Last week on CBC’s arts show Play, host Jian Ghomeshi tried to set up a segment about Canadian author Douglas Coupland by asking three young men in the live audience if they were familiar with the writer. Tellingly, only one of the trio of twenty-somethings mumbled, “Uh, I’ve heard of him.” Clearly, it’s been a while since Generation X catapulted Coupland into the spotlight. But while that searing debut about slacker ennui at the cusp of the ’90s coined an indelible catchphrase, Coupland is still as relevant as ever. With eight novels and four works of non-fiction to his name, he’s also returned to his art-school roots, designing art installations and pieces of furniture that are exhibited the world over.
As a writer, Coupland’s signature is balancing the light with the dark-while his suburbanite characters may crack wise on the surface, underneath there’s a yearning to understand. In his new novel, Hey Nostradamus! (see review next issue), four distinct yet interconnected characters try to make sense of a high school massacre in their own way. While Coupland draws on the real-life shootings in Columbine and Taber, he uses the tragedy as a backdrop to explore the issues that have always fascinated him-questions of religion, relationships, and the crazy world we live in. If Generation X heralded the arrival of the Next Big Thing, 12 years and as many books later, Hey Nostradamus reminds us that Coupland remains one of the most vital and relevant artists of our time.
It’s been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. If that’s the case, then attempting to interview Douglas Coupland is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. A recent chat with the Varsity at publisher Random House’s offices in Toronto proved to be much like reading a Coupland novel-amusing, touching, and fiercely intelligent all at once. In the course of half an hour, the surprisingly soft-spoken 43-year-old managed to touch on everything from his childhood in B.C. to the current state of fashion, and even a (very) little bit about the book he was supposed to be promoting. We soon gave up asking questions and just listened to him talk. Somehow, in the end, it all made sense. Here’s a taste.
On whether writing Hey Nostradamus! was difficult due to its subject matter:
You hear that noise in the background right there? Imagine there was that and no other noise-that was sort of the noise I had in my head throughout the whole thing. In answer, no, it was not hard, but it was something new. I approached this book in a different way. Pregnancy still remains the best analogy for books- during the first two months, I didn’t watch TV, I didn’t do much of anything else. Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album, almost very ‘voice from the dead’ a capella-it was like that.
There’s some dark stuff in there, but it’s not like All Families [Are Psychotic, Coupland’s last novel] or something. People ask if there is a difference between doing art and doing books, as if they’re apples and oranges. But to me it’s all just apples and apples- a book is just an art project that uses words instead of wood or glass or anything else.
On the difference between visual art and writing:
They’re different in the way that someone else as an audience takes them in. I can look at a painting or a piece, be it conceptual or an artifact, and I can tell within one-tenth of a second if it’s good or not. And that just comes from going to art school, having all of my friends be artists, and living within that creative community. With books, God, you’re saying to people, ‘Hi, I want six hours or whatever of your time, you have to ignore your life and your family, and you have to turn off the TV and close the door…’ You’re really asking a lot of people. And you can’t make that instant judgment. And even then, you might have taken up hours of people’s life before they realize that they don’t want to read it anymore. So there’s this relationship that you have to have with your imaginary reader, whoever that entity is.
It’s not a blog-you’re writing to communicate something to someone else. And if you fail to get them through the whole thing, then you’ve failed, period. And to do that, biologically and organically, it’s a different part of the brain that runs that, but it’s still within the arts-school lobe, wherever that is. When you’re making something-when I’m making something (Doug, stop talking about yourself in the second person!)-and it’s starting to happen, and there’s this fireworks thing that happens in your head (it really is, ‘ooh, ahh!’). But with writing, you don’t get the fireworks until near the very end of the book, so it’s like you’re spending the whole time organizing everything, and making sure the powder charges, sets you off at the right time.
On shirts (Coupland spots a NOW Magazine cover photo from several years ago on the boardroom wall and gets distracted):
As we’re speaking here, this is really weird for me, that picture there… I’m trying to remember-15 percent of my brain is saying, ‘Whatever happened to that shirt?’ I’m trying to remember wearing that shirt, honest to God… [He gets up and goes over to stare at it] I don’t remember ever owning that shirt! This is really freaky. Have you ever really done that? You’ve moved around a few times, and then find an old box of stuff, and you’re like, “I remember that shirt! This was a really big deal to me at one time, and now it’s just… a shirt. The ephemerality of ownership and all that. God. Everything can be taken away from you, can’t it?
What I do now with shirts, I go to England now once every 18 months. I go to the Fred Perry store and stock up on these things. (Famed American painter) Georgia O’Keefe- someone asked her, ‘How come you always wear just black and white?’, and she said, ‘I don’t want to think about clothing, I want to put all my thinking into what I do.’ I read that and thought that it was the greatest advice. So I have three uniforms-this one, which is most days, rainy-day gear, which I wear out in Queen Charlotte because I have a place out there, and the suit. And it’s all I need. It’s great not having to think about clothing-liberating, really.
On the current state of fashion:
Somehow in the last few years, [fashion] has gone from being a source of creative stimulus or at least diversion to… it’s really silly. I’m sure it’ll come back, it always does, but for the time being, we’re in a fashion dead zone. Friends of mine that I went to high school with, they do design out in Vancouver. They do really wonderful work, but they say that no one cares. I think it’s almost at those moments where no one cares and everyone’s completely forgotten about it that something really big is about to explode.
The thing about the fashion world is that it provides a safe haven for other forms of creativity. I’m doing a back-and-forth e-mail interview with (No Logo author/former Varsity editor) Naomi Klein for Black Book, this New York fashion magazine. We talk about the whole notion of ‘selling out’, and she actually finds that the most interesting aspect of the discussion. And what about this magazine? Is there any point-I mean, who reads this magazine? [Philosopher] Jean Beaudriard and Pebbles Flintstone-is one going to connect with the other? But what it does is provide a really interesting safe haven for a discussion about the nature of protest through dissent right now. And I don’t think you could do that elsewhere-if you’re reading Adbusters, you’re already converted, in Details, it wouldn’t happen, if it’s in Newsweek it’s like a [Simpsons’ news anchor] Kent Brockman ‘My Two Cents’ or something… So it’s dumb but it’s smart and it’s like a little halfway house, the fashion world.
On the visual art scene:
The art world is this big-it’s so tiny. So tiny. And everyone knows everyone. I’m only three years into it. And it has come with its advantages and disadvantages. Right now there’s this whole body of work I’m sitting on-there’s two shows, one at the Design Exchange in Toronto in July of next year, and then another huge one at the Centre for Architecture in Montreal in October. So I’m sitting on top of all these amazing images and I can’t give them out yet! It’s just that feeling in the head that you get that you can’t get anywhere else. If I could get it from drugs or something, I’d probably do that. If I could get it from drinking, I’d probably drink. But for me, there’s no other way to get it. If art were a drug I could get in a pill, I’d probably take it. But no one’s invented it yet, so in the meantime, I have to do this.
On growing up:
My dad was a GP, and in the ’70s, the pharmaceutical companies just threw hundreds of thousands of samples at doctors, and Dad just put them all into these great big whiskey boxes underneath the bathroom sink. ‘Dad, I have an earache, I think it’s bleeding!’ ‘Oh, just go find something in the box.’ Social services should have jumped in and rescued us. [laughs] We had this kind of very casual relationship with pharmaceuticals in the family. It’s kind of strange, because none of us kids turned out druggie, and we always in the end did find the right medicine: ‘Oh, erythromycin, that should do it.’
Another thing about our family was that our mother’s policy was that ‘Sleep is very important, and if you think you need sleep, sleep in, and I’ll give you a note.’ From kindergarten to grade 12, none of us skipped one day of class. It turns out later that she just didn’t like making breakfast. [laughs] It’s kind of like we rose to the occasion. Now I sleep in until 10:30 every day, never more, never less.
On finding your way:
I have these dreams-I’m in my kitchen or wherever, and I’m unemployed and I don’t know what I do for a living, and it makes me feel… 25 and 26 were the worst years of my life, and it just brings me back there again. ‘Holy cow, I gotta get a job! But I’m not qualified for anything, what will I do?’ And then I wake up and think, ‘Thank God I write.’
You’re at U of T, that’s, like, a real university where people learn real skills and everything. I went to the Emily Carr College of Art and Design studio program where we just played with paint. I did typography, I liked that a lot, some graphic design… I look back on the decisions I made in my life, and I’m horrified! My parents were completely disinterested in what we all did, which is actually kind of liberating, because there’s no pressure that way. I changed careers about eight times, I think-I did industrial design, which I did enjoy and was good at, but didn’t want to do for a long time. Did all sorts of McJobs everywhere; I’ve always loved work. Did design work in Tokyo, and that was great, but I had to leave because I couldn’t handle tropical weather.
It sounds apocryphal now, but I wrote someone a postcard, she put it up on her fridge, and my first editor read it and said, ‘This guy should write for us.’ It was never planned or anything like that. I’m terrified by young people that want to be writers, and they know this at the age of 20. I mean, how can you know anything that surely at 20?
I remember school was out, and the first two weeks of July were when the huckleberries came out, and I was picking them and putting them in a margarine tub-I remember the sound of the berries hitting the tub, thump, thump, thump… And now I look at my nephew, and he’s got a Rolodex-he’s seven. And on weekends, it’s like, ‘Oh, we have two birthdays and a playdate, and…’ My concern is that he’s not going to develop the knack for introspection or reflection. I think that’s really important. That was probably the one thing that led to me becoming a writer, that very introspective lifestyle. You can’t go back and undo your childhood, so you sort of make what you can from it. I was very lucky. And I’m very fortunate to do what I do.
Coupland reads at the International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront on Oct. 28 at 8 p.m., and is interviewed by Bruce Mau at 2 p.m. on Nov. 1 at the Lakeside Terrace.
