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JPod

douglas coupland

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A lethal joyride into today’s new breed of technogeeks, Coupland’s forthcoming novel updates Microserfs for the age of Google.

Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose names start with 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 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, as readers will see.

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.

Excerpt from jPod :

I slunk into the BoardX meeting where Steve, Gord-O, and staff from the loftiest perches of the food chain were still trying to nail the essence of Jeff the Charismatic Turtle. Prototype turtle sketches were pinned onto a massive cork wall, all of them goofy and sunglasses, baggy pants and (dear God) a terry-cloth sweatband.

“Does Jeff the Turtle follow players around the entire time they manipulate their third person?”

“Almost. Like Watson is to Sherlock Holmes.”

“Can you imagine how annoying that would be?”

“Maybe the buddy isn’t such a good idea.”

Steve squashed that hope. “It’s going to be a buddy. Players will love it.”

“It’s really Poochie-Joins-Itchy-and-Scratchy.”

“How am I ever going to look somebody who plays Tony Hawk games in the face again?”

“Isn’t our turtle supposed to be a bit more studly?”

“Turtles aren’t studly by nature.”

“What about the turtle they used in the 1950s to pimp the atomic weapons program? He was kind of studly.”

“No he wasn’t and, besides, he’s dead.”

“What?”

“Dead. Hanged himself from the side of his posh midtown Manhattan terrarium. Left a note saying he couldn’t handle the shame of what he’d done. Wrote it on a piece of Bibb lettuce.”


From the Hardcover edition.

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2006
Literary awards
scotiabank giller prize, 
Places
vancouver british columbia, canada, british columbia, 

This edition

Format
528 pages, Paperback
Published
January 2, 2007 by Vintage Canada
ISBN
9780679314257
ASIN
0679314253
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Steve Logan

    Steve Logan

    ...

  • John Doe

    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

    Carol Jarlewski

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

  • Dad

    Dad

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

  • Ethan

    Ethan

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

  • Douglas Coupland

    Douglas Coupland

    Novelist...

More editions

About the author

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douglas coupland

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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....

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 99 votes)
5 stars
29(29%)
4 stars
37(37%)
3 stars
33(33%)
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99 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
lethargilistic
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Fun! Fun! FUN!
Literally Laugh Out Loud funny.
Our main character, Ethan, works as a Game Developer and is stationed in JPod. Once you're in Jpod, you're there for life. Long story, but worth the read.
One quarter of this book reads a script from The Office if that office was a gaming company instead of a paper company. Plus, Coupland writes himself into the story and made my day.
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Skelator
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I am a fan of Coupland and I have read everything he has ever published, but it is clear after reading Jpod that he's been in Vancouver too long and needs to get out for a weekend, if only to try another city's dope and take-out. Jpod is supposed to be the sequel to Microserfs, but Coupland wastes this one hunting-and-pecking for Gen Y/Echo Boom culture like a noob coder; he doesn't see that the map is not the terrain. So what if the main character's Mom is growing and selling weed, Dad is dating his son's classmates, and his boss is being manipulated by a billionaire Asian criminal? Sure it's shocking, but is this the zeitgeist, or just, "Extreme Vancouver?" Coupland needs to look beyond the electronic globe his own character creates (he writes himself into the book and creates an interactive-globe killer app that saves the group from techie overwork and under-compensation); that metaphor for an impersonal electronic world fails because his characters never break through as real people with any purpose. Gen Y's struggle to assert "authorship", i.e. identity in a world where society = electronic gaming, should have been inherent in the characters' personal lives and struggles; instead, Coupland builds them with thin and obvious devices like everyone playing the "what-superpower-would-you-have" game. In the end, I am not sure this story or these characters matter, and I think they may as well not have been. Phooey, Doug, Phoeey I say! Has the well run dry?
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JuneNephthys
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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3.5. A crazy ride that skewers on-the-spectrum IT workers, Hollywood (in Vancouver) extras, and anyone (everyone) pursuing an alternative lifestyle. I listened to the audiobook so took little enjoyment from the long lists of acronyms or random (yet alphabetical) words. I didn’t care for some of the dismissive/misanthropic tone in some places, ironic or not. To wit: “Workshops and seminars are basically financial speed dating for clueless poor people. TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.”

The author makes a number of appearances in the book as himself, as a demi-god of sorts, at one point admitting that he has a 2-book deal and needs fodder for his second. And that’s a bit like how this feels. It isn’t great, although there are some great parts to it, but it does the job And there’s quite a bit of “getting away with it”-ness in the novel. I suspect the author may justifiably feel that he “got away with” fulfilling his book contract with this one.
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shlomiardan
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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wasn’t anything I’ve ever read before so I think that’s what kept me interested, made me laugh out loud a lot
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UKyun
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This book reminds me of the voices in my head. Awesome.
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Asha-san
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Style and substance abound here, but I only give it one star because the plot simply went nowhere. Perhaps that was the point, but I still need my fiction to have some kind of trajectory that makes me feel I journeyed *to* something by the end.
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JohnnyBoy333
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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FANTASTIC! Getting a look into something that I don't do is always interesting, but looking at another artists' colony way of life is even better!
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