Coupland A. Coupland B.

I think the world contains more than one Douglas Coupland. Last year I posted about jPod, being very underwhelmed by it. Now I’m reading his most recent, The Gum Thief, and it’s much more enjoyable.

This got me thinking about how consistently inconsistent an author he is. He has this reputation for social and cultural commentary, but even in that he’s a bit hit and miss. I think of myself as a fan, but a fairly critical one.

Case in point: of Coupland’s fiction, some of it is very good indeed, and some of it is decidedly not. Hence the two Douglas Couplands. A can write, B has trouble with it.

Coupland A:

• Life After God
• Microserfs
• Girlfriend In A Coma
• Miss Wyoming
• Hey, Nostradamus!

Coupland B:

• Shampoo Planet
• Eleanor Rigby
• All Families Are Psychotic
• jPod

I’ve excluded Generation X because I wasn’t sure where to put it, but to be honest I was leaning towards Coupland B. At the half-way point, I think The Gum Thief was written by Coupland A.

(Whilst writing this post, for some reason I consistently mis-spelled ‘thief’ as ‘theif’.)