Journal Response #2 (Doug Coupland in the Novel)

First off, this is a warning to anyone who hasn't read the novel, and doesn't want to be spoiled. This post contains critical incidents from the book! BEWARNED!

That said, right from the start of the novel, first dialouge said, he includes himself. By this, I mean he wrote himself a part in the novel. The characters know him for his works from the start, as they constantly say lines that refer to "Doug Coupland's Novels".

Page 17: "Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel!"

Page 117: "If I were Douglas Coupland, I'd have sued the pants off Aaron Spelling."

Page 217: "Drinking Zima is something Douglas Coupland would make a character do."

(I just realized this as I typed out all the quotations, but freakisly they are all on a page in an incriment of 100 plus 17. Strange..)

Anyways, halfway through the book, when Ethan is traveling to China in first class, he sees Douglas Coupland. Having ordered Scotch, Ethan is partly drunk when he accidently stumbles upon Coupland. They begin to talk however, and Ethan explains this wacko situation he is in(His mother had a stalker who was also Ethan's boss, A friend of the mother made him addicted to heroin and sent him to China to work in a shoe factory, so he had to go get his boss to save the company's project). From this, Coupland is interested in Ethan and asks for his Laptop. When Ethan awakes from his drunken slumber, he finds a note on his Laptop, saying how much of an idiot he is for giving it to a random stranger. Later they meet again and Coupland is asked to help Ethan, but Coupland only agrees to help if he can have his laptop. The purpose of this is so Coupland can write a novel about the interesting life that Ethan leads.

Now I found this part interesting, because Coupland asks for Ethan's second laptop saying that he would be writing the novel. It posed the question: "Is this real?". It made a so unbelievable novel, with all its quirks and weird instances seem like it had all happened. So I did a little research:

1. Through the power of the internet, I have found there are no people with the names Ethan Jarlweski, John Doe, Kam Fong, or any other characters from the novel in Canada. Bummer..
2. There is also no new peice of technology the is even similar to Dglobe, which is a new invention in which Coupland hires all the Jpodsters to work on. (This thing was awesome, I'd buy one!).
3. Most of the email addresses given to the Jpodsters, do not excist, except for Cancer Cowboy's and Evil Mark's addresses.
4. There are no Missing Person reports similar to that of Steve Lefkowits or Tim (?).

Another thing that threw me off: He potrays himself as an arogant bastard. This is confusing because if I were writing about myself, I'd make myself look good. Then again, he is being described through Ethan's perspective, and from Ethan's P.O.V., I would agree. I found the reason why he based his character like he did. He was putting himself out there as the media, or rather the internet, had potrayed him. In later interviews he calls himself the "Anti-Doug".

From this, I have to put off my theory that Doug Coupland actually took something non-fictional and made it into a novel. Through the way the novel is written though, he could fool anyone without a computer to research the book(Yes, I was without a computer on my 5 hour drive in which I read it).