JPod

douglas coupland

Very evil....very funny

A lethal joyride into today's new breed of technogeeks, Douglas Coupland's new novel updates Microserfs for the age of Google.
Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers are bureaucratically marooned in JPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver video game design company.
The six JPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a boneheaded marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan's personal life is shaped (or twisted) by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China. JPod's universe is amoral and shameless - and dizzyingly fast-paced. 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. JPod is Douglas Coupland at the top of his game.

Genres fictioncanadahumorcontemporarycomedynovelsliteratureliterary fictiontechnologysatire

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2006

Literary awards

scotiabank giller prize,

Places

vancouver british columbia, canada, british columbia,

This edition

Format: 448 pages, Hardcover
Published: May 16, 2006 by Bloomsbury
ISBN: 9781596911048
ASIN: 1596911042
Language: English

Characters More characters

Steve Logan

...
John Doe

Grew up in a lesbian commune and was home-schooled until the age of twelve. Never saw a TV set until age fifteen. Wants to be statistically normal to counteract his wacko upbringing. Grew up without pop culture or music....
Carol Jarlewski

Has a thriving marijuana grow-op. Is Ethan s mother.more...
Dad

Wants desperately to be a speaking part actor. Ballroom dancing fanatic. Father of Ethan and Greg....
Ethan

Narrator. Hates humidity ... lives in fear of karaoke....
Douglas Coupland

Novelist...

About the author

douglas coupland

Douglas Coupland is Canadian, born on a Canadian Air Force base near Baden-Baden, Germany, on December 30, 1961. In 1965 his family moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he continues to live and work. Coupland has studied art and design in Vancouver, Canada, Milan, Italy and Sapporo, Japan. His first novel, Generation X, was published in March of 1991. Since then he has published nine novels and several non-fiction books in 35 languages and most countries on earth. He has written and performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, England, and in 2001 resumed his practice as a visual artist, with exhibitions in spaces in North America, Europe and Asia. 2006 marks the premiere of the feature film Everything's Gone Green, his first story written specifically for the screen and not adapted from any previous work. A TV series (13 one-hour episodes) based on his novel, jPod premieres on the CBC in January, 2008.

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Retrieved 07:55, May 15, 2008, from http://www.coupland.com/coupland_bio....