coupland

[Jonathan Shainin]

Having never posted to the list in some 5 months of reading it, I feel much
like a child among giants, but last night I read a book that I found quite
enjoyable, if not of the complexity of much of what's discussed here.  The
book was microserfs, by Douglas Coupland, and I was wondering if anyone
else had picked up any books by him, and what the consensus might be.
I just kept thinking of an interview with Norman Mailer that I read in a
USAir magazine, where he talks about how he used to want to write the great
american novel, but that he thought maybe now it was impossible because no
novel could encompass the scope of modern america.  I found this to be a
pretty interesting remark, reminiscent of some "contemporary authors" thing
I read about Pynchon a long time ago, which seemed to link GR with
Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, certainly a great american novel on the basis of
capturing the america of an age, on the basis of what Walt Whitman called
the "unchecked energy of america," and described how Pynchon apparently
realized that this original energy couldn't be reflected in any literary
form, thus the unconventional patterns of movement in GR.  Well, Coupland
seems somewhat concerned with this "energy," but moreso in chronicling how
america has grown beyond the scope of its great novel of today, if not in
the sophisticated manner of GR.
jonathan shainin.
shainin at worldweb.net