporting of American jobs overseas, higher rates of taxation, declining wages, high job turnover, and increasingly longer work-weeks, this book can reflect today, and it can reflect other generations. There are many of this book's characters in our world today--and they are in their 40s and 50s now. Their physical circumstances are the same, but their mentality is different. Their minds have already been molded. For a person to be an individual who chooses to live their own life (rare today in America) they don't have to reject mainstream society nor the major cultural norms of it. They simply have to embrace what they like, believe in, and want in their lives and do it. Often, people think that real-life folks who live like the characters in this book are "rejectionists" in some form when in fact they are not. They are simply living the way they want to. And, in the instance of this book the characters' lives follow along a different path that most people follow. Everyone's interpretation is different. But Copeland and these characters reflect a setting and environment, that includes the mentality and actions of a lot of people, and not just those of the Gen Xers, when he wrote this 12 years ago. A lot of the latter Boomers (b. 1950 or later) are experiencing similar phenomena as Dag, Andrew, Claire and Tyler.
Written in 1991 it's just as relevant today in 2003, because the economic fundamentals are still the same, minus the brief interruption of the short lived techie and dot.bomb boom. A temporary bubble that made a lot of people think that things were going OK, or even getting better. Well, things are still progressing as they were when this was written. There are many definitions to terms at the bottom of the pages of this book. There are many great ones. Here are a few: Air family: Describes the false sense of community experienced among co-workers in an office environment (page 127). Yuppie Wannabees: An X generation subgroup that believes the myth of a yuppie life-style being both satisfying and viable. Tend to be highly in debt, involved in some form of substance abuse....(page 104). Ozmosis: The inability of one's job to live up to on'e self-image (page 30). Brazilification: The widening gulf between the right and the poor and the accompanying disappearance of the middle class (page 13). Expatriate Slopsism: When arriving in a foreign travel destination one had hoped was undiscovered, only to find many people just like oneself (are there); the peeved refusal to talk to said people because they have ruined one's elitist travel fantasy (page 200). Tele-parabilizing: Morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots: "That's just like the episode where Jan lost her glasses!" (page 138).
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