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Douglas Coupland: Moody
- plg 11y ago"Douglas Coupland is currently artist in residence at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris" Try explaining THAT to someone from past decades. Wow
- jgrahamc 11y agoThe Medici's made a fortune in banking and politics and were great sponsors of art.
- kitcar 11y agoI think more-so what past decades may find unusual is that a Canadian, born in Germany, is an artist in residence position in France, at an American institution.
- mariodiana 11y agoIn all fairness, in the days of the Medicis, those who were both educated and well-off lived in as cosmopolitan a society as the one you describe.
- treerock 11y agoI get the impression, reading certain writers, that they live in some parallel universe very different from my own. Just about every paragraph here had me saying 'what?'.
- g_delgado14 11y agoDon't fret. Everything that comes out of DC's head makes most ppl say, 'what?'.
- DanEdge 11y agoNot everything, surely. Microserfs?
- shadeslayer 11y agoTry reading Generation X [1] by the same guy, I'm still trying to make sense of the book after 2 weeks of finishing it :P [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X:_Tales_for_an_Accelerated_Culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X:_Tales_for_an_Acc...
- equalsione 11y ago20+ years later it's hard to have a context on Generation X and how perfectly it captured that moment in time. (American Psycho was published the same year - how's that for context!). Post-Regan, Post-yuppie (well, almost), Pre-grunge, mostly pre-internet... Generation X, McJob etc are all parts of the lexicon now. Fight Club always felt to me like a kind of follow-up to Generation X. It's the weakness in Couplands whole "capture the zeitgeist" storytelling. 150 years on, Great Expectations is still relateable. Generation X, not so much. I still love the book though :-)
- coldtea 11y agoAny particular examples we can address?
- to3m 11y ago``Nowadays, if you bump into someone you haven’t seen in a while and their behaviour is weird, you say hello, depart and think, “Well, they seemed a bit medsy, didn’t they?” And then you move on.'' What? ``Throw in Ritalin and concentration drugs such as Adderall and moods quickly become very, very niche: Wellbutrin + online binge shopping; Effexor + Facebook + three scotches; Adderall plus Celexa and sitting at your desk dispiritedly checking for new emails every two-and-a-half minutes. These all sound beyond mundane'' (italics mine) What??
- hyperpallium 11y agoSame. e.g. has there been a revolution in skin and dental care? > Teenagers seem to no longer have acne or cavities
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- applecore 11y agoIs “neural reconfiguration generated by extended internet usage” a real phenomenon, or is that just a clever turn-of-phrase for reading?
- robotresearcher 11y ago> Until the mid-20th century, alcohol was it. Not really. Cannabis, opium, mushrooms, etc. have been around forever and have been marginalized to a greater or lesser extent over time, and often much less than they were in the 20th century. I've enjoyed some Coupland work, but I didn't get this piece at all.
- hunterjrj 11y agoI'm with you - this is a noted (at least in Canada) author, who appears to be ignorant of history and especially of markers in his own craft. Sherlock Holmes/snuff, etc.
- thorin 11y agoI remember reading this in uni too - lots of examples in the 1800s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opium-Eater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opiu...
- coldtea 11y ago>Sherlock Holmes/snuff, etc. Sherlock Holmes or Freyd etc, is not indicative of any trends in the general population. Might as well have used Mescalito indians as an example to rampant psychedelics use in the USA in the 19th century...
- hunterjrj 11y ago"It originated in the Americas and was in common use in Europe by the 17th century" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_%28tobacco%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_%28tobacco%29
- coldtea 11y agoIn the same Wikipedia articles it mentions several times that it mostly spread among the elites.
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- facepalm 11y agoI usually like to read Coupland, but I disagree here. Seems to me there were always ways to experience different moods: simply by doing things. Watching a sun setting would evoke different moods than chopping wood or reading a book.
- Kluny 11y agoI don't exactly disagree with what he said, but what was the point of this article?