Personal Response

Wow, hard to believe I'm actually finishing the project, but at the same time, I'm a little disappointed that it's done. Jpod was one of the first books that I like "analyzing", and from this I'm hoping it will give me that push to keep doing so in such an acceptable manor. From what I've heard, this project has also improved my writing a lot. I've gotten comments on blogs from random people (some who aren't even in this class..) saying that they are interesting and fun to read. Its always good to hear that someone had fun reading them, because I had just as much fun writing about the world of Jpod. Personally, what I think I'll miss the most is the blogs themselves. I'm a really tech-like person, and enjoy the change from writing on paper to keyboard. It doesn't set your opinion in stone quite like paper, and gives you the chance to go back as many times as possible and change what you want. Now, I'm not going to finish this small bit by saying this assignment helped me "grow as a student, an intellectual and amazingly enough – as a person" as I think that's going a bit overboard. But I have grown as student, I just need to work on my punctuality and perhaps wording things better. Hope you enjoyed this blog, I'm out!~

Explication

So..to start, I thought I had posted this. But as I retype this, I know that it somehow did not get published. So this is my best attempt at recreating what I originally had typed for my Explication:

First off, Jpod is one of the most diverse books I have ever read. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but will all its strange events, I had troubles focusing on one. Perhaps Revolt, for the programmers within Jpod are set on putting an evil Ronald McDonald character in their newest production manager's game for ruining their own game. Or perhaps Abduction, as Steve is taken to China to work in a Nike Knock-off factory, and Ethan is sent to save him. This could also be Recovery. In reality, I could go on and on, naming off countless events that happen within the book. However, I have narrowed down Ethan's conflict to be the Dramatic Situation which happens throughout the entire book.

An Unfortunate, I see as Ethan. He is seen as stuck in this world he lives in with an almost dysfunctional family and out-of-the-ordinary co-workers. We see him constantly striving for some normality, but whether it be helping his mother with her grow-op or his father with an obsessed hooker or retrieve his (now drug addicted) boss from China, he seems to always be in the middle of the Drama. The way his character is written makes sense, but Coupland makes it awkwardly obvious that this character has problems.

A Threatener, in my opinion can be one of two things. As described before, Ethan's life is complex and almost everything and everyone can be described as the "threatener" to Ethan's normal life. However, Ethan can also be the threatener. He is always stopping himself from truly fitting in 100%. He tries, he participates, but he is constantly questing why his life can't just be normal or comparing instances from his childhood that could of played out differently. Its great that one individual can strive for something in such a manner, but he needs to learn to give in. I can just sort of imagine all the other characters in hoods, whispering "join us Ethan..join the dark side".

And so when Ethan finally does join the "dark side", he is rescued by none other than the author, Douglas Coupland. At the end of the book, he is in a hole after digging out a body he had buried months before with his mother. This is the point where he accepts his world, but finally takes his first step into it when Coupland offers him a job on Dglobe. From this, he feels accepted and (from what I can tell) feels as if his life will be a bit more normal.

Apologia

Douglas Coupland has contributed a large amount of Canadian postmodern literature, and Jpod is a great example of this. The book is based largely within Canada, and focuses on cultural and social issues commonly reconized in Canadian literature. To have someone such as Coupland contribute so much to the list of postmodern art is a gift to any and all Canadians, even if at first his work was not reconized. (Cheesy? Overglorifing?)

Even as a young child, Douglas Coupland was able to reconize art in many forms. An insident that stands out is "when he read an encyclopedia article for pop art". "It showed a tomato soup can by Andy Warhol and a Roy Lichtenstein exploding jet that said, "Whaam!" My brain just kind of melted. The "TOMATO SOUP" and the "Whaam!" told me that the everyday world and its documentation is just as aesthetic and as important as any other realm.(Douglas Coupland)" After attempting courses in science, he attended Emily Carr College of Art and Design in which he describes "the best four years of [his] life" and emerged with a focus on sculpture. He did not study and forms of literature as his major, and did not start writing until offered a job as a magazine writer.

"Douglas Coupland can be seen as the King of Postmodernism in today's day of age(Nancy Stotts Jones)." His first work, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" was his first postmodern work. It started as a handbook that outlined the generation, but changed throughout its writing. The Canadian publishing company that had hired Coupland to write this handbook cancled the publication, and so Coupland's first novel was published in the United States. The novel was a "sleeper-hit", as it rose in success far after its release date. However, this was the trigger that started the avalanche of Canadian works from Douglas Coupland.

Coupland is well known for writing about such issues as Web 2.0 technology, human sexuality, and pop culture, but specific to Jpod, are the topics of immigration and drug trafficing in Vancouver. He approaches it with a relaxed tone, almost no seriousness, which can somehow let the issue settle in, yet still show the intensity of what is actually going on in the novel. Ethan, the almost "entirely normal" character can be a representation to how the community in which Coupland lives in would react, whereas the chracters who don't react "normally" (Ethan's Family, Kam Fong) can be seen as how Coupland might react or see the events played out. This style is different in comparason to other forms of literature in Canada, and has been well recieved by a variety of people. Jpod has been criticed both negatively and posatively, however has had many nominations for awards, including the Giller Prize in 2006.


(...Unfinished?)

Welcome Post

To those of you who have stumbled upon this blog, Welcome. My name is Chris Klomp, and as part of my English ISU, I have chosen to investigate the novel "Jpod", by Douglas Coupland. The novel consists of some interesting quarks, and it is my task to report on them here on this blog. I've already posted 3 responses relating to some things within the book, so I suggest reading over these if you'd like a bit of perspective on the book's events. Coming up are an Apologia, Explication, and my own personal response to the entire project. Stick around and feel free to follow if interested.

Links List

1. Douglas Coupland's Official Website - This site outlines all of Coupland's expereiences, includes a Biography, and shows all of his work in novelization and television.
2. Jpod's Offical Website - This flashy website is the official website for the Jpod, book and tv-series. Detailed information is given on almost all the characters and has an extract from the book. Good for those who are interested in reading Jpod.
3. An interview with Douglas Coupland - This interview was very insightful (to me atleast) as it covered a lot of topics I did in my own responses. Such questions cover the pages and pages of prime numbers, Douglas in the novel himself, and the character Ethan.
4. A review on JPod(Positive) - This page praises Coupland's style and ability to write through the mind of a cubicleworker. Like almost all found reviews, it refers to his previous works being great influences (Generation X and Microserfs).
5. A review on JPod(Negative) - This USA Today outlines Coupland's work as "empty iriony, shapeless plots and more wink-wink witticism than an episode of VH1's I Love the '90s." I thought it would be good to show both opinions the public had on the novel, even if I personally disagree with this one.
6. Chinatown, Vancouver - This page is from the offical Chinatown Vancouver site, but it clarifies the heritage, mainly looking into immigrants and refugees.
7. Microserfs - This book is seen as the basis of JPod, and has very close ties. To fully grasp some of the critism of the book, you have to understand this book.
8. Postmodernism - Douglas Coupland is considered royalty here, the King of Postmoderism.

Response #4(???)

Ok I know this post won't be done by October 5th because I've been trying to think of what to do the response on, and still nothing comes to mind. I promise it will be finished soon, but I have still to think on this one.. Sorry.

Response #3(Ethan's Conflicts)

I'm find doing this response very hard, simply because I have no direction to go in. Everyone else is reading their book and responding as they go, which I didn't do. So I'm reading through what the significant points could be about, and conflict comes up. Ethan's the main character, lets look at his conflicts.

Now I'm not ignoring Mrs. Stotts-Jones comment from my first post, to look at the book from a Post-Modernist's view. In fact, I did a little research, just so I could fully grasp what Post-Modernism was. From what I can see (thanks to Wikipedia's article), I have already covered a few things.

Pastiche, which involves pasting multiple elements together. This would reflect on my first post, showing the different forms of media in the novel.

Metafiction, which is basically writing about writing. This would reflect on my second post, showing that Douglas Coupland is writing the novel, in the novel.

Another form of evidence in Post Modern literature is Paranoia. "The belief is that there's an ordering system behind the chaos of the world. For the postmodernist, no ordering system exists, so a search for order is fruitless and absurd."(Wikipedia) However, we are presented with Ethan, the character who is looking for this orderly world, and yet the more and more he tries, the more chaos the world spits back out at him. This is why I can see this as one of Ethan's main conflicts, is that he is trying to be normal, but there are just to many things obstructing this goal.

The novel starts out rather normal. A group of co-workers are coming out of a meeting and are discussing the outcome. But when Ethan's mother calls him, it stirs the orderly way Ethan sees things, and he is thrown into the chaos of finding that his mother had electrocuted a client of her weed-selling and must discard the body. From here, the "rising action" would be that Ethan deals with much more ordeals, much more worse than the first.

These different instances weave the characters and Ethan together to the point where he just gives in. Within the book, he finds that this way of living is much more satisfactory if you aren't swimming against the stream. So, by the end of the book, we find that Ethan is satisfied and content with the outcome of his life within the novel. This is what I can see as Ethan's main conflict.

(This is just a little side question towards the English teachers at central, but why are your Profile Photos stuff monkeys? Inside joke?)

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).

Journal Response #1 (Book Construction)

First off, when I took this approx 500 page book called "Jpod"*, I expected a bore of a read relating to iPods and technology in today's society. Something corny I suppose. One weekend later and I've finished the book, regretting that I had not taken the time to enjoy it more.

The way the book is composed at first glance is different. When I first flipped through the pages, I realized that randomly the text was broken up. Large lists of random numbers, Chinese text, and what seemed to be screenplay all scared me to what this book could lead to. However the construction of how its all meshed together is quite effective in keeping the readers attention.

For the most part, the book is written in first person by Ethan Jarlewski, who is self-defined as a techie. The way Coupland has chosen to narrate the book through Ethan is amazingly witty. There are so many characters in the book, with problems and whatnot, that Ethan weaves his way through. In the end, all of their stories and experiences all come together, as weird as they all might be (From deaths of helium intake, to marijuana grow-ops, smuggling of refugees, and ballroom dancing).

When Ethan is not narrating the book in first person, the pages are littered with tid-bits of information relating to the story, or perhaps what Ethan or his co-workers are seeing on their screen. For instance, to introduce the 6 programmers who worked in "Jpod"*, Ethan declared he would "draw up a standerized list that itemizes everything special and unique" about his coworkers. This was an effective way to create a basic outline that didn't completely define each character, but was a good start to build from.

The plot is seemlessly scattered, and does not follow the rules of "Climax" and "Rising Action" at first glance. It follows more of a TV Show outline(Which I found later, has already been made in 2008). Events happen, and in the end they all coordinate together. The Climax in my opinion would be (Spoiler Alert) the first time Doug Coupland asks for the laptop from Ethan.

* "JPod" is defined as the pod(a group of cubicles), in which these programmers work at. The reason they call it "JPod" is because all the members in this pod, have a first/last name starting with J. (Ethan Jarlewski, John Doe, etc)