Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

A great debut novel from Coupland focusing on three friends, Dag, Andy and Claire, who have dropped out and live on the margins. This book captures the essence of a disenfranchised generation who cannot see the value in the ‘Great American Dream' anymore. Coupland also coins various phrases, such as McJobs, which have passed into common use. A short novel, but immensely readable and far more sympathetic to its cast of misfits than, say, Bret Easton Ellis, who covers similar ground in his books. Thoroughly recommended.

Not a typical novel because there isn't a plot as such. What we have here is an odd collection of anecdotes about/told by a group of 20 somethings living in the early '90s. Andy, Dag, and Claire have gone through a “mid-twenties” crisis and decided the usual life path of college to career to marriage to house to kids is not for them.

I can relate. As a middle-class kid you always feel like you have to aim for the same life your parents had. If you don't, I suppose you delay “adulthood.” Of course if you delay too long, your life can still seem kind of empty. The characters in this book share the notion that the pursuit of status and material objects that their parents engage in wasn't going to give them a real life. So they withdraw and live underemployed, doing jobs they are too smart for and just getting by. Still, are they happy? Coupland isn't offering you a solution here, just showing you how this generation may have looked at the world.

I love the chapter titles, “ I Am Not a Target Market”, “Shopping is Not Creating,” and “Remember Earth Clearly” are a few favorites. I'm still thinking about my moment of how I want to remember Earth. One story that stood out in my mind was about the three sisters and the astronaut. In a “fairy tale” the sister who went with him would have been rewarded with a fantastic new life for her faith but in this cynical Gen-X tale, it is assumed by the other two sisters, and the reader, that she dies for being a trusting fool.

I would say an almost must-read for high schoolers and college kids just starting to wonder if society isn't worth dropping out of. Very thoughtful while remaining very accessible and easy-reading. A landmark.