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2024-05-16 1:14 pm

Generation X : fortællinger for en accelererende kultur

by Douglas Coupland

Paper Book, 1994

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Library's review

Indeholder kapitlerne "Første del", " Solen Er Din Fjende", " Vores Forældre Havde Mere", " Lad Være Med At Genbruge Fortiden", " Jeg Er Ikke En Målgruppe", " Drop Dit Arbejde", " Død Ved De 30 Begravet Ved De 70", " Det Kan Ikke Vare Ved", " At Shoppe Er Ikke En Skabende Handling", " Re Kon

Struér", " Ind I Hyperspace", " 31. December 1999", "Anden del", " Også New Zealand Vil Blive Ramt Af Bomben", " Uhyrer Findes", " Spis Ikke Dig Selv", " Æd Dine Forældre", " Købte Erfaringer Tæller Ikke", " Husk Jorden Klart", " Skift Farve", " Hvorfor Er Jeg Fattig?", " Berømtheder Dør", " Jeg Er Ikke Jaloux", " Forlad Din Krop", " Dyrk Blomster", "Tredje del", " Definér Normal", " MTV Ikke Kugler", " Trans Formér", " Velkommen Hjem Fra Vietnam, Sønnike", " Eventyr Uden Risiko Er Disneyland", " Plastic Forgår Aldrig", " Afvent Lynet", " 1. Jan. 2000".

"Første del" handler om ???
" Solen Er Din Fjende" handler om ???
" Vores Forældre Havde Mere" handler om ???
" Lad Være Med At Genbruge Fortiden" handler om ???
" Jeg Er Ikke En Målgruppe" handler om ???
" Drop Dit Arbejde" handler om ???
" Død Ved De 30 Begravet Ved De 70" handler om ???
" Det Kan Ikke Vare Ved" handler om ???
" At Shoppe Er Ikke En Skabende Handling" handler om ???
" Re Kon Struér" handler om ???
" Ind I Hyperspace" handler om ???
" 31. December 1999" handler om ???
"Anden del" handler om ???
" Også New Zealand Vil Blive Ramt Af Bomben" handler om ???
" Uhyrer Findes" handler om ???
" Spis Ikke Dig Selv" handler om ???
" Æd Dine Forældre" handler om ???
" Købte Erfaringer Tæller Ikke" handler om ???
" Husk Jorden Klart" handler om ???
" Skift Farve" handler om ???
" Hvorfor Er Jeg Fattig?" handler om ???
" Berømtheder Dør" handler om ???
" Jeg Er Ikke Jaloux" handler om ???
" Forlad Din Krop" handler om ???
" Dyrk Blomster" handler om ???
"Tredje del" handler om ???
" Definér Normal" handler om ???
" MTV Ikke Kugler" handler om ???
" Trans Formér" handler om ???
" Velkommen Hjem Fra Vietnam, Sønnike" handler om ???
" Eventyr Uden Risiko Er Disneyland" handler om ???
" Plastic Forgår Aldrig" handler om ???
" Afvent Lynet" handler om ???
" 1. Jan. 2000" handler om ???

Et plotløs fortælling om tre unge sidst i tyverne i 1990'erne, Andy, Dag og Claire. Jeg er født i 1960, så jeg er også en generation X.

Tags

Genres

General Fiction

Publication

Valby : Borgen, 1994.

Description

Andy, Dag and Claire have been handed a society beyond their means. Twentysomethings, brought up with divorce, Watergate and Three Mile Island, and scarred by the 80s fallout of yuppies, recession, crack and Ronald Reagan, they represent the new generation- Generation X. Fiercely suspicious of being lumped together as an advertiser's target market, they have quit dreary careers and cut themselves adrift in the California desert. Unsure of their futures, they immerse themselves in a regime of heavy drinking and working in no future McJobs in the service industry. Underemployed, overeducated and intensely private and unpredicatable, they have nowhere to direct their anger, no one to assuage their fears, and no culture to replace their anomie. So they tell stories: disturbingly funny tales that reveal their barricaded inner world. A world populated with dead TV shows, 'Elvis moments' and semi-disposible Swedish furniture.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member marek2009

This brilliant book explains all that Coupland has subsequently written. Before I read anything by him I thought he was a superficial ironist, but the tragedy of his characters is that they are left with little more than irony to face the world.

LibraryThing member Stbalbach

This is the book that popularized the term "Generation X" and first put a label on my generation. It focuses on the themes of information overload, declining standards of living, and many other traits such as non-family oriented, travel oriented, other-country oriented. Another trait is

fragmentation, it is difficult to generalize about GenX so the characters and scenes in the book represent one subgroup of many possibilities. Reading it for the first time 15 years after it was published (almost a generation later) he got many things spot on where culture was headed.

LibraryThing member veracite

I first read this book when it was most relevant to me. A friend, one of those friends who is not particularly hipster but always seems to know what's sharp on the bleeding edge, loaned it to me. It had that early 20s ring of authenticity. I thought it was marvellous.

I was disappointed by every

single subsequent Coupland book and eventually stopped reading him. It was hard to reconcile the author of Generation X with the author of Girlfriend in a Coma. Were they really the same guy?

Re-reading it now, 21 years later, I can see all the stylistic quirks and tedious fixations that so depressed me in all his other work and the joy and relief and recognition I once felt reading Generation X is hardly even a memory.

This is a book about storytelling and fear and the pomposity of youth. It's pretty good.

LibraryThing member lahochstetler

This book was supposed to be the defining statement of a generation. That said, I enjoyed it less than some of Coupland's other work. This is the story of disaffected twenty-somethingswho've found that life has little to offer them except escalating home prices, creeping commercialism, and what one

can only describe as middle-class ennui. So, they escape to the desert, work minimum-wage jobs, and entertain one another telling stories. All of the stories highlight the emptiness that defines the characters' lives. I'm not entirely sure why I found this less fulfilling than other of Coupland's works. Perhaps it's because I was born at the tail end of Generation X, so these sentiments were hardly revolutionary to me. Perhaps the nearly twenty years that have passed since its first publication have seen the sentiments assimilated into mainstream culture (irony noted.) Whatever it is, I have enjoyed other of Coupland's works far more.

LibraryThing member gazzy

The book that spawned a generation of copy-cats mainly because it so accurately portrayed the lives of the title. The first and best of that 90's aesthetic of Irony, brought to a close by 9-11.

LibraryThing member drewandlori

I hated most of this book when I was in high school, but I think I should definitely give it a second chance now that I'm a little older.

LibraryThing member TheAmpersand

It's easy to point out the dated elements of Douglas Coupland's "Generation X." The typeface is distracting, most of the neologisms defined on the margins are cringe-inducing, and Coupland throws around the the demographic epithet "yuppie" like Reagan's still in office. Heck, he even ripped off the

book's title from a sixties-era sociology textbook and Billy Idol. Still, underneath all this window-dressing, Coupland tangles, in a snarky, roundabout way, with some important questions. "Generation X" is a real novel. Whether is good enough to be a generation-defining novel, however, is still very much up for debate.

The protagonists of Coupland's novel, ur-slackers Andy, Dag, and Claire, aren't exactly pop culture obsessives; for a book about the harmful effects of media oversaturation, "Generation X" contains very few cultural references. It might be more accurate to say that they're burdened by too much history: the atomic legacy of the Cold War, the failed promise of the sixties' cultural revolutions, their own troubled family histories. Their decision to create ordinary, relatively straight lives in Palm Springs isn't so much a campaign against the establishment as it is an attempt to wipe the slate clean. These characters, like many young adults, constantly struggle with the question of whether fresh, unmediated experience is still possible in a world increasingly dominated by multinational capitalism and awash in looming, formless anxiety and too much unorganized information. It isn't a coincidence that these characters try to regain some perspective by telling each other stories, either. Coupland wants to know if the narrative form can still help us make sense of an increasingly confusing world, and that's always a good question for novelists to ask. Coupland doesn't, of course, come up with any answers, and it's hard to see how working a service-sector job with a lousy attitude could serve as a effective means of social resistance. Still, Coupland, like his characters, is trying his best.

This isn't to say that "Geneation X" is written particularly well. Coupland's got a gift for incisive, slightly grotesque descriptions and his prose sometimes manages to evoke the lovely, creepy emptiness of his book's desert setting. Still, all of his characters, young and old alike, speak with the same verbose, slightly affected voice, which I suspect is very much like Coupland's own. Also, while I won't ruin it for folks who haven't read it yet, the novel's final pages are something of a cop-out. Even a novel where nothing much happens needs a decent final chapter.

LibraryThing member AdonisGuilfoyle

Douglas Coupland is a comic genius. 'Eleanor Rigby' was eerily perceptive and very droll, but this book is perfection - short, snappy and sharply humorous, sort of Brett Easton Ellis without the drugs.

Narrator Andy (although his 'voice' is almost unisex) and two best friends Claire and Dag are

twenty-somethings living in Palm Springs. They tell each other stories to pass the time because nothing happens. It's hot, they go to work, sit by the pool, drive out into the middle of nowhere for picnics. But Coupland makes this work, because his characters are introspective, intelligent, abstract and also very real. I could feel the oppressive heat and boredom he describes, and empathise with their neurotic 'generation x' fears.

Coupland's writing is sharp, vivid but not pretentious - he captures the 'voice' of disaffected youth perfectly, with a wicked turn of phrase. One woman, nicknamed Elvissa, has a 'large, anatomically disproportionate head, like that of a woman who points to merchandise on a TV game show. This head is capped by an Elvis-oidal Mattel toy doll jet black hair-do that frames her skull like a pair of inverted single quotes'. A counter surface looks like the 'narrow horseshoe of flooring surrounding the toilet of an alcoholic, a lunar surface of leprotic cigarette burn sores'. Andy's father 'flounders through the empty rooms of the house like a tanker that has punctured its hull with its own anchor'. These are images that capture your imagination, making the reader 'see' without obvious comparisons what he is trying to say. Coupland should write a manual on how to phrase original metaphors and similes, he's that good.

There are also some very apt definitions of modern phrases and social conditions peppering the pages like footnotes - 'voter's block', 'diseases for kisses' or 'hyperkarma', 'paper rabies' - that fit perfectly, as well as Lichenstein cartoons and pithy 'bumper sticker' slogans. All in all a very 'visual' book, complete with dazzling neon pink cover!

LibraryThing member lexport

A fantastic non-story. Nothing much happens really, but it's interesting none the less. It seems like an accurate portrayal of the predicament of a generation.

LibraryThing member LynnB

I didn't really get into this book when I read it in 1991. I couldn't identify with any of the characters, who are only a few years younger than me (less than 5). I did enjoy some of Coupland's definitions and a few of the "bedtime stories" the characters tell each other. So, I just read it again.

I still can't identify with it at all, but some of the ideas of working in dead-end, service industry jobs seem to resonate more for me about my children's generation than it ever did about my own.

LibraryThing member Cecilturtle

A fun, new outlook at a generation previously 'undefined' - the ones who inherited of the Baby Boomer mess

LibraryThing member sinaloa237

I must have missed something about this book...

LibraryThing member jddunn

Penetrating, cynically witty in parts, and pleasingly melancholic, but too clever by half and sorta hollow, slipshod and packaged, in the same way much of what he is offhandedly criticizing is. The whole decrying-knowing-irony-whilst-compulsively-indulging-in-it schtick gets a bit old, if very

tragically illustrative of the Problem With Our Culture or whatever. Perhaps this is a conscious decision, but it doesn't really work for me. Seemed more quotable than readable in the end.

LibraryThing member veronicadarling

I could read this over and over again. Not sure where my copy is now though! Might have to hunt it down!

LibraryThing member Deesirings

I read this several years ago and it stands out as a favourite. I love the sidebar definitions and the whole unorthodox format.

LibraryThing member pratchettfan

An interesting view of a generation which tries to find itself by taking jobs their overqualified for and being constantly on the move.
Even though the book is very funny and insightful, I couldn't find a bond to the characters as happened with Coupland's novel JPod, but that's probably because I'm

too young to be part of this Generation X ;).

LibraryThing member yorkjob

First time I read a contemporary novel that was clever and hit close to home.

LibraryThing member soylentgreen23

This could have been the beginning of something wonderful, but I feel that Coupland's work of late has been something of a let-down.

That said, the world will always have this perfectly formed slice of nineties anxiety. Life in the nuclear age - both in terms of technology, and the "nuclear family"

- is expressed through the adventures of a delinquent group of friends living in the tragic rubble of California around Palm Springs: they don't belong there, and it tells.

LibraryThing member AJBraithwaite

Usually when I finish a book I'm straight onto Goodreads with a review. With this one It's taken me nearly a week. I didn't have any strong feelings about it, either way, which might explain the delay. I think I was expecting something more radical, perhaps, given the way that the phrase

'Generation X' has gone on to define a whole generation. My generation.I didn't find myself in the characters here. They seemed so shiftless, self-absorbed, resentful. I liked the story-telling aspects of the story and could relate to the anti-consumerist aspects, but just couldn't connect with the people.

LibraryThing member Knicke

I didn't like this as much as Microserfs, I think because it sort of didn't tell me much...the characters seemed real, but none of the insight was particularly new to me (hey, I LIVED Gen X, baby!). Something odd that I liked very much: the textbook-y design of the book. I wish more fiction books

were made this way. My internet-induced ADD likes call-outs and sidebars (wayyyyy better than footnotes), and a large, thinner, paperback format is easier to read at dinner (stays open without a hand or other prop).

LibraryThing member Oreillynsf

I loved this engaging and spot-on depiction of the idiosyncracies of Gen X. As someone on the cusp of Boom and X (though very much a Boomer in values and lifestyle) I was tickled to death by this insightful novel that exposed what makes the Gen X outlook unique.

It's quite funny. And you can read

it just for that. But beneath the yucks there is deep insight into how and why Gen Xers are different.

And the story is good as will, though I was constantly reminded of that Seinfeld rejoinder of a show about nothing.

If you have any interest in sociology or generational differences, this book will give you a nice fix.

LibraryThing member RandyStafford

My reactions to reading this book in 1992. Spoilers follow.

I read this shortly after reading Generations by William Strauss and Neill Howe. Their nonfiction work of sociology and history claimed that the reactive generational types (particularly, the Lost Generation which produced Ernest Hemingway,

William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald) often produce America’s best writers. I wanted to see what Coupland would have to say about our mutual generation, the reactive 13ers, and our plight and attitudes, so my reaction is twofold to this book: one on its literary merits, one on how truthful it is portraying our generation.

On the literary level, it’s a quick, fun read. I won’t say you really come to care for Claire Baxter, Dagmar Bellinghaus, and narrator Andrew Palmer, but they are interesting to be around -- at least on the edited, organized printed page. Coupland does try to reach for a new image or metaphor (most of which seem to be drawn from pop culture or achitecture) too hard sometimes, but some of them are genuinely arresting like comparing the future to a “horrible diseased drifter”. It strikes me that this book, filled with little tales Dag, Clair, and Andy (and a couple of ther minor characters) tell each is a sort of anti-Canterbury Tales. The novel starts out in the desert of Palm Springs and ends in the desert of Calexico, Mexico. There is no movement to a City of God, a spiritual enlightenment, a new understanding of self, or even a future (Dag at one point laments of “futurelessness”), only a physical movement (appropriate since reactive generations are often referred to as peripatetic). The tales the characters tell ring with frustrated quests, apocalypse, longing, frustrated ambition, and loneliness. Dag’s tale of apocalypse met in a supermarket, a boy chasing lightening storms across the prairie hoping to be struck, Claire’s tales of fatal -- yet longed for -- love on the strange asteroid Texlahoma where it’s always a strange twisted version of a dark 1974, Claire’s tale of the woman that implodes upon spiritual enlightenment, Eluissa’s tale of a long hoped reunion with an ex-lover that comes to nothing. As Dag says, life in this book is “kind of scary, kind of sexy, and tainted by regret”. In the end, when Claire, Dag, and Andy go to Mexico to live on “the lurider side of the fence”, to enact their “difficult destinies”, I sensed little psychological, little psychic change in the main character,s merely an external manifestation of their lifestyle attitudes by moving to Mexico and getting a hotel. I don’t think this is bad. I don’t believe in the “requirement” that characters must change in a story. The best part of the novel is the marginalia: the cartoons, stamps, and coined phrases. The latter are especially truthful in detailing 13er plights and attitudes. Several are humorous and deserve wider use.

To me, the book seemed to have a lot of truth in it about Coupland’s and mine generation. Dag shows the 13er resentment of old people (the retirement leeches of the civic generation of G.I.s whose mooching is detailed in an appendix of statistics) and Boomers who have won “a genetic lottery” and lucked into the jobs reactives want. There are the relatively uneducated, but ambitious “Global Teens”, the ones who want to work for a big corporation and earn lots of money. And there is the love of fashion. Its interesting to contrast the novel with the slovenly portrayal of 13ers in the movie Slackers. Both, though, feature characters aimless, befuddled, voraciously consuming pop culture, and who are devotees of conspiracy theories and paranoia.) and feelings of desperation, futility, and anger at being robbed of a future which most 13ers (me included) have to one extent or another. I feel somewhat removed from these characters though. They seem, by my standards, to be rather wealthy in their clothes and travel. I feel this may explain the book’s running attacks on consumerism (and Republicans and nuclear power -- all of which give the book a liberal feel) and marketing. Coupland even explains this with a sidebar word: “Conspicous Minimalism: A life-style tactic similar to Status Substitution. The nonownership of material goods flaunted as a token of moral and intellectual superiority.” and "Lessness: A philosophy whereby one reconciles oneself with diminishing expectations and material wealth”. Coupland is ironically suggesting his three main characters have only convinced themselves they don’t want things and the good life, softened their frustration by denying their original desire. In short, I don’t feel there’s any great statement in this book, no revelation of 13er psyche it moves to, but it is a truthful book in describing some of my generation’s anger, aimlessness, frustrations, and concerns.

LibraryThing member Kplatypus

How to describe Generation X? It was written in 1991 and focuses on the lives of three people in their late twenties who have abandoned their mainstream jobs and lives in favor of a more austere existence in Palm Springs. The storyline (if you can really call it that) follows the three of them over

the course of several months, as they expound upon their theories of the world, mainly via stories. In one sense, this book is reminiscent of On The Road- the characters are just, sort of, going. No real destination, no real plans. They're trying to find themselves through their experiences, which they attempt to "purify" by disassociating themselves from popular culture. However, they still interact with various other characters, some from Palm Springs, some from elsewhere, and there are a whole lot of pop culture references, so their disassociation feels more like the self-conscious irony so popular today.

The one thing that Coupland did really well was capture the frustration of being a twentysomething. That feeling that you're not quite where you should be, and that maybe where you should be isn't anywhere that you want to be, but that, in that case, you have no idea where you're going or what's next. He's not the only author to capture this, naturally, but he did it nicely. Even the dated aspects of this book don't alter that. As a twentysomething myself (at least for a little bit longer), I could really identify with some of what the characters were saying and feeling; other things, though, felt contrived or irrelevant in today's world.

The lack of a forward-moving plot made the book a bit hard to get into, and, even when I could empathize with the main characters, I still found them rather annoying, or trite, or self-centered. They epitomize the intentionally bohemian artist-types, who like to moan about how pointless our lives are, and act terribly superior for having realized this, without being interested in doing anything to change the situation, aside from maybe running away. Because of this, I just couldn't get myself very worked up over anything that happened to them. I was curious, but not emotionally attached.

As a look at a specific subgroup of American culture in the '80s and '90s, Generation X works well. I kind of wish I had read it in my early twenties, but I'm also kind of glad I didn't, since having my feelings of smug ennui substantiated might have made me a terrible prig. I wouldn't want to know these people any more, but reading about their hijinks was still entertaining.

LibraryThing member BookishMatters

Wow, talk about reading a book at the right time in your life. If you’re in your twenties, fresh out of college, and in that phase where you’re trying to get your life sorted out, this is the book for you.

We live in a time where our options are limited and we’re forced to conform to “the

system” – AKA you can’t get a good job without a college degree and most of us can’t get a college degree without putting ourselves into overwhelming debt, and then we can’t get jobs without experience but we can’t get experience without jobs. It’s a vicious cycle, but one we’re forced into. My father didn’t go to college but was still able to get a job that paid well enough to put him into the upper middle class. That’s not an option my generation has, and there’s this whole sense of “wtf is the point then?” among us.

Everything is bigger than us. Giant corporations control what we buy and what we can afford, the bank more or less controls everything else, including whether or not we’re qualified for a home, a car, or other things life has taught us are necessities but we learn are often outside our reach. Our protests don’t mean much, and the person with more money always seems to win. It’s frustrating to feel so small, and I think Generation X can be summed up by the following:

“We know that this is why the three of us left our lives behind us and came to the desert – to tell stories and to make our own lives worthwhile tales in the process.”

I love it. I love the idea of living my life through a story, because we all want our lives to have meaning. And the jealousy Andy feels at realizing the Baby Boomers hit the “genetic lottery” (able to attain good jobs and various luxuries without having to throw oneself into a lifetime of debt) is something I personally feel every time another student loan bill shows up in my mailbox or I get a call from a collection agent. The desire for a simpler time, to just run away to the desert and escape everything, resonates within me, and in that regard I really feel like I connected with this book.

I wouldn’t consider this a traditional book by any means. I didn’t really care for the characters so much as the ideas of the book. There wasn’t really a story (there were lots of tales within the book, but not really a cohesive storyline) – it was more the existence of the characters. I have no problem with this, but some might, so I thought it worth mentioning. However, the ending was really weird, I’m not going to lie. I’m still not sure what happened exactly, except perhaps Andy had some sort of spiritual experience he felt gave his life meaning. It’s my best guess. And the ending did throw me a bit, because it didn’t feel like it was part of the main book. But honestly, I loved this book too much to really care, because I felt like it was the truth of today written in a book.

LibraryThing member zmagic69

A book written in 1990 describing what baby boomers/yuppies did to the country. Could easily be about today, the way things that were annoying then are now extreme. It was also like a trip down memory lane.

Subjects

Awards

Canada Reads (Nominee — 2010)

Amazon.ca First Novel Award (Shortlist — 1991)

100 novels that make you proud to be a Canadian

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1991

Physical description

214 p.; 22 cm

ISBN

8741866312 / 9788741866314

Local notes

Omslag: Judith Stagnitto
Omslaget viser titlen på en baggrund af skyer og blå himmel
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Oversat fra engelsk "Generation X: Tales for an accelerated culture" af Klaus Lynggaard

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Pages

214

Library's rating

Rating

½ (1326 ratings; 3.7)

DDC/MDS

813.54

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