Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland OC OBCis a Canadian novelist and artist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized terms such as "McJob" and "Generation X". He has published thirteen novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books, and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. A specific feature of Coupland's novels...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth30 December 1961
CountryCanada
I've got all my old laptops going back to my first, which was so fancy at the time, in '93 or '94, but now it's just like a doorstop. One day I said, 'I'll go in and get all my old documents in there.' The cords and the wires are all gone, the discettes you need are gone. Meanwhile the little electrons are starting to wither away.
I'm pro-forwards. Do I want the Seventies to come back? No. The haircuts were terrible. Everyone stank. The food was awful.
Fashion only seems to make sense if it's rooted in some dimension of history or if it feels like a continuation of an idea.
I think half the people who get married now have met online. If I think about all the people in my life who married - they met online, online, online. And it makes sense if you think about it, because you fill out this form of 35 things that really define you and - bam - look, you've got two people who match. It works.
The thing about living in the 21st century is you can get to fortysomething and not have anyone major in your life die.
The one thing about my life that's different from others is that I wake up for no one, and for some reason, that's just good for your creativity.
My question about luging is, How do you get into the luge community to begin with? Is it one day like, 'Mom, Dad, I really want to luge.' And your parents are like: 'O.K., I'll quit my job. We'll move to an Alpine community.'
The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn't feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.
The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.
There's nothing cure or funny or lovable about being cheap. It's a total turn-off.
I get verklempt if I see a vintage TI-30 or TI-54 calculator. But I don't think I'd want to use one.
I love working out how things are made, which is why I have so many models of towers.
Bespoke tailoring: yes! I found this one pair of pants - they're Canali - and brought them into a tailor and said, 'Clone these, dammit.' They just do all the right things. I've got eight pairs in different colors and I never have to think about pants again. The only look otherwise that suits me is, like, the Professor from 'Gilligan's Island.'
In a faraway land called 'pre-2000,' what Earthlings now call blogging was called 'keeping a diary.' It's hard work to do well. I tried doing it in the early 1990s but had to stop because I no longer had a life - instead I had this thing that generated anecdotes to go into my diary. The diary took over and I had to stop.