Libri di Douglas Coupland migliori da leggere e consigliati

Douglas Coupland e Marshall McLuhan a confronto. L’autore che ha dato un nome e un volto alla Generazione X e poi alla Generazione A racconta uno dei maggiori sociologi del Novecento. E lo fa con il suo stile inconfondibile: mescolando linguaggio pop e riferimenti colti, aforismi e curiosità, citazioni originali e personali. In occasione dei cento anni dalla nascita di Marshall McLuhan, Coupland riflette sulla vita e sull’opera di un intellettuale che ha rivoluzionato il modo di interpretare la realtà in cui siamo immersi oggi, lasciato espressioni ormai entrate nell’immaginario collettivo (“il medium è il messaggio” e “il villaggio globale” sono solo due tra le più note) e previsto, con i suoi studi, l’impatto della tecnologia sulla nostra società. Coupland rompe le regole della biografia per creare un ritratto a tutto tondo di McLuhan, la nitida fotografia di un genio indiscusso del secolo scorso: ricca di aneddoti, avvincente come un romanzo.

Andy, Dag and Claire have been handed a society beyond their means. Twentysomethings, brought up with divorce, Watergate and Three Mile Island, and scarred by the 80s fallout of yuppies, recession, crack and Ronald Reagan, they represent the new generation – Generation X. Fiercely suspicious of being lumped together as an advertiser’s target market, they have quit dreary careers and cut themselves adrift in the California desert. Unsure of their futures, they immerse themselves in a regime of heavy drinking and working in no future McJobs in the service industry. Underemployed, overeducated and intensely private and unpredicatable, they have nowhere to direct their anger, no one to assuage their fears, and no culture to replace their anomie. So they tell stories: disturbingly funny tales that reveal their barricaded inner world. A world populated with dead TV shows, ‘Elvis moments’ and semi-disposible Swedish furniture.

In Bit Rot, Douglas Coupland explores the different ways in which twentieth-century notions of the future are being shredded, and creates a gem of the digital age. Reading the stories and essays in Bit Rot is like bingeing on Netflix . . . you can’t stop with just one. ‘Bit rot’ is a term used in digital archiving to describe the way digital files can spontaneously and quickly decompose. As Coupland writes, ‘bit rot also describes the way my brain has been feeling since 2000, as I shed older and weaker neurons and connections and enhance new and unexpected ones’. Bit Rot the book explores the ways humanity tries to make sense of our shifting consciousness. Coupland, just like the Internet, mixes forms to achieve his ends. Short fiction is interspersed with essays on all aspects of modern life. The result is addictively satisfying for Coupland’s legion of fans hungry for his observations about our world. For almost three decades, his unique pattern recognition has powered his fiction, and his phrase-making. Every page of Bit Rot is full of wit, surprise and delight.