Loved it. Short little vignettes from the lives of three twentysomethings trying to define and describe their rapidly changing world and suss out some meaning from their alarmingly empty culture. Containing strong undercurrents of anti-commercialism, fun dialogue, and imaginative storytelling, this book was written in 1991 but feels just as timely today. I was surprised to find myself in these pages, not just in the characters and story, but in some of the tongue-in-cheek marginal definitions as well (Terminal Wanderlust - A condition common to people of transient middle-class upbringings. Unable to feel rooted in any one environment, they move continually in the hopes of finding an idealized sense of community in the next location. Poverty Jet Set - A group of people given to chronic traveling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permanent residence. Tend to discuss frequent-flyer programs at parties.)

With some things you know exactly what they're going to be like before you experience them and you hope you're proved wrong. I saw "A Mighty Wind" recently and shouldn't have bothered - good film well made and all, but utterly predictable. As was Generation X. DC is a snappy writer, he's Tom Wolfe's kid brother, and this book should have been a collection of smart essays like Kandy Kolored Tangerine Streamlined Baby etc. It doesn't really leave the ground as a story with characters. And also, really, he is a bit too self-regardingly clever.
So if you don't come from Generation X itself & are therefore reading this out of sheer nostalgia, forget this and check out three funny movies about similar stuff - Clerks, Office Space and Empire Records.

this was a cultural touchstone when it came out, and that's when i should have read it. couldn't even finish this one, the ideas are flat, characterizations non-existent, and the concepts are surprisingly uninterestng.

This book was such a surprise. I had wanted to read it forever, but never really knew what it was about. And although it should feel dated it doesn't. The characters and their conversations and attitudes feel still relevant and accurate today. The writing is great as well, the way Coupland creates the characters and atmosphere of each situation is just wonderful. You just get sucked into these people and feel right at home.
Just one more thing - this is not a plot driven book. Nothing much happens in terms of story. So if you can't stand that you will not have the same experience I did.

Generacija X je knjiga koja mi je toliko na rubu petice da mi je žao dati joj četvorku. Sigurno na svom profilu imam petica koje sam dao davnih dana a koje su su mi danas daleko slabije knjige od ove, ali ne želim zbog toga gledati stare popise i spuštati ocjene. Ono što mogu reći je da ću Generaciju X čitati ponovno i uvjeren sam da će mi jednoga dana ocjena skoknuti zvijezdicu gore.

Jedini "problem" koji sam imao s knjigom je taj što mi je možda bila malo teška za čitanje. Ne na način težine razumijevanja, već toga da se za vrijeme čitanja mora biti jako koncentriran na rečenice usprkos tome što se uglavnom gotovo ništa ne događa. Lako je nešto odbaciti kao 'ništa bitno', preletjeti preko paragrafa i ići naprijed, ali takvim čitanjem zapravo možete preskočiti i cijelu knjigu. Jer stvarno - jako malo toga se dogodi u njoj. Većinom se to svodi na nekoliko individua koji vode (po njima) dosadne živote kojima uopće nisu zadovoljni. Imaju određene strahove i brige, nemaju baš previše (ili uopće) ambicija ili želja i većinom dane provode pričajući priče i filozofirajući.

Ovaj roman zapravo i je zbirka priča koju pričaju ti likovi. Neke su njihove biografske priče, a neke druge su toliko bajkovito metaforičke da skoro spadaju u SF ili fantasy žanr. Svaka od njih zapravo samo ističe skoro pa stereotipna razmišljanja generacije X koja je za vrijeme radnje i pisanja same knjiga bila još uvijek mlada i nabrijana generacija.

Kroz ovaj se roman jasno vidi taj generacijski jaz između X-ovaca i prethodne generacije koji je, barem po romanu, daleko izraženiji od onoga što je danas između X-ovaca i takozvanih milenijala. X-ovci su ipak prva generacija koju je počela odgađati televizija pa su zbog toga razvili određene strahove i daleko pretjerana očekivanja. Bio je to početak prevelikih očekivanja u ljubav, roditelje, školovanje, cijeli život općenito i smisao koji jedna indvidua može ostvariti na Zemlji.

Velika porcija romana posvećena je i strahovima od bombi i nuklearnog uništenja. Nema sumnje da je taj strah isto bio najviše posljedica televizije, to se i potvrđuje jednom kratkom pričom u kojem jedan od likova odlazi posjećivati prostore na kojima su izvršena nuklearne eksplozije samo kako bi stvarno uvidio da te stvari nisu toliko strašne koliko je on zamišljao. Naravno, baš nakon što se napokon smiri i shvati da je u svojoj glavi uveličavao eksplozije, shvati da su te bombe toliko malene a da trgovine konstantno postaju sve veće i da će se uskoro nuklearne bombe moći kupovati u supermarketima. Zbog toga njegov strah prelazi iz jedne forme u drugu, ali usprkos tome što promijeni formu, strah ostane više-manje jednak.

Preko dvadeset godina nakon pisanja ovog romana, stvar je zastrašujuće slična. Nas milenijale ne odgaja televizija, već internet. Ne bojimo se nuklearnih bombi, ali bojimo se terorističkih napada. Mislimo da naši roditelji nisu proživjeli dovoljno i bojimo se da to nećemo napraviti i mi. Baš kao i kod priče s bombom, emocije su evoluirale, ali svejedno su ostale više manje iste.

Vjerojatno se ne može puno drugačija stvar očekivati ni od nadolazeće generacije Z, one koju već sada odgajaju mobilni uređaji a kojih tko zna što već čeka u budućnosti. No vjerojatno je riječ o istim strahovima zapakiranima u drugačiji omot. A mi, milenijali, sada na vrhu razočaravajućeg svijeta, tek trebamo postati razočaranje generaciji koja nas nikada neće stvarno razumijeti. Baš kao što mi nikada nećemo razumijeti njih.

This is the story of a handful of Generation X-ers, defined as people born between 1960 and 1980.

In the book three late-twenty someones - Andy, Claire, and Dag - separately give up their upwardly mobile jobs and move to Palm Springs, California. There they take up residence in modest digs, take low-paying service jobs, and attempt to live more or less minimalist lives.



They entertain themselves by telling stories (made up or real), drinking, snacking, having picnics, and - for the most part - eschewing serious relationships.



Their purpose, apparently, is to reject traditional society, which they find oppressive. Though the characters reject the values of their nuclear families (which are not perfect, but whose family is?) they do maintain contact via phone calls, visits, and so on....so their isolation is not complete.



Though the hippie-ish lifestyle of Andy and his friends/acquaintances is amusing to read about, it strikes the reader (at least this reader) as unrealistic and unsustainable. Though a small segment of society can decide to 'do nothing' with their lives and suffer few consequences - if everyone took up this lifestyle the country's economy would soon collapse. And even for those who are determined to stick it out, this kind of freewheeling behavior becomes unattractive when people are no longer young (that is, approach their mid-thirties and older).



The main characters try to be committed to their 'no-strings' lifestyle, but life does impinge: Claire develops a huge crush on Tobias, an exceptionally handsome man - and follows him to New York - where their lives don't mesh.



Dag is attracted to Claire's friend Elvissa, and tries to develop a relationship with her - until Elvissa skips town for an even more minimal lifestyle.



Dag is also an obsessive vandal, damaging other people's cars and even destroying one by setting it on fire. I would have liked to see Dag punished for this, though he would undoubtedly bitterly resent the fines/jail imposed by outside society.



Regardless of my opinion of the characters (whom I didn't admire), the book is well-written and the characters are believable. It's interesting to get a peek into the thought processes of some Gen X-ers. I think the best part of the book is in the margins, where Douglas Coupland defines some of the original and entertaining Gen-X expressions/vocabulary. If you're curious about Gen X, this is a good book for you.

n  Examples of Generation X Vocabularyn
go postal = get very angry
dip = leave
crib = home
phat = cool
grindage = food
grody = disgusting
cheddar = money
all that and a bag of chips = the best of the best

The book is "phat", but it's not "all that and a bag of chips."

What a boring and pretentious book. It's the kind of writing that would have seriously impressed me when I was 14, full of consciously witty soundbites.

What I really don't like about it is the glorified loser culture of the early 90s and nearly 18 years later it hasn't aged well and just seems bloated. The decade that everyone thought was the pinnacle of evolution is now looking as bad as the 80s did ten years ago. To highlight this, Coupland's plot doesn't have much as a 'story' per se, instead it's a collection of short ironic stories and vague self-realisations by the characters.

The only thing that prevented it being tossed out is the fact that Coupland is genuinely briliant and there's no doubt that he's a fantastic writer. However, you wish that he would get take his head out of his arse for this one

If I had read this book when it was published, I'd probably have liked it more. Clearly I don't mean that literally, since I was 7 years old when it was published. I just mean that it was obviously a very zeitegisty book at that time, and a lot of its details seem irrelevant and dated now, and if I'd been the age I am now in the early 1990s, I would have got it and appreciated it rather than getting it but thinking, so what. It was perhaps a stupid place to start with Coupland, but I haven't heard anything particularly great about his more recent books, and I wanted to begin with something that seemed to be loved by other readers. The characters should be insufferable: privileged twenty-somethings who have chosen to drop out of their careers to live in the desert and work in low-paid, easy jobs they can afford to be comfortable in because those 'McJobs' (which I'm sure was funny when it was a new term... just annoying now) aren't their only option. But it's actually pretty hard to dislike them, and their friendship is portrayed well, refreshingly free of a 'love triangle' angle given that it involves two men and a woman. Nothing much happens, the characters tell each other a few stories and there's the odd dramatic incident but it all melds into a largely numb whole. I read half the book in one sitting, went away from it and felt weirdly depressed at the thought of returning to it; but when I did, I read the second half in one go as well. It's about 200 pages, which I know isn't very long anyway, but it feels more like 100. Some nice lines, some nice moments, and the dialogue is quite good, but overall it was one of those books that made me think: now I've read this, I don't need to read anything else by this author.

Last night, I had to ease myself down from an OCD treadmill, after a day spent fending off incessant reminders from the authorities that the world was no longer a safe or a healthy place, and we all had to do our best straight-‘n-narrow bit to stay ahead of the game.

Sound familiar?

Like you, I was trying to stay normal.

So, after the dishes were safely tucked away into their cradles in the dishwasher, and that cantankerously noisy household device had been duly started, drowning out the news, I rigidly sat back in a kitchen chair - to find out where exactly in this self-isolated day, I had gone wrong...

And I was once more catapulted back to the nineties, a tumultuous time of leaner, smarter and better Gen-Xers in an endless, blindingly fast lane.

That was where it started. The Me-Gen’ers were now calling the shots. And Enoch's Giants, in their latest manifestation as the Me-Geners, were morphing into powerful DROIDS.

I remembered how Douglas Coupland, when I bought the first hardcover edition of this book back in ‘94, had reminded me that we were all suddenly behaving as if the very life, and our very identity, had been sucked outta our arteries!

And that’s still us, or more so now, at the beginning of the 20´s - the start of the Age of the Quaranteens (AKA burnt out, viral Gen-Xers)!

Coupland is right. Our personalities have now been leeched away. But here on Goodreads - have you noticed? - there are quite a lotta reviewers and bloggers who are attempting to INJECT THAT LIFEBLOOD BACK INTO OUR SYSTEMS.

Books are where we start.

Books are where we begin our re-invention of our lives.

Coupland said our brains trust reconditioning resulted in a situation back in the 1990’s where we found we had lost our stories to tell.

Well, here - right here on GR - that’s all changing. We’re reading and ordering vast MOUNTAINS of books. ALL chock fulla great stories that are REMAKING OUR LIVES - into Real Things. And things of Beauty.

Coupland may have thought we were all becoming robots.

We’re not, now.

We’ve got our literacy.

AND we are RE-IMAGINING Helen Reddy’s power anthem of the eighties:

WE ARE READERS -
HEAR US ROAR!

Watch out, you Forces of Impersonality!

Cause WE have our books.

буквально, адаптація ідіоми first world problems. вперше читав цю книжку на другому курсі універу, і тоді переживання героїв здавались мені неймовірно далекими та дуже дорослими. станом на сьогодні, їх трабли вже видаються доволі поверхневими та дещо наївними. ну, типу, ви, троє дотепних розумак, богемно лежите біля басейну під сонцем каліфорнії, вигадуєте дивакуваті історії, та сваритесь на те, яке все навколо марудне та банальне. ця книжка має продаватись в парі з Bullshit Jobs девіда гребера, і це я, навіть, неіронічно. думаю, головним героям вона б дуже сподобалась.

хоч текст і написаний щемко та хистко, не можу сказати, що роман якось особливо в мені резонує, бо все ж таки контент свого часу. у випадку україни він морально застарів рочків десь так на 10-15. на позір в нас, міленіалів, доволі багато відмінностей від ген-іксерів, але якесь тепле відчуття від роману все одно залишається. бо, по-перше, фейкова ностальгія з точки зору біохімії — це все одно ностальгія, а по-друге, увесь цей ген-іксерський контент до нас доходив із відчутною затримкою, хоч і у формі карго культу. бо де ми, а де всі ці нью ейджеві практики на світанку під мескаліном десь посеред пустелі мохаве? так, слідування мантрі GREED IS GOOD із найвідомішого япі фільму всіх часів, та обговорення найкращих реклам із канських левів на загальній кухні, бо всі начитались 99 франків і дуже хочуть бути причетними до маркетингу, — все це було в повітрі, було підмішано в воду в офісних кулерах, і спокійно співіснувало разом із такою міленіальскою жагою ультимативного ескапізму: бажанням з піною біля рта доводити, що гафлпаф — це ТЕЖ класний факультет, та спробами відшукати валідацію свого захвату гіківською маєчнею в теорії великого вибуху. якщо ера рейгана привчила іксерів боятися ядерки, але в цілому знаходитися в контакті з реальністю, то міленіали знайшли в діалапному інтернеті однодумців і просто втекли в готем, гогвортс, гобітон, аби хоч трохи абстрагуватись від неминучості катастрофи. тупо, але вже як є.

p.s. просто зараз десь у ванкувері сидить один коупленд і тамує гикавку, бо описана ним схема ідеально працює: іксери сваряться на бумерів, міленіали на іксерів, і нам теж вже дістається від зумерів. колесо крутиться і наче все норм, але ти мені все ж таки скажи, яким буде твій найголовніший спогад про землю після того, як твоє серце перестане битись?

«Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture», 1991
Douglas Coupland
⠀
«Покоління Х. Друге видання»
Дуґлас Коупленд
Komubook , 2019
⠀
На сьогодні, книжка сприймається як класика, а не інновація.
⠀
Ніякого шоку.
⠀
Загальновідомі факти.
⠀
Актуальна ідеологія.
⠀
Поняття змінилися:
Япі або Покоління Х –> Міленіали або Покоління Y.
⠀
Книжка про трьох відступників, що пасивно протестують проти системи.
⠀
Технології і наука прогресували, але проблеми Людства залишилися незмінними.
⠀
Книжка охоплює майже всі сфери життя: стосунки в родині, залежність від гаджетів, проблеми забруднення довколишнього середовища, позиціонування людини в суспільстві відповідно до фінансового статусу, тощо.
⠀
Попри те, що книжка з'явилася майже 30 років тому, більшість проблем залишились невирішеними.
⠀
Але віршувати їх доведеться.
⠀
Тому, «Покоління Х» має і матиме надалі своїх прихильників.
⠀
Анотація:
⠀
«Біблія дауншифтерів, роман «Покоління Х» Дуґласа Коупленда — це історія про «офісний планктон», який розчарувався в ідеології успіху та щастя, що нав’язується сучасною корпоративною культурою.
Це зворушлива розповідь про пошуки молодими людьми власної дороги в житті, навскісно і часто всупереч тим шаблонам, які наполегливо насаджує нам «суспільство реклами». І розказана ця історія з палкістю, прозірливістю та дотепністю справжнього культурного маніфесту.»
⠀
Цитата:
⠀
«Залицяльники: Найпоширеніша, а також єдина спроможна до розмноження підгрупа покоління Х. Живуть майже виключно парами, і їх можна впізнати за відчайдушними спробами відтворити видимість достатку ери Айзенгауера у своєму повсякденному житті, тоді як їм доводиться давати собі раду з захмарними цінами на житло та стилем життя, що передбачає дві офіційні роботи. Залицяльникам властиве хронічне виснаження, викликане ненаситною гонитвою за меблями та різноманітними дрібничками з наміром їх придбати.»
⠀
«Розумієте, якщо ти – представник середнього класу, тобі доводиться жити, примирившись із фактом, що для історії ти – ніхто. Тобі доводиться змиритися з фактом, що історія не боротиметься за тебе і що за тобою не шкодуватимуть. Це ціна, яку потрібно заплатити за щоденний комфорт і тишу.»
⠀
#примхливачитака

I think I read this right when it came out. I identified for the most part with the generation he describes but actually was probably about 5 years too young to completely fit. It is interesting to note that the preoccupations we had back then are not all that different then those of the current millennials - but that back then, we did not have social media or iPhones and so the dissemination of our discontent, our angst, and our disillusionment was not as accessible as it is today via Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. It would be interesting to see how Coupland would compare the current 20-somethings to this description of 20-somethings the same year that Pearl Jam's Ten, Nirvana's Nevermind, U2's Aching Baby, and Blood Sugar Sex Magic by the Red Hot Chili Peppers came out. Without sounding like too much of an old fart, I am not sure that 25 years later, we have had as epic a musical output as we did back in '91 when GenX was published. Please feel free to disagree in your comments :)