Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
by Douglas Coupland

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• ISBN13: 9780312054366
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Book Review: Applicable To Today
Summary: 5 Stars

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).

Summary of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

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