(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

Last week, I finished Douglas Coupland's novel about lonely people, Eleanor Rigby. Overall, I liked it, but I thought it could've been much better.

A long time ago, Coupland was my favourite author. Gradually, he's waned on me. I'd read all his English-language novels up to Miss Wyoming, but after that last dull effort, I didn't really feel enthused enough to buy his later novels.

Eleanor Rigby looked interesting, though, and even if I hadn't gotten it as a gift, I'd have read it. Some thoughts (mostly criticism):

• One of the things that gradually turned me off Coupland was that he's a very cold writer. He doesn't deal well with emotions -- he's more connected to abstract ideas -- and the emotional content of his novel consists largely in last-minute redemptions. Eleanor Rigby started off cold, but he's getting better at that feeling thing.
  
  
• On the other hand -- one thing I used to like about Coupland has gradually turned into a turn-off. Most writers avoid mentioning the modern world and how technology has changed human life in positive ways -- some go out of their way to ensure that their characters have no access to e-mail, internet, and cell phones. Coupland doesn't, and I appreciated that. OBut he goes to the other extreme-- he fetishizes these things. This can get equally annoying -- a passage in praise of the joys of a favourite TV program just slips toward the abyss of David McGimpsey and his poetry about Gilligan's Island.
  
  
• I only clued in to one of the things in the background of his books that's always irritated me, and which I couldn't quite name. Now I see it -- his characters are very wealthy, very dismissive of the poor and less fortunate, and very certain that they are personally hard-done-by. In retrospect, it's actually quite funny that I loved Generation X so much when I read it. At the time, I was on welfare, partially living off the charity of friends, and frequently in desperate financial straits -- and yet here I was loving a novel about a bunch of middle-class and wealthy twenty-somethings, living in a very expensive piece of real estate on the edge of a desert, and whining how they'll never have what their parents had.
  
  
• I'm glad he's actually setting stories in Canada, now. Coupland's characters tend to exist in a vacuum where place doesn't matter and people in that void can simply re-invent themselves endlessly. Maybe the fact that he's noticed the place where he lives is a sign he's growing up a little and coming to understand the importance of place -- he actually has a book out about Vancouver, now, so there's hope.
  
  
• One thing that frustrates me is the gay killer stereotype. Watch The Celluloid Closet sometime -- for thirty years, from Rope to The Talented Mr. Ripley the only role that existed for gay people in Hollywood films was "serial killer." This, in spite of the fact that all studies show our rates of violent crime are much lower than for the general population. So why do writers -- and gay writers especially -- seem obsessed with presenting homosexuality only with violence? I mean, Timothy Findley was terrible at this (try finding a happy gay couple there), but so far Coupland managed to avoid it. As of Eleanor Rigby, he fails. Too bad -- his character of Bug in Microserfs was excellent.
  
  
• On that note, he hasn't quite gotten past the false universality that used to impel him to set novels in the States -- after all, he's written a very queer story straight-up. His main character seems like a lonely gay man in drag, and the young man who changes her life shows up literally in drag. But he doesn't have AIDS -- he has MS (written like a thousand AIDS dramas) -- and he's written straight-up. This novel is in many ways a story about the gay world, with the sexes of characters changed at the last minute to protect...what exactly? I wish I knew.

So, yeah -- I don't love Coupland as much as I used to, although I think he is gradually becoming a better writer, and I'll probably read more of his stuff in the future -- I already have JPod on my shelf. I'd also recommend Eleanor Rigby, for all its flaws.

Comments

[sugar-spun.livejournal.com]

I honestly hated Eleanor Rigby, and it really upset me because I'd really liked Coupland up until then. It was like earlier Coupland on narcotics - all the same messed up stuff that I loved but dealt with in a haze of pills and smoke.

[sugar-spun.livejournal.com]

This comment brought to you by Inarticulate Reviewers R Us.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

If that's your inarticulate, your eloquent must be remarkable ^_^

I liked it better than Miss Wyoming, which was where he hit his depth of whiny-rich-people-wanting-to-reinvent-themselves, without any of the redeeming qualities of previous books. It honestly read like a Cosmopolitan article.

Eleanor Rigby had more depth, and a bit more humanity than Coupland usually gives us, and I appreciated both. It did still seem unfocused, though, and at times I didn't really like the protagonist.

In some ways, her son saves things. He's often interesting enough to carry things.

The pacing is pretty good as well. The images are hit-and-miss.

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[(Anonymous)]

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[(Anonymous)]

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