A traves de una prosa frenetica, desternillante y teñida de ironía, Coupland nos introduce en el mundo de un patetico grupo de personajes que se definen a sí mismos como ?deprimentes compendios de cultura pop y emociones reprimidas cuyas vidas estan controladas por la forma mas banal de capitalismo?, como ?gente que vive perpetuamente preocupada por la posibilidad de quedarse obsoleta?. Ethan Jarlewski y sus cinco compañeros de trabajo conforman el Jpod, un grupo de programadores de videojuegos sometido a las directrices absurdas de una multinacional. Incapaces de rebelarse y limitados por lenguaje logico y matematico de los ordenadores, los trabajadores sacrifican sus vidas privadas por el bien de la corporacion. El contacto con los personajes del mundo exterior, entre los cuales se encuentra el propio Coupland y la madre del protagonista (una despiadada ?viuda negra?, narcotraficante), nos presenta un panorama humano amoral, condenado a la ignorancia y con una dudosa posibilidad de redencion.Douglas Coupland nacio en una base de la OTAN en Alemania en 1961 y se formo como escultor, artista visual y diseñador grafico en Vancouver y Milan, entre otras ciudades. Ademas de su trabajo en las artes graficas y plasticas, Coupland es mundialmente conocido por su particular prosa, a
Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose surnames end in 'J' are bureaucratically marooned in JPod. JPod is a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver game design company. The six workers daily confront the forces that define our era: global piracy, boneheaded marketing staff, people smuggling, the rise of China, marijuana grow-ops, Jeff Probst, and the ashes of the 1990s financial tech dream. JPod's universe is amoral and shameless. The characters are products of their era even as they're creating it. Everybody in Ethan's life inhabits a moral grey zone. Nobody is exempt, not even his seemingly straitlaced parents or Coupland himself. Full of word games, visual jokes and sideways jabs, this book throws a sharp, pointed lawn dart into the heart of contemporary life.
Cheryl Anway is 'no longer a part of the world and still not yet a part of what follows'. She was pregnant, but she isn't any longer. The morning she went into school to tell her boyfriend - well, secret husband, in fact - Jason that they were going to have a baby was the last morning she spent alive. It was a beautiful day in Vancouver, and the world had seemed 'unbearably pretty' to Cheryl. She was sitting with her girlfriends in the school cafeteria as the gunfire started, and they watched the three malcontents, students who had dressed up like duck-hunters, give death to their schoolmates one lunch-hour, before turning on them...Ten years on, Jason is the kind of guy you sometimes see, sitting in his car, staring out in silence at nothing in particular - with, sometimes, a dog at hand to indicate his ability to sustain a relationship. And his family is not one to fall back on for support: Jason's father loves what God loves, hates what God hates; his mother is lost to drink; his brother is lost to dogma. Jason himself moves between black-outs and all-too-clear memories of the school shootings and their aftermath. But as moves in and out of his own life, between body and sou
Este libro mezcla de reportaje y ficción explora el mundo que existió a principios de los noventa, cuando la década era joven y aún tenia que encontrar su propia textura. Ahora releo estos artículos y es como si abriera un cajon de la cocina y encontrara una caja de Kleenex llena de Polaroids y postales cargadas ya de nostalgia. Espero que las imagenes fotograficas del libro contribuyan a acentuar esa sensacion de hojear antiguas cartas llenas de recuerdos.
