![]() ![]() Its amazing, in hindsight, how much clarity Coupland had about (one segment of) this generation, and how well his critique has held up over twenty-plus years.Ĭosmopolitan blurbed the book as “a modern-day Catcher in the Rye.” That may be going a bit far. ![]() ![]() Generation X’s chapter titles are as thick as its content: Our Parents Had More. He coined phrases to describe the previously undefined cohort following the Boomers, such as McJobs (“low pay, low prestige, low benefits, low future”), option paralysis (“the tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none”), and conspicuous minimalism (“the nonownership of material goods flaunted as a token of moral and intellectual superiority”). The concept: they tell each other stories–some personal, some invented–as they try to manufacture meaning for their underwhelming lives.ĭouglas Coupland defined a generation with his novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. The characters: three twenty-something friends–Andrew, Dag, and Claire–who are underemployed, overeducated, floundering. The setting: the Southern California desert, 1991. ![]()
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