My least favorite Douglas Coupland book so far. This is for Coupland's die hard fans ONLY. Reading it in 2017 is a little redundant and weird as most of it is about subjects that were very much relevant in the 90's, and may seem ridiculous to read about these days, after all that has been happening since its first publication. Grateful Dead concerts, the first days of the internet and upheavals in celebrity culture - In hindsight, I think I should have read it much earlier. The Brentwood part was the best part of the book and perhaps the only reason to read it (except maybe some stories in the first part). Coupland's breakdown of different aspects and ingredients of Brentwood is remarkable.

Don't bother..

I got lost in a little time warp, having found this book at the library, where the new releases usually are displayed. Apparently, the staff picks were shelved right nearby.

I read this in one day (lots of photographs included) and wondered what time period the fiction was supposed to be set (I mean, there have been fires and mud slides and drought in California recently, but these are described like some sort of future hellscape).

The other essays seemed more tethered to the 1990s. I would like an update of the The Brentwood Notebook please. Then I checked the publication date and it all snapped into place. Still, I wonder how a 90s baby would receive this. I knew all the references because I’m almost as old as Douglas Coupland.

It's a collection of essays - many centered around likely fictional Dead concert attendees. Amusing imagination at work here. really enjoyed this line of thinking - Pg 179 - about the importance of having a story, a narrative of your life and how, if you lose that, you are denarrated – or not having a life.' So-and-so doesn't have a life. How can you have a story when you have no religion, no family connections, no ideology, no sense of class or location, no politics and no sense of history? America gives us no clues on how to cope with personal storylessness.

“The bridge is not merely a tool, not a casually delectable piece of infrastructure, and it can never be deleted from memories like an undesirable file.”

Polaroids from the Dead was bought on a whim at a second-hand book store based on the title and cover. I had never heard of Douglas Coupland, but now he is an author I will never forget. I dove into this book expecting to explore polaroids taken by deceased individuals and explain the pictures and where and when it was taken in their lives, but to my pleasant surprise, the book threw me in a whole other direction that I was not expecting, but needed.

“Why would we destroy something we love rather than let a stupid pride prevent us from saying, “It means something to me”?”

Overall, I think this book was perfect for me, as I am reading this at the right place and time in my life to have an essay-driven narrative on the death of the middle-class and media-obsessed 1990s America which looks tame in comparison to now shine through in polaroid pictures.

“It Is a suburb in denial of technology, yet all-demanding and its need for technology to provide illusions generated by denial.”

What I love most about Coupland is his ability to analyze meticulously the intricacies of what makes an idea, or lack of an idea, resonate or not in a certain generation of this country, and why it secretly has always been in each generation in this country. One example of this is the idea of denarration in one’s life. Where the idea of finding a life goal or mission comes from your given life narrative falling off the tracks metaphorically at some point in your life, and how this can be found in the lives of the famous over the decades.

“There is a sadness. When asked what they want nowadays, young people, with alarming frequency, ask for fame or money, wishing nonlinearity and denarration upon themselves.”

I highly recommend this book, as I found it to not only be entertaining wholly throughout but thought-provoking and intelligent from the first page to the last. If I had to rank the three sections of the book, they would follow in reverse order of how they were read. Number 1 would have to be Part Three: Brentwood Notebook, Number 2 would be Part Two: Portraits of People and Places, and lastly would be Number 3 with Part One: Polaroids from the Dead.

Some of the photos were interesting but the stories were boring and some what pretentious.

Not what I was expecting.

A collection of short stories and essays that analyses 90s culture in North America from the perspective of somebody living through it.

Douglas Coupland is right up there as one of my favourite authors and this was my first experience of his short writings; a selection of themed pieces told in such a way that even the fiction felt like reality.

Dissecting the evolution of the generation he had previously inadvertently christened Generation X and the way we choose to connect with others whilst remaining disconnected, he uses found photographs to enhance the message at the collections core. To use a quote from Downton Abbey, "things are changing."

As always Coupland writes well but my attention wavered from piece to piece and as a whole it failed to sustain my enjoyment.

One of Coupland's best, in my opinion.

The essays were good.
The short stories were rubbish.

The book is a series of short stories with its main characters post-collegiates encountering and reacting to events of the day (i.e., Kurt Cobain’s suicide, OJ Simpson’s murder case) and their lives in general. Contained therein are a sort of commentary by the author in a detached, sometimes snarky, and often witty manner. The book is a sort of Salinger for the 90s with the angst and ennui brought on by the early dotcom years where the aforementioned events become the characters’ defining moments absent the grander events of previous generations (i.e., WWI/II, the Depression, Vietnam).

a+ nostalgia and cultural critique