Living Digitally

Review of "JPod" by Douglas Coupland

Read it? If you're a self-proclaimed geek, by all means.

If you're looking for a book that celebrates geekdom and video games like Death in the Afternoon celebrates virility, then read Douglas Coupland's JPod.

JPod is about five cube mates — each with their own manias, neuroses, and complexes — who work for an overly corporate and bureaucratic gaming company in Vancouver. I use the term "work" loosely, however. The majority of their time is spent managing their dysfunctional families, soothing their angst, indulging their fetishes, placating their idiotic managers, and either issuing or participating in bizarre challenges like taking the first hundred thousand digits of pi, inserting a single incorrect digit, and seeing who can find it first. If you're a software developer, or if you've ever worked with software developers, you're probably following right along.

I have to admit that I'm a little surprised that I'm recommending this book. I actually started out actively disliking it. In fact, I disliked it until exactly page 184 (once I start reading a fiction book, I finish it come hell or high water — imagine my dismay after casually picking up Moby Dick one day). It was page 184, and in particular the passage below, that taught me how to read JPod:

"Ethan, watching you play Manhunt is like watching a steak being carved at Benihana."
"It's only pretend gore."
"With characters customized to resemble people here at work?"

Can't you just hear the laugh track? This was this passage that made me realize I was reading a 448 page sitcom — a story where everyone either knows exactly what to say, or says precisely the wrong thing; where every exchange is witty and quick enough to keep you from losing interesting and changing the channel; where characters are either impossibly intelligent and successful, or fantastically stupid.

Once I figured all this out, I found that I really liked the book.

JPod is a book for and about the video game generation: a group of people who paradoxically have superhuman powers of concentration, yet can't seem to focus on anything. Similarly, JPod briefly touches on dozens of different topics like autism, gore sites, human trafficking, marijuana cultivation, Chinese industrialization, and ballroom dancing, yet still manages to explore in painstaking detail such critical and stimulating topics as the history of Zima, and the best way to convince Roland McDonald to go on a date with you. The book is as ADD as its characters (and probably most of its readers).

Aside from confusion over the genre of the book, I had one other issue with JPod that I had to come to terms with: Coupland actually wrote himself in as a character. Not just any character, but a bona fide asshole. In fact, the very first passage of the book goes like this:

"Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel."
"That asshole."
"Who does he think he is?"

If I'd read that passage while still in the bookstore, I guarantee I wouldn't be writing about JPod right now. I would have gone with the David Foster Wallace novel I was holding in my other hand. For some reason, Coupland's technique seems a little narcissistic to me, like a really obvious and sort of sad attempt to turn yourself into a cultural icon. But refusing to admit defeat so soon (and having just paid $14.95), I kept reading. Coupland appeared in the book a few other times, and by the time he became a full-blown character, I had come to understand and like the book enough that I was ready to roll with it.

One thing I never doubted about JPod was that I really enjoyed the writing. Coupland has a way of expressing things in very human and immediately familiar terms. There were dozens of great lines like "Everyone suddenly remembered they were supposed to look interested," "I hoped to God that would shake my Etch-a-Sketch clean," and "Dad went over to the TV and touched one of those little black knobs beneath the screen that nobody ever touches." JPod has a way of talking to you like a good friend.

Reading JPod for me was like visiting my in-laws: a bit awkward at first, but in the end, I had a blast. If you're a neurotic, pod servant gamer yourself, JPod is a great way to get a little reading in without straying too far from your comfort zone.

Review of "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" by Cory Doctorow

Read it: Yes

I wanted to read a book by Cory Doctorow for two reasons:

1. I like Boing Boing, and since Cory is a Boing Boing editor, I figured I'd like a book written by someone who writes for Boing Boing.
2. Cory releases all his books under a Creative Commons license and makes them available for free in a variety of formats which I think is very cool. Ironically, I actually bought the book in order to support the idea of giving books away for free. Hmm.

Anyway, I picked Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (which I will refer to from here on out as Someone) from his canon of five books for no other reason than I thought it had the most intriguing name, and the most compelling cover art.

I'll warn you right from the beginning that if you're not an open-minded reader, don't bother with this review, or this book. Save yourself the time. Someone is so unique that I'm not even sure what genre it fits in to other than fiction. Science Fiction? Fantasy? Cyberpunk? Yes.

I'm not into spoiling plots, but just to give you some idea of what you're getting into by reading this book, Someone is about a man who will answer to any name which begins with the letter "A". He seems to be most commonly called Alan, so we'll go with that. Alan's father is a mountain, and his mother is a washing machine. Literally. And his brothers are Russian nesting dolls, a clairvoyant, and a psychopath. Alan's neighbor has wings which she's so committed to hiding from the world that she has her sadistic boyfriend saw them off on a regular basis.

The book follows two paths:

1. Alan's unconventional childhood growing up in a cave.
2. Alan's present day struggle to restore an old house, deal with the return of his psychopathic brother who is supposed to be dead, blanket a bohemian neighborhood in Toronto with free WiFi, and come to terms with his depressed winged neighbor.

I want to say that Someone is an unconventional book, but it's not so much the book or the writing style that is unconventional as it is the plot and the characters. In fact, that's what struck me most about this novel (and what I liked best about it): the plot and the characters are completely bizarre, however Doctorow treats it all with a great deal of literary care and respect. I've read strange books before where the author seemed to revel in the oddity of his work, adopting a writing style as unconventional as his subject matter. Doctorow, on the other hand, takes this world he's created extremely seriously and writes about it passionately, almost as though he's unaware of how strange it is.

Someone is certainly not for everyone, but I found myself entirely immersed in Doctorow's world, and able to take it every bit as seriously as Doctorow himself.