Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland OC OBCis a Canadian novelist and artist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized terms such as "McJob" and "Generation X". He has published thirteen novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books, and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. A specific feature of Coupland's novels...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth30 December 1961
CountryCanada
Characters in a book are very much like personalities divvied up within a family. In the end, it all averages out to a sort of overall averageness.
Everybody has basically the same family, it's just reconfigured slightly differently from one to the next.
Headwise, I always kind of knew that everyone goes grey in our family very early - and I was like, it works for me. I started growing my beard, and it changes the shape of your skull and your face, and I started seeing my mother's side of the family in myself for the first time.
People are pretty forgiving when it comes to other people's families. The only family that ever horrifies you is your own.
All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family - it's just reconfigured slightly different from one to the next.
We need to be around our families not because we have so many shared experiences to talk about, but instead because they know precisely which subjects to avoid.
It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.
If you write fiction, you have to love your characters. It's like your family. You don't have to like them, but you have to love them.
We are a dreadful species indeed, and deserve whatever it is our techno-baubles do to us.
With 'Worst. Person. Ever.' I knew where it started and where it had to end, but I threw Raymond as many curveballs as I could along the way. He's like the coyote in the 'Road Runner' cartoons.
I think social and moral disengagement is repugnant.
I think most people either forget or don't know that Microsoft only hires people with I.Q.'s well over 130.
I think half the people who get married now have met online. If I think about all the people in my life who married - they met online, online, online. And it makes sense if you think about it, because you fill out this form of 35 things that really define you and - bam - look, you've got two people who match. It works.
My own experience with being interviewed is mixed. I suppose they're a part of my job, and as I would like readers to connect with my books, I do them. I've also made many lifelong friends whom I first encountered as interviewers - as a writer, they're a terrific way to meet and add smart new people to one's life.