Front Porch: Douglas Coupland
March 8, 2006
Bethany Meckelburg
The rumors you have heard are true. Douglas Coupland is an artist. He is an author. And he is a playwright/actor.
This man has not only attended school at three prestigious art and design schools in Vancouver, Milan and Sapporo, he has also gone on to make a name for himself as an author as well. Two plays, nine novels, several non-fiction books and 35 translations later you have yourself a triple threat in the arts and culture scene. Being that he “…live[s] in Vancouver and recommend[s] others to do the same,” he’s practically at your back door and waiting to be discovered.
Coupland began his adult life as a visual artist, graduating from the studio program in sculpture at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, going on to study abroad and eventually returning to the city he was raised in to showcase an exhibition entitled “The Floating World” in November 1987. He has showcased exhibits in Asia, Germany, Italy, New York and San Francisco as well. Like all artists there is a story behind each work of art and one particular sculpture exhibit, “Spike”, has a story behind it that has influenced his writing as well.
This particular story begins with a little girl and takes place in Vancouver. In 1999, a baby was thrust into this world, born with a severe defect at a time when defects such as these were increasing rapidly. Little Sarah, Coupland’s niece, was born without a left hand.
She inspired him to create an exhibition focusing on deformities and defects. He did this by using giant deformed toy soldiers that look as though they came out of the mold before they were complete, and huge, unlabeled plastic Tide, Downy, and Alberto VO5 bottles. He began the bottle sculpture without really knowing why he wanted to use them. A friend later pointed out the connection with Sarah’s story; the bottles are designed for a hand to easily grab and each of the products contained chemicals that could cause birth defects. His novel All Families are Psychotic mirrors this tragedy. The daughter of the family in this novel is born without a left hand and is about to be launched into space.
Perhaps it was natural for Coupland to merge into the world of print after focusing on visual arts. Although he began work as an industrial designer, Coupland was quickly noticed by Malcolm Parry, an editor of a local paper. After reading a postcard written by Coupland while he was living in Japan, Parry immediately offered him a job. A job which Coupland took and was later unsatisfied with. He has commented that it was a “bottom-of-the-food-chain” job and the “…cubicles were like veal-fattening pens. There was just no dignity.” Lucky for the reading population, he went on to bigger and better things which eventually led to the publication of his first novel.
His first book, Generation X was published in March 1991. Generation Xers began to spring up after this; middle aged North Americans who were in no hurry to “find themselves” and who found a description of their generation that they could identify with. They began to clamour for a spokesperson to head up their group and automatically sought to elect Coupland himself as their leader. He quickly squashed that thought by replying: “I speak for myself, not for a generation.” The reason his book came to be was due to Coupland’s “speaking” through another genre…art.
In this case of the “chicken vs the egg” debate (art vs writing in our case) art clearly was the forerunner. The novel was started after he and another illustrator collaborated together to form a comic strip focusing on a “generation X” for a newspaper. After the newspaper went belly-up, he decided to pursue the idea further in a book. This novel explores the harsh realities of life for this particular generation and brings to light a lack of religious values and economic instability for this particular group. By using language described as “fresh, like wet paint” Coupland has risen to one of the most appreciated Canadian authors.
He has gone onwards and upwards in his career to publish many other novels (his 11th is set to come out sometime this spring) but unlike other authors who sit comfortably in their area of stated expertise, Coupland has branched out to include non-fiction as well. One of his most popular non-fiction exploits is the book entitled A Souvenir of Canada, explores the diversity and beauty of Canada through 11 of his still life photographs and states emphatically that “It’s never felt as different to be a Canadian as it does right now.” Actually, many of his non-fiction books have a Canadian theme, such as his most recent non-fiction publication: Terry: The Life of Canadian Terry Fox, and City of Glass, which is an in-depth look at the beautiful city of Vancouver.
In addition to covering the fiction and non-fiction genres, he also minored his dual majored career with playwriting, and has written two plays so far. His first play, September 10, 2001, he performed himself with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon, England. For speculators wondering if he will do another play sometime in the future, he has only one thing to say: “Yes. It’s a secret for the time being, but after much rumination, I can’t wait to get back in there and work.”
Great art, great books, and great plays make this local seem a little otherworldly. However, a Generation Y furniture designer once said: “I knew of him as a guy who wrote this very cool book and expected a sleek, stylish, cool guy, but really he’s, well, kind of dorky. And that’s cool.”
Now you go...
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