I almost wish I hadn't re-read this 20 years after the first read. I kind of liked remembering it as part of my angsty young adulthood. Oh well, that's over now! LOL.

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Radioactive nostalgia. Idealization of the 1950s, in an ironic way of course. Everyone's so smart and so cool, telling pointless and melancholic-fantastic stories to each other. Like the sisters who are struck in their own planetoid and one falls in love with an astronaut who falls with his spaceship from the sky. Or the story about the young kid whose sun has gone out of the sky. Or the apocalyptic scenarios with slight variations by Dag (whom I have always thought as some sort of mellower and much 'gothic' variation of Tyler Durden.) Dag's paranoia makes him lovable. He speculates that may be all those gigantic mushroom clouds are not really what they were portrayed to be. What if they are actually really small, and the media is manipulating things to make it looks so much more menacing than it actually is.

And in a way these thoughts of Dag remain relevant so long as there is the presence of atomic weapons capable of dragging us all into annihilation. The Cold War never really ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now the latest news I've read, tells of Israel's plan of attacking Iran. Israel's been keeping a more-than-wary on the latter ever since news surfaced of its weapons-grade enrichment of nuclear materials. ( )

I first read this book shortly after it came out and it started my love affair with Douglas Coupland. It wasn't until very recently that I reread it. I'd been afraid that it wouldn't have passed the test of time--that it would seem as dated as the movie Singles. Fortunately, I still found it to be quite enjoyable. However, what I've found over Douglas Coupland's career, is that I most enjoy his novels set in the Pacific Northwest. He writes of the environment with a greater sense of authority--no doubt from living his life in and around Vancouver. One of his greatest strengths, in my opinion, is capturing the "feel" of life in the PNW.
The three main characters in Generation X have turned away from the expected path of their peers, namely the acquisition of careers and material goods. They're looking for happiness and meaning in simpler ways and their jobs are simply a mean to an ends--their jobs aren't their lives, their jobs are simply something to keep food in their bellies and a roof over their heads while they look for real meaning elsewhere. Even now, almost 20 years after the novel was published, there's something beautiful about that idea. ( )

I had the same problem with this book that I have with any book, piece of artwork, song, or movie that attempts to speak to and/or about my generation.

Part of the problem is the sheer weight of representation: in their attempts to wax philosophical on life and its accompanying angst, what most prominently stands out in the words of Claire, Dag and Andy is either the pretension that comes with making any grand gesture meant to stand for a collective consciousness or the disingenuous gravity that accompanies "Proclamations of the 'Truth'" (that's 'truthiness' to you Colbert fans).

Whenever I catch Juno or Empire Records or the like on television I get that same feeling - a sense of naughty delight at the winsome words coming off of the screen dampened by the realization that NO ONE REALLY TALKS LIKE THIS, and if they do, they are probably too caught up with their own words to really care to listen to anyone else's. Which is not to say that I'm a stickler for realism either, but in this book there is a clear line between the sad suck of reality and the semi-magical realism of the tales these three windbags tend to dream up, and the realism part just doesn't work.

But I'm being harsh. I have no problem with environmental and social responsibility, or a lessening of hyperconsumption in all its forms. And I admit, if I'd read this maybe 9 or 10 years ago I might've absolutely gobbled it up whole, but I find it all tiresome now. There is a lot that does ring true here, but the execution is sometimes taxing.

Maybe it is the author's intention that the characters just sound like a group of ungrateful, vacuous people taking up space, and if so then the job is done. Some parts of this genuinely made me laugh and some of the characterizations are done very well, but I have a hard time swallowing books that are filled with whining, particularly the kind of whining where there is a wink at how clever it all is to whine in such a way.

I also have a hard time with this notion that the answer is "out there," in some fading desert - a la Coehlo's The Alchemist (or, worse yet, in an underprivileged foreign country) just waiting for some 20-something lost American middle-class soul to pluck it from the ether. The act is seen here as courageous when it is really some imperialist orientalist romanticism that has more to do with avoiding answers than really finding them.

Not that I have any answers either, but still. ( )

Nothing really happens in this novel, but maybe that's a metaphor for GenXers lives or at least the way they see their lives? I'm firmly in the middle of Gen X, being born in 1970, maybe this book would have resonated more for me when I picked it up 20+ years ago. I don't think so. These seemed like "normal" white kids from suburban households. I was raised in white suburbia, but I was a punk rocker and a metalhead, I never aspired to corporate dominance and never (to this day) worried about climbing the corporate ladder. I didn't worry about being "successful" in the traditional sense and I wasn't worried about my parents being disappointed in me, they never were.

Anyway, this was witty at times, included a bunch of short stories told by the characters, which is kind of a cool mechanic. I liked the little border notes. Really though it was kind of boring. ( )