JPod A Novel

JPod, Douglas Coupland's most acclaimed novel to date, is a lethal joyride into today's new breed of tech worker. Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose surnames begin with "J" are bureaucratically marooned in jPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver game design company. The jPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a boneheaded marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan's personal life is shaped (or twisted) by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China.JPod's universe is amoral, shameless, and dizzyingly fast-paced like our own. Douglas Couplandis a novelist who also works in visual arts and theater. His novels includeGeneration X,Microserfs, All Families Are Psychotic,Hey Nostradamus!, andEleanor Rigby. He lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers are bureaucratically marooned in JPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver video game design company. The six jPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a bone-headed marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan's personal life is shaped (or twisted) by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China.JPod's universe is amoral and shamelessand dizzyingly fast-paced. The characters are products of their era even as they're creating it. Everybody in Ethan's life inhabits a moral gray zone. Nobody is exempt, not even his seemingly straitlaced parents or Coupland himself. Full of word games, visual jokes, and sideways jabs, this book throws a sharp, pointed lawn dart into the heart of contemporary life.JPodis Douglas Coupland at the top of his game. "To Coupland's credit, the technologically sophisticated but socially alienated universe that he anticipated in 1995 is an even more tangible and complicated entity in 2000a time when people really do speak in regurgitated sound bites fromThe Simpsons, and are labeled autistic simply because they are shy, and are granted preposterous job descriptions like being part of a 'world-building team' when they possess little control over the world in which they liveand that gives him license to revisit this territory inJPod."The New York Times "The perfect vehicle for [Coupland's] funny and poignant evocations of near-term nostalgia . . . there is brilliance at work inJPod."Los Angeles Times "Zeitgeist surfer Douglas Coupland downloads his brain intoJpod."Vanity Fair "Jpodis a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away."New York Times Book Review "A willful, joyful satire that revels in the same cultural conventions that it sends up."Rocky Mountain News "Perhaps it's time to admire [Coupland's] virtuoso tone and how he has refined it over 11 novels. The master ironist just might redefine E.M. Forster's famous dictate 'Only connect' for the Google age."USAToday "Coupland is mining territory that has been largely ignored by the literary set . . . the novel shows Coupland did his homework."The Washington Post "N

Douglas Coupland is a novelist who also work in visual arts and theater. His novels include Generation X, Microserfs, All Families Are Psychotic, Hey Nostradamus!, and Eleanor Rigby. He lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.

Praise for JPod:
“JPod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away.�—New York Times Book Review
 
“It's to [Coupland's] credit that in JPod he's still nimble enough to take the post-modern man—too young for Boomer nostalgia and too old for youthful idealism—and drown his sorrows in a willful, joyful satire that revels in the same cultural conventions that it sends up.�—Rocky Mountain News
 
“It's time to admire [Coupland's] virtuoso tone and how he has refined it over 11 novels. The master ironist just might redefine E. M. Forster's famous dictate ‘Only connect' for the Google age.�—USA Today
 
“Zeitgeist surfer Douglas Coupland downloads his brain into JPod.�—Vanity Fair