Jpod
| Item Information | |
|---|---|
| Item#: | 9780679314257 |
| Author | Coupland, Douglas |
| Cover | Paperback |
| On Hand | 0 |
A lethal joyride into today’s new breed of technogeeks, Coupland’s JPod updates Microserfs for the age of Google.
Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose names start with J are bureaucratically marooned in jPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver game design company.
The six workers daily confront the forces that define our era: global piracy, boneheaded marketing staff, people smuggling, the rise of China, marijuana grow-ops, Jeff Probst and the ashes of the 1990s financial tech dream. jPod’s universe is amoral and shameless. The characters are products of their era even as they’re creating it.
Everybody in Ethan’s life inhabits a moral grey zone. Nobody is exempt, not even his seemingly straitlaced parents or Coupland himself, as readers will see.
Full of word games, visual jokes and sideways jabs, this book throws a sharp, pointed lawn dart into the heart of contemporary life. JPod is Douglas Coupland at the top of his game.
Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose names start with J are bureaucratically marooned in jPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver game design company.
The six workers daily confront the forces that define our era: global piracy, boneheaded marketing staff, people smuggling, the rise of China, marijuana grow-ops, Jeff Probst and the ashes of the 1990s financial tech dream. jPod’s universe is amoral and shameless. The characters are products of their era even as they’re creating it.
Everybody in Ethan’s life inhabits a moral grey zone. Nobody is exempt, not even his seemingly straitlaced parents or Coupland himself, as readers will see.
Full of word games, visual jokes and sideways jabs, this book throws a sharp, pointed lawn dart into the heart of contemporary life. JPod is Douglas Coupland at the top of his game.
Review Quotes
A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Coupland is possibly the most gifted exegete of North American mass culture writing today. . . . JPod is without a doubt his strongest, best-observed novel since Microserfs.” —The Guardian (UK)
“Coupland explores the landscape of our rapidly globalizing culture like a tourist armed with a digital camera and a limitless memory card, taking snapshots of everything that catches his eye.” —The Vancouver Sun
“A first-rate novelist and observer of the contemporary scene.” —National Post
“[Coupland has] given us a rollicking good, larger-than-life read.” —Ottawa Citizen
“[Coupland] once again nails the zeitgeist of the age. . . . The best thing about JPod is its characteristic good writing . . . and its dark, unflagging wit.” —Calgary Sun
“Coupland is an accomplished and talented writer whose books are perennial bestsellers.” —Quill & Quire
“[JPod] is a work in which [Coupland's] familiar misgivings about life on the technological cusp are again invoked, but also one in which the skills he’s been developing as a novelist pay off, where his satirical streak and his social consciousness finally stop fooling around with each other and settle down together. . . . JPod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away.” —The New York Times Book Review
“JPod is a seriously funny book, . . . a rolling thunder of sustained comedy, first page to last, as it ends up, and skewers the shamelessness and amorality that define our era. . . . Coupland’s timing is impeccable: JPod is the right book at the right time.” —The Globe and Mail
“Coupland is possibly the most gifted exegete of North American mass culture writing today. . . . JPod is without a doubt his strongest, best-observed novel since Microserfs.” —The Guardian (UK)
“Coupland explores the landscape of our rapidly globalizing culture like a tourist armed with a digital camera and a limitless memory card, taking snapshots of everything that catches his eye.” —The Vancouver Sun
“A first-rate novelist and observer of the contemporary scene.” —National Post
“[Coupland has] given us a rollicking good, larger-than-life read.” —Ottawa Citizen
“[Coupland] once again nails the zeitgeist of the age. . . . The best thing about JPod is its characteristic good writing . . . and its dark, unflagging wit.” —Calgary Sun
“Coupland is an accomplished and talented writer whose books are perennial bestsellers.” —Quill & Quire
“[JPod] is a work in which [Coupland's] familiar misgivings about life on the technological cusp are again invoked, but also one in which the skills he’s been developing as a novelist pay off, where his satirical streak and his social consciousness finally stop fooling around with each other and settle down together. . . . JPod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away.” —The New York Times Book Review
“JPod is a seriously funny book, . . . a rolling thunder of sustained comedy, first page to last, as it ends up, and skewers the shamelessness and amorality that define our era. . . . Coupland’s timing is impeccable: JPod is the right book at the right time.” —The Globe and Mail