My Weekly Book

Cory Doctorow, of BoingBoing.net, reviews Douglas Coupland’s jPod - excerpt below.

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I’m really looking forward to reading this, as Microserfs is a good contender for my favourite book ever (if you haven’t read it, do so, right away). But I’m in debit - I still have Eleanor Rigby unread on the shelf. And I’m at the point with Coupland where, while I know the GIAC and Miss Wyoming days are well behind him, but it’s still like listening to Morrissey albums from the mid-to-late-90s - you feel you never know when you’re going to come across something that’s going to really upset your dedicated fandom. And, indeed, see the stuff about writing himself into the book, below. So I must screw up my courage and read it if I’m ever to get onto this next one…

Coupland’s JPod: the Anti-Microserfs JPod is the anti-Microserfs. Coupland has written himself as a character into the book, someone reviled by his other characters, presumably for having duped them into thinking that irony and a career in tech will make them happy and fulfilled. He’s a villain, and he’s pretty unflinching in criticizing his own work.The prose is peppered with long pastebombs of Internet prose, from the banal to the sublime. eBay UI chrome. Penis enlargement spams. Acronym expansions, humorous and serious. All the valid three-letter Scrabble words. Where this kind of pastebomb appeared in earlier Coupland works, it was ironic, or cool, or funny. In JPod, it’s a cross between reverent prose-poetry and a lament at how our brave revolution has become another bureaucracy.

Coupland’s message is more than a counsel of despair there. First and foremost, he is indeed saying that working at EA in 2006 is no less miserable and soul-crushing than working for IBM in 1975 was, sure. But he’s also reveling in how fast the revolution happened, how many peoples’ lives it’s touched, how fast it’s become the new normal.

Which is right: there’s no such thing as a permanent state of turmoil. Eventually, turmoil becomes normal.

But next year’s turmoil is always lurking around the corner — and every generation will get a chance to experience some kind of wrack and roll. Read full article here…

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