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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--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
You just never know with Coupland, do you? Sometimes it is simply magnificent (Hey Nostradamus! Life after God) or at least sweet and moving (Shampoo Planet); sometimes it is a downright failure (Girlfriend in a Coma; All families are psychotic); and sometimes you get something in between, something that is very clever and entertaining and post-postmodern and selfconsciously self-deprecatory - and yet, the moment you turn the final page ("play again? y/n") you forget all about it (JPod). Maybe the forgettability was intentional in this novel about geeks who work in game development and who are obsessed with futile details and highly transitory, pointless hypes. The plot is way over the top and clearly not meant to be taken seriously, nor are we for a moment expected to believe (I hope) that any of these people might actually exist. We get (**spoilers**) a weed-growing mom who kills and turns lesbian; a sinister Asian man-smuggler who's only interested in 'making people happy'; an autistic teamleader who turns heroine addict and thus finds happiness; a dyke called freedom (no capital f) who turns into a bimbo called Kimberly; Coupland himself as Deus ex machina; and an outing to China thrown in for good measure. Coincidences abound and the point of all the frantic plot twists remains a mystery. Unless the point is the deconstruction of the novel as such.
There are several good laughs in JPod, and you won't be bored. The book however lacks the memorable observations and oneliners found in other, better Coupland works, such as Generation X. JPod is simply too facile - it takes a little more than quoting computerbabble, product packages, and internet-vernacular to be a chronicler of our times. This far-fetched story with its barrage of embedded puzzles rather felt like the (supposedly) intellectual counterpart to The Da Vinci Code. There is also a degree of arrogance I found somewhat off-putting. Coupland doesn't mind making his readers pay for 41 pages (!) covered with decimals of pi. Other pages are filled with chinese characters; the 8,363 prime numbers between 10,000 and 100,000; brand names; listings of product ingredients, and what not. All, of course, printed with the mandatory typograhical quirks that are the bane of novels these days. This book may feel heavy when you pick it up, but rest assured that most of it is fluff.
My advice? Sample before buying. If you are a first-time Coupland reader, there are much better places to start.
Sometimes you get a bad feeling from the first page of a book, such as when the author namedrops himself. In this case, clever Douglas Coupland.
Fortunately that bad feeling doesn't continue throughout the geek purgatory of "JPod," which can be seen as a sort of sequel to "Microserfs" -- bored, brilliant people in unfulfilling corporate jobs. It staggers at the midway point, but the corporate bizarrities are definitely worth the read.
When he's not dealing with a doomed video game, Ethan is trying to help his parents -- his pot-growing mum killed a hostile biker, and his wannabe-actor dad is having a hot affair with a sexy girl Ethan's age. To make matters worse, his brother has smugglesd illegal Chinese immigrants into his home without permission. And you thought YOUR day was bad.
Things deteriorate even more when the JPod boss develops an obsessive crush on Ethan's mother, and he ends up getting shipped to China. Now it's Ethan's job to go retrieve him, since the turtle-themed video game is being destroyed by their new manager. But getting the boss back won't be the end of his problems.
Let's get this out of the way: Coupland casts himself as a character in "JPod." Essentially it's his evil, sociopathic clone. Coupland does get credit for not making himself come across as appealing at all, but the whole sequence seems very gimmicky and artificial.
"JPod" itself is a smirky black comedy, with lots of dysfunctional characters and a a lot of all-out comic situations. In fact, he really never lets up with the comedy, with idiot bosses, lesbian mothers with lowercase names, and even a gangster born without a sense of humor. Not to mention love letters to Ronald MacDonald. Yes, the fast-food clown.
But in this view of the world, the best you can hope for is a kind of chaos that is familiar to you, and Coupland takes the opportunity to poke fun at the attitudes he helped trigger. It's a very different tone from more uplifting novels like "Eleanor Rigby," and it suits Coupland's satiric tone very well.
Coupland's strongest writing is on the JPodders themselves. They're not really likable, but they are fascinating. They fill up their worktime with mind games, mathematical riddles, and in-jokes. Unfortunately, these jokes also feel like filler to flesh out the story. At the same time, they meditate on what personality quirks drove them to this job.
"JPod" is wildly uneven and also deeply absurd, a black comedy with a postmodern Dilbert edge. It's not fully satisfying, but it is entertaining.
I liked a lot about JPod, and I actually wanted to like it even more than that. Microserfs was probably my favorite Coupland to date, and I got very excited reading all the early noise comparing this to Microserfs.
Bad comparison-- not accurate. The only thing that the two books have in common is that they focus on the tech industry. Microserfs is much more of a novel and had a much warmer spirit than JPod.
JPod is a pretty straight up comedy with a very mean streak. I miss the feeling of affection Coupland has for his characters when he's in better form. It is often very funny. But, I just as often had a bad feeling for laughing at it-- like laughing at a bully's jokes. Even so, it would have been a much better work if it hadn't been so incredibly self-indulgent on top of the meanness. I realize that railing against Coupland for self-indulgence kind of misses the point. But still, there are limits. The Coupland character irritated me to no end, as did the silly interstitial pages with all the numbers and stream of consciousness stuff. He's used these kinds of devices before, and never did it feel so much like stuffing the page count.
Shame. I really liked Eleanor Rigby, and I was hoping to like this just as much. Instead it felt like a self-indulgent mess that would rather mock its characters than understand them. Only Coupland's humor and natural writing skills keep it from being a complete waste of time.
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