Author Douglas Coupland is pictured in this undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ HO- Random House - D.J. Weir
TORONTO - Sitting in his publisher's Toronto office, nursing a cup of not-strong-enough coffee, Douglas Coupland recalls a recent Twitter post he made about a gory experience at London's Heathrow Airport.
A few weeks ago, Coupland says, he snagged a fingernail going through security, leaving him with a half-torn nail and nowhere - for obvious reasons - to buy a nail file or small pair of scissors.
So he shared his situation with one of the airport screeners, who pulled out a tub of seized nail clippers, fished out a reasonably clean one and handed it to him.
"What do you do with (a story like) that?" Coupland laughs, before answering his own question: "You put it on Twitter."
It's an anecdote that might seem to have nothing to do with his newest novel, "Generation A," which the 47-year-old Vancouver-based author is doing interviews to promote.
But a good portion of the book, says Coupland, is an attempt to consider how, in a world where almost everyone has access to a blog or a Facebook page or a Flickr account, people attempt to carve out their own identity.
"Generation A" - or simply "A," as he affectionately calls it - tells the story of five characters from different corners of the globe: Diana, a northern Ontario woman with Tourette syndrome; Harj, a Sri Lankan man whose family was killed in the 2004 tsunami; Samantha, a young New Zealander; Julien, a French university dropout; and Zack, an American corn farmer with a predilection for harvesting his crops in the nude.
It's set in a not-too-distant future where the world's honeybees have disappeared, making a McIntosh apple the equivalent of a rare, centuries-old bottle of wine. At least, people assume the bees have vanished until, one by one, Diana, Harj, Samantha, Julien and Zack are stung.
There's a connection between the stingings - which, in Zack and Samantha's case, are on the Internet even before they're whisked off to a secret laboratory for observation - and Solon, a highly addictive drug that one character says is like "reading a thousand books in 24 hours."
The five are held in captivity for weeks, forced to answer odd, seemingly meaningless questions while being fed only gelatinous cubes. Then they're released - and that's when things get truly strange. Without giving too much away, the five find themselves drawn to each other, and end up on an island off the British Columbia coast, where the mysterious scientist Serge goads them into telling made-up stories to each other, all apparently in the name of research.
Coupland says he wanted "Generation A" - an obvious riff on "Generation X," his career-defining debut novel - to explore what he calls "the 19th-century romantic notion" that everyone's life is a story, with a clear beginning and end. Technology and globalization are changing the way people measure their identity, he says.
"That's probably one of the biggest non-political changes we're going to go through," Coupland says. "It'll probably continue for another two decades, I think, the notion of who you are and why you are."
Coupland is among the best Canadian writers at extrapolating, in realistic ways, how society might be using technology decades from now. Take Samantha: when we meet her, she's forming an "earth sandwich," a fictional-yet-believable fad where, by using a GPS-enabled cellphone, people on opposite sides of the planet contact each other, lay down slices of bread and snap a photo.
Other characters are constantly vlogging - that is, video blogging - their lives, and the technology plays a key part in one of the book's climactic scenes.
To promote "Generation A," publisher Random House got together with Toronto-based production company Crush Inc. and produced three video clips inspired by the novel, releasing them on iTunes. In one clip that's reminiscent of the five main characters' time in isolation, Coupland is alone in a white apartment, where a disembodied voice asks questions like "What is the most evil letter?" (In case you're wondering, Coupland thinks it's J.)
Coupland says it's great to have a publisher willing to push the boundaries, even if it's impossible to quantify what effect the campaign will have on book sales.
"Does it work? I don't know. There's no way of measuring the stuff. Does advertising work in general? I mean, if that copy of Maclean's didn't have (an ad for) Crest toothpaste, would Crest take a hit? Probably not," he says.
"But at least they're trying to think forwardly."
Still, Coupland insists he's not a soothsayer or a prognosticator. Nor, he says, is he a "cheerleader" for technology. He loves it when he sees people reading in public and admits he can't get to sleep at night without reading at least a few pages of fiction.
"I'm interested in the present," Coupland says. "And I've always found that if you examine something incredibly obvious, that's where you find the most unusual things."
Ze Frank, in a part of his daily variety show (which ran for a year), decided to make an Earth sandwich. Unfortunately for him, he could only make an open face sandwich as opposite from his location on the Earth is nothing but water. So he then challenged his viewers to complete the dream. Using tools he developed, they did. Repeatedly.
Now enter Mr. Coupland. As he was writing the book, he, or someone closely involved, warned Ze that this would be in the book. Ze emailed Coupland and requested that credit be given, i.e. in a footnote or similar entry. Coupland did not comply. Needless to say, Ze is not pleased.
Honestly, this entire deal leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It makes me wonder what other current or past events Mr. Coupland has observed and decided to claim as his own ideas. I will not make an effort to find out.