Polaroids from the Dead ~ Douglas Coupland
I believe Polaroids from the Dead was Coupland's fifth book, but I'm glad I never read it until now. It's a real treat for a long-time fan! A mix of essays, "Microstories," letters, memories, and travel writing, this book is visual (typically) and personal and very revealing.
Young Douglas discovers James Rosenquist at age 8, and making his own "Rosenquists" becomes his new hobby.Years later he is driving through Washington State, crying for Kurt Cobain in a coma. A middle-aged Deadhead-turned-software-millionaire attends a Dead concert with his surgeon pal, and mourns the evaporation of the middle class; meanwhile the Shampoo Planet-esque kids flee the Dead concert to listen to "songs about robots - written by cash registers." In Brentwood, Los Angeles (a real place that does not technically exist), lives of people are "denarrated," and history is as irrelevant as morality. The lack of storyline is static, no matter what Marilyn Monroe, Lisa Marie Presley, or O.J. Simpson might be up to. In contrast, Palo Alto is a charming and gracious "dreamscape."
We all know D.C. is a master of perfectly capturing moments in history (a blurb on the jacket calls him a "zeitgeist chaser") but in this case, he takes the early years of the 1990s and shows how their stories repeat themselves, through the past and into the future. That being said, don't read this book until you're ready to return fully to 1994 for a day or two. The nostalgia may overwhelm you.
Young Douglas discovers James Rosenquist at age 8, and making his own "Rosenquists" becomes his new hobby.Years later he is driving through Washington State, crying for Kurt Cobain in a coma. A middle-aged Deadhead-turned-software-millionaire attends a Dead concert with his surgeon pal, and mourns the evaporation of the middle class; meanwhile the Shampoo Planet-esque kids flee the Dead concert to listen to "songs about robots - written by cash registers." In Brentwood, Los Angeles (a real place that does not technically exist), lives of people are "denarrated," and history is as irrelevant as morality. The lack of storyline is static, no matter what Marilyn Monroe, Lisa Marie Presley, or O.J. Simpson might be up to. In contrast, Palo Alto is a charming and gracious "dreamscape."
We all know D.C. is a master of perfectly capturing moments in history (a blurb on the jacket calls him a "zeitgeist chaser") but in this case, he takes the early years of the 1990s and shows how their stories repeat themselves, through the past and into the future. That being said, don't read this book until you're ready to return fully to 1994 for a day or two. The nostalgia may overwhelm you.