The great Coupland experiment: the results published
In April, I went into a very pleasant branch of Ottakar's Booksellers in Truro, Cornwall, where they had a succubus in the form of a three-for-two offer. I left with a copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (as yet unread but definitely on the list), a book on the wartime invasion of Malta for and – I don't know how it happened, it just slipped into my hand – Douglas Coupland's new novel Hey! Nostradamus.
As outlined at great length in an earlier post, Coupland used to be among my favourite authors, then he wrote a turkey in the shape of Girlfriend in a Coma and an unsatisfactory follow-up in the shape of Miss Wyoming. I became stuck in a terrible loop – unable to read any more of his books, unable to stop buying them then arranging them in pride of place on the shelf next to Harry Potter.
I embarked on therapy by forcing myself to read each of them in turn, and so coming to terms with the complete volte-face that had left, to me and I believe many other Coupland fans, the genius behind Life After God and Microserfs, writing unrecognisably badly. Well, I got through that first one, but I didn't enjoy it:
“There are glimmers in there, certainly. But, by God, it's silly. What happens is silly. Jared the angel – ridiculously silly. The apocalypse scenario – you know what I'm going to say, now, don't you. The ending… wait for it…
And it doesn't speak to me in the way the others do. And I think he's already achieved what he set out to achieve in this book in Microserfs, which is a bit of a pinnacle of literary achievement. I tell you, I waited eagerly for this book to come out in paperback, and then I read it, and I was heartbroken by how bad it was.
But at least I've read it now, so hopefully that particular demon is exorcised and I'll be able to progress through the next three.”
I understand now that it was a difficult transitional novel for the author and that my sympathy for this fact, while extending to the need to keep reading his work, does not have to extend to liking this book. My problems in the past had continued with Miss Wyoming which I had a game stab at but gave up on because its picture of the state of the human condition was so bleak, so unredeemed, that I just didn't feel able to go on with it. However, I steeled myself and gave it another look:
“This didn't strike me so much this time – it turned out I had, as predicted, packed up reading at more or less the nadir. But the plot was, in its way, as far-fetched and unsatisfying as its predecessor, despite being, in my view, generally a better book.
It seems to me to be the same old theme of redemption through love and through shedding the redundant that was done to perfection in Microserfs and which seems to be getting a more or less extreme rerun in each subsequent book. Moreover, the ending of this one is every bit as unsatisfactory as Girlfriend in a Coma. In both, the narrative just stops dead after the life-changing experience and there is no hint of whether the characters can make a go of their new lives. I must look at Microserfs actually, and see how that compares.
But maybe, reading this back, I am being rather negative. This was a book I am glad to have read, although I can't see myself returning to it with the anticipation of much of the early stuff. The experiments with time and with narrative are fascinating, and I think Coupland carries this difficult trick off. It read very much like 'classic Coupland' in a way that GiaC didn't – that dragged instead of soaring. This at least took off.”
So things were looking up by the time I got myself along to the space party for All Families Are Psychotic. Despite having some issues with the way the plot is structured (see below) I found it a lot easier to find good things to say about this one:
“As far as writing and characterisation go, it's witty, sparkling and original. Particularly notable is the complete break with the Gen X'ers – this story focuses on a character in her 60s. The plots, however, are out of the window. Bizarre coincidences and incredible happenings are heaped upon the bones of odd situations and things that will make you shake your head in disbelief.
This does stretch your patience a bit as a reader, but it also leaves you wondering whether it's actually not a failing on the part of the author, but quite deliberate, and part of his grand plan for the novel. Which leaves me wondering how I am supposed to react, a problem that I haven't got to the bottom of yet.”
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So, onto Hey Nostradamus and the conclusion. Well, I liked it a lot. I would go so far to say it is well on its way to being classic Coupland. I don't mean that in the bad way of 'this author has failed to make any forward progress,' but rather in the good way of 'this is as good as the better/best things he wrote.' Things I liked very much were the novel's structure of four first-person characters in a narrative spanning a couple of decades. As you would expect, no single one of them has the whole story for any one part of it. The characters themselves are well-drawn and make me recall something I observed the other day on the receipt of a new CD by Morrissey, that artist (highly relevant in the context of Coupland, actually) formerly known as frontman of The Smiths. It is this: it is consoling to know that those artists who have been around to help you through the difficult periods of your teens and twenties are now doing you the same service for approaching middle-age.
The plot is, to my mind, a lot better-organised, although wild improbabilities still play their part, and don't expect anything as obvious as a resolution at the end. The joy of it is in the writing, which has that lovely poignant, stream-of-consciousness quality again that says to me Life After God. In fact, this book seems to be more or less a linear descendant of that one in the same way that Girlfriend in a Coma seemed to be related to Microserfs – a Jekyll and Hyde situation if ever there was one.
So, I've got Douglas Coupland back in return for just a little pain and I would say to former fans that it is actually worth the struggle to get up to speed – if there are any of you out there that have taken as long as I have about it.
To new readers, I would say the following:
* Don't take too much notice of the 'high school massacre' controversy about this novel – it's the jumping-off point rather than the whole story, although its reverberations carry through to the end.
* Don't start Coupland with his later oeuvre – find out what the earlier fuss was about first. My personal picks would be Shampoo Planet, Life after God and Microserfs which many readers believe will be the Coupland novel that makes it into literary canon, not Generation X.
* Oh yes, Gen X. The book that reputedly drove Coupland to depression and stopped him writing. I like it, a lot, and I would recommend reading it. But the problem is that it is given a disproportionate amount of attention – it was, after all, the poor man's first novel, and he did have to watch its message being successfully and cynically subverted by the very people it was aimed at.
* So try to see it in context with the rest of his work and don't necessarily read it first, unless you are a stickler (as I am, actually) for things in order.
There. Just my humble opinion, Ma'am.
2008 update: This was ultimately an exercise in futility. Coupland’s attempt to disavow his back catalogue and state that everything other than his last novel but one is complete rubbish, and that by extension people like me who like his back catalogue have worthless views, has finally exhausted my patience. Part of being a published author is accepting that once something is published, it has left your control and you can’t recall it and rewrite it because your perspective has changed in the meantime. If you don’t like this, don’t sign that contract with the devil. I loved Hey! Nostradamus but thought Eleanor Rigby was abject. I hate the premise of jPod and have finally lost my faith.