Why I didn't like "JPod"

"JPod" (2006), about a group of dysfunctional coworkers at a videogame company (plus some of their family and friends), may be Douglas Coupland's worst book.

Firstly, the funky slogans interspersed within the narrative of "Generation X" (1991) have become the equivalent of literary spam. I realise that in this case it's done to evoke the Internet, which is such a big part of the character's lives. However, devoting several pages to a chunk of the number pi with one digit printed incorrectly is ridiculous. Perhaps Coupland thinks thinks it gives a profound insight into the lengths geeks will go to, that's it's daringly funny, or that readers will enjoy searching for said digit. I don't x3.

The noise wouldn't be so bad if "JPod"'s signal was stronger. I've read and enjoyed each of Coupland's previous novels, but this time round I just wasn't buying the personalities on offer. Main man Ethan is supposed to be smart, but rarely demonstrates it. The rest are happy to lie, cheat, sell drugs, drug others, kidnap, kill, or at the very least turn two blind eyes. It was hard to give a stuff about any of them.

(Sarcasm warning...) But it's OK because they make plenty of pop-cultural references! Those don't ring true here, either, often smacking of a quick web trawl. And anyway, I never liked Coupland just because he could rattle off the names of comic books or cult movies - I liked him because in the next paragraph he'd be listing plant species or talking about architecture. He gave cred to the crap I enjoy while proving it could coexist with the "real world".

Probably the thing that irks most about "JPod" is the way Coupland has made himself a character in the story. It didn't work in Bret Easton Ellis' ultimately pointless "Lunar Park" and it doesn't work here. As post-modern as it might be for an author to use his own incarnation as the deus ex machina, it did nothing for me but scream: THIS IS A PIECE OF FICTION.

Coupland's endings are usually uplifting, bordering on magical - I'm thinking specifically of the rain of animals that closes "Shampoo Planet" (1992) - but this one's a dud. Too obvious, too short and too knowing.

After the beautiful and moving "Hey Nostradamus!" (2003) and "Eleanor Rigby" (2004), "JPod" is a backward stumble. It appears to be (and is certainly being marketed as) an attempt to write an updated "Microserfs" (1995). Unfortunately, doing it in a tongue-in-cheek way has killed what Coupland does best: creating endearing folk in familiar settings, then stripping away everything but their hurting, loving, hoping human hearts.