Tag Archives: April 2010

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland (1991)

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Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland (1991)Whenever I feel myself succumbing to dangerous levels of loathing and doubt, burnt out by all the culture offered up so graciously to me as a target market, I reach for the old favourites, the comfort reads. In doing this, however, there is always a hidden anxiety: what if we’ve grown apart? What if the changes of the years apart have caused irreperable damage to our relationship? What if we just don’t click like we used to? I first read Generation X in my first year of university, gleeful at the contents of the multiple university libraries which had so many books I’d always wanted to read but local and school libraries never stocked. I don’t exactly recall my initial reaction, but I’ve since devoured everything else Douglas Coupland has written, so I imagine it must have been fairly positive. So, I dug out my copy of the neon pink covered Generation X and, despite the fear and possibility of disappointment, got stuck into it.

The carapace of coolness is too much for Claire, also. She breaks the silence by saying that it’s not healthy to live our life as a succession of isolated little cool moments. “Either our lives become stories, or there’s just no way to get through them.”
I agree. Dag agrees. We know that this is why the three of us left our lives behind us and came to the desert – to tell stories and to make our lives worthwhile tales in the process.

I’m not sure if back in 2003 I quite would have appreciated the blunt truths offered in Coupland’s novel, those moments of acidic humour that cut to the core of post-war Western consumer existence. Let’s face it, I was eighteen with the whole world ahead of me and still believed I was on the cusp of immersing myself in a world of thoughts and ideas that would open up numerous opportunities that I couldn’t even fathom. Uh, yeah. But now, with most (oh my god) of my twenties behind me, I come to Generation X with a different perspective, from the point where you’re no longer “the youth” anymore, and a new generation is fast usurping your own (which you never quite felt apart of anyway), and you realize that although you’re supposed to be an adult, you have no fucking idea what you’re supposed to be doing.

And for this particularly knotty stage of life, Generation X is perfect. Admittedly, there are some differences between the generation of the characters of the novel and my own – theirs is a landscape noticeably untouched by the internet, although the comic frames and neologisms within the text do point toward that sort of multi-textuality that we’d become used to with the growth of the internet; and if this is an accelerated culture, what can we say about ours, hyper-acceleration? (an issue Coupland would expand upon in 2009′s Generation A) – but the general sense of distrust of consumer culture, of apathy and exhaustion, of alienation and of the unknown, still resonates strongly, perhaps the byproduct of mid-twenties malaise no matter the generational setting. Here there is the pleasure of small recognitions of self and experience which legitimize those experiences and perceptions, or at the very least, offer the consolation that you are not alone in sensing the strangeness, the contradictory and the futile.

But I get this feeling–
It is a feeling that our emotions, while wonderful, are transpiring in a vacuum, and I think it boils down to the fact that we’re middle class.
You see, when you’re middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.
And any small moment of intense, flaring beauty such as this morning’s will be utterly forgotten, dissolved by time like a super-8 film left out in the rain, without sound, and quickly replaced by thousands of silently growing trees.

Okay, so that’s all my guts spewed up in words for all to see, but what about the actual novel? Generation X features three twenty-somethings, Andy, Dag and Claire, who have removed themselves from their peers and their expectations to work menial jobs in California, where they tell stories to each other, revealing truths about themselves and their lives through fiction and an extensive frame of cultural reference and understanding, in this way being able to openly speak about and simultaneously cover up the unspeakable fears they hold about where their lives are headed. It’s not all doom and generational gloom, but it’s also sharp and funny. While Generation X hails the power of stories and fiction to give us control over our lives, I wonder whether the search for our own narrative is also the very thing that entangles us with this distinct anxiety and alienation, especially when our narratives don’t measure up to those we see in film, television, literature, internet, other people?

What have I learned from this rereading experience? That Generation X and I have not grown apart, nor are we disgusted by our slight changes over time, but that we are closer than ever, a sort of book and reader eclipse in which our stories begin to overlap. It may not always be this way, we’ve both got a lot of changing to do yet, but for now, the pages between these blindingly neon covers are of the greatest comfort.

Pop: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company by Constance L. Hays (2004)

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Pop: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company by Constance L. Hays (2004)With the release of the iPad and the growing popularity of the Kindle, Nook and other e-reading devices, a few outlets such as The New York Times and Meanjin are contemplating the fate of the book cover. Not only do they act as the outward display of our undeniably exquisite reading tastes (or something to be bent back to hide what we’re reading from prying eyes, should our tastes lapse ever so slightly), but they can draw us toward a book that we wouldn’t otherwise pick up. Such is the case with Constance L. Hays’ Pop: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company. Some savvy librarian had placed the book on a display shelf at the end of the 300s, and myself, unable to resist a pup looking sadly hopeful at a rosy cheeked woman and her old-fashioned bottle of Coke held daintily in gloved hands, took it home.

One Wall Street analyst liked to describe Coke and Pepsi in terms of two diametrically opposed college students: Coke was the studious one, the one who was always in the library and aced his exams. Pepsi, meanwhile, was the fraternity brother who lived to socialize, studying just enough to get by and occasionally surprising himself by doing very well – often enough to make him believe that his approach worked just fine. In product development, in marketing, and in overall strategy, throughout all the years of their competitive relationship, Coke had been the diligent one and Pepsi’s record had been hit-or-miss. By 1997, when Goizueta died, analysts all believed fervently in Coke, that Coke could do no wrong, while Pepsi was regarded as a joke.

I expected, or wanted perhaps, an overview of the cultural and historical impact of Coca-Cola. Pop does cover some of this ground, but for the most part it is an insight into the fraught business of Coca-Cola, from the turbulent relationship between the company and the bottlers, to internal politics, to stock options and stock prices and aggressive marketing campaigns. I’m not exactly what one could call business-minded, but Hays tells the story of the intense business of selling Coca-Cola in a way that makes it accessible to readers. The numerous chief executive officers and their tribulations are told as great overarching narratives that represent the changing world in which Coke existed. Sometimes, it is hard to believe the stories. At one point, Roberto Guizueta the CEO of Coca-Cola from 1980 to 1997, and the man who tried to introduce the world to the infamous New Coke, owned one billion dollars worth of shares. At that stage, the gross national product of his home country of Cuba was ten billion dollars. This is what I don’t really understand about business, how much money is enough? What kind of life would you be living if no amount of money is ever enough? Okay, one of gold-plated cars and money vaults like Scrooge McDuck. The strategic moves made in order to make profit and keep the shareholders are astronomical, such as the dramatic dismissal of Doug Ivester after creating billions of dollars in value to the company and only two years in the top job. And yet, employees were disappointed that Ivester’s business strategy had become solely about “the bottom line.” Although with the severance payouts, I don’t see cause to complain too much, we’re talking double figure millions here.

Thankfully, Pop isn’t all about the business side of Coca-Cola, and interesting tidbits are supplied in abundance by Hays extensive research. Such as the use of Coca-Cola in World War 2, in which it was used as a patriotic symbol through which homesick American soldiers were reminded of home. Between 1941 and 1945, ten billion bottles of Coke were sold to troops; a clever ruse through which to create patriotism and marketing value home and abroad. Prohibitionists displayed concern over the caffeine levels of Coca-Cola from the introduction of the beverage, but little attention is given to the concerns over sugar content that seems to have exploded over the past few years. (A recent article compares excessive soda consumption to tobacco usage.) The New Coke fiasco, basically an attempt by Coca-Cola to undo the damage of the Pepsi Challenge, altered the recipe for Coke and caused widespread outrage among consumers, who rallied and lobbied for the return of the old recipe. Eventually New Coke was scrapped altogether, but the experiment exemplified the cultural significance of Coke, as well as the nostalgia consumers attach to the product; through and after the ordeal, sales of the old recipe soared and stock prices were raised – causing no real or lasting financial damage to the company, though it would be used as an example of what not to do in business.

Pop: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company is packed a wealth of  information about the business of Coca-Cola, from those mentioned above to product recalls, lawsuits charging the company with racial discrimination and the ruthless introduction of the company into foreign markets. Though focused primarily on the business aspect of the company, Pop provides insight into what has made the Coca-Cola Company a dominant strength, not only within the beverage industry, but in the global economy.

Book Loot: Week Ending April 4th, 2010

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I hope you’ve all had a splendid Easter, with chocolate (oh so much chocolate) and hot cross buns and, if you can believe it, we’re already a quarter of the way through 2010. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time this week trying to research why it is that so many from non-religious backgrounds continue to observe the no fish on Good Friday tradition. I wasn’t raised in a religious household, my parents weren’t raised in religious households; yet still, every Good Friday we eat fish. Not out of some culinary coincidence, but because you can’t eat meat on Good Friday. I don’t really understand why, out of all the religious traditions, this particular one is the one that has stuck. Perhaps because it is relatively easy to follow? Tradition has a strange power over us; I think the guilt of breaking the tradition itself is more powerful than any of the religious connotations. Anyone else have any ideas?

Now that Easter has passed, it’s time to begin looking forward to that other huge event: Clunes Booktown. In the first weekend of May, an entire small country town converts into a book lovers haven and all of the historic buildings are given over to booksellers and their wares. Books, good food, clean country air, it’s really a very special and unique event. A few hints from a seasoned Booktowner (ahem, I went for the first time last year): there is no mobile phone reception in the town, so if you’re attending with others make sure to have planned meeting spots/times to avoid confusion and frustration. Or learn how to send smoke signals. Also, if you go on the Sunday, by late afternoon some of the booksellers are desperate to get rid of their remaining stock and will start selling BOXES of books for spare change.

It’s very unlikely that I’ll have any new acquisitions to post about in these Loot posts until the end of the Clunes weekend, but luckily there’s still some good readin’ on the internet: