I’ve no read pretty much every book written by Douglas Coupland, the writer who coined the term Generation X. I’ve got a couple more to go, but I feel like he is probably my favorite fiction writer. When I first moved here, I picked up some of his books at the library because I remembered reading and enjoying Microserfs when I was 14 or 15. I think what I love about Coupland is that he makes me think. In some of his books, it seems that what he is writing could be reality. In others, the story becomes so real that things that probably couldn’t happen seem like they might.

The book I finished today, Girlfriend in a Coma, is incredibly intriguing. With Coupland, I can’t ever really guess where he is going. I know that there is some point that he is trying to drive home, but I don’t always get it. The story is an unlikely one, but through it I became more and more convinced that what was happening was something that could. In the end, I feel like I understand the world a little bit more, and I understand what I’m doing a little bit more after having read this book.

Imagine standing there, knowing that the world has ended. You are surrounded by your friends, but you’ve just wasted a few months together getting nothing out of what has happened to you. You have a choice, you can go on with your friends in the world with no one else, continuing on your paths of self-destruction where life means nothing, or you can go back to the day that the world ended and start all over again as long as this time around you try to make a difference. You let people know that the world is theirs, that life means something, and that the current state of the world that has us working towards efficiency and getting things done isn't our purpose. Can’t we ever revel in the presence of another?

I don’t have to go through that kind of tragedy of watching the world end around me to know that I want to make a difference, to know that I want to give to this world despite the discouragement, pain, and suffering.

I love when fiction opens my mind to new things. It always opens up my world a little bit to ideas that normally would pass me by.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 25, 2006 at 8:51 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.