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Polaroids from the Dead

douglas coupland

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Douglas Coupland takes his sparkling literary talent in a new direction with this crackling collection of takes on life and death in North America -- from his sweeping portrait of Grateful Dead culture to the deaths of Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe and the middle class. For years, Coupland's razor-sharp insights into what it means to be human in an age of technology have garnered the highest praise from fans and critics alike. At last, Coupland has assembled a wide variety of stories and personal "postcards" about pivotal people and places that have defined our modern lives. Polaroids from the Dead   is a skillful combination of stories, fact and fiction -- keen outtakes on life in the late 20th century, exploring the recent past and a society obsessed with celebrity, crime and death. Princess Diana, Nicole Brown Simpson and Madonna are but some of the people scrutinized.

198 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1996

This edition

Format
198 pages, Paperback
Published
September 20, 1997 by Harper Perennial
ISBN
9780060987213
ASIN
0060987219
Language
English

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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(3.9 / 5.0, 96 votes)
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96 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Progeny
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Den här boken är SÅ bekant; formatet, färgerna. Har jag eller någon i min närhet ägt den och haft den framme synligt? Kanske bläddrade jag i den på något bibliotek på 90-talet för att läsa brevet till Kurt Cobain?

Känner mig inte nostalgisk över det årtiondet och inget annat heller, förutom 60-talet - som jag missade, så hoppar nu över många texter och fokuserar på det Vancouverrelaterade. Den om Lions Gate Bridge finns även publicerad här. Två världar kolliderar när jag nu noterar att Coupland gillade att "haroldera" i sena tonåren, d.v.s. hänga på kyrkogårdar, som Harold i filmen. Särskilt Capilano View Cemetery och vi styrde genast hyrbilen upp dit.
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TyphSZ
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Just like how he writes and because I guess its about me and a little older.

This from pre-1996:

"Up until recently, no matter where or when one was born on earth, one's culture provided one with all components essential for the forging of identity. These components included: religion, family, ideology, class strata, a geography, politics and a sense of living within a historic continuum.

Suddenly, around ten years ago, with the deluge of electronic and information media into our lives, these stencils within which we trace our lives began to vanish, almost overnight, particularly on the West Coast. It became possible to be alive yet have no religion, no family connections, no ideology, no sense of class location, no politics and no sense of history. Denarrated.

In a low-information environment, pre-TV, etc., relationships were the only form of entertainment available. Now we have methods of information linkage and control ranging from phone answering machines to the Internet that mediate relationships to the extent that corporeal interaction is now beside the point. As a result, the internal dialogue has been accelerated to whole new planes as regularized daily contact has become an obsolete indulgence."

Sound familiar? Like anybody you know? Seems prophetic...


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Yuunagi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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If you want to understand the tenuous transition with which western culture entered the 90s, read this book.
it is excellent.
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tembrook
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Short stories and articles. Good stuff, but far from J-Pod.
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Pyongmon
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Essays, some of them quite good, all of them with the same Gen X asceticism that is sometimes mistaken for pure irony.
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SebArts
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Although some of the pieces in this book are mediocre, others are among Coupland's finest and most beautiful work, especially "The German Reporter."
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diedrupo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I believe Polaroids from the Dead was Coupland's fifth book, but I'm glad I never read it until now. It's a real treat for a long-time fan! A mix of essays, "Microstories," letters, memories, and travel writing, this book is visual (typically) and personal and very revealing.

Young Douglas discovers James Rosenquist at age 8, and making his own "Rosenquists" becomes his new hobby. Years later he is driving through Washington State, crying for Kurt Cobain in a coma. A middle-aged Deadhead-turned-software-millionaire attends a Dead concert with his surgeon pal, and mourns the evaporation of the middle class; meanwhile the Shampoo Planet-esque kids flee the Dead concert to listen to "songs about robots - written by cash registers." In Brentwood, Los Angeles (a real place that does not technically exist), lives of people are "denarrated," and history is as irrelevant as morality. The lack of storyline is static, no matter what Marilyn Monroe, Lisa Marie Presley, or O.J. Simpson might be up to. In contrast, Palo Alto is a charming and gracious "dreamscape."

We all know D.C. is a master of perfectly capturing moments in history (a blurb on the jacket calls him a "zeitgeist chaser") but in this case, he takes the early years of the 1990s and shows how their stories repeat themselves, through the past and into the future. That being said, don't read this book until you're ready to return fully to 1994 for a day or two. The nostalgia may overwhelm you.
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