Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Not a typical novel because there isn't a plot as such. What we have here is an odd collection of anecdotes about/told by a group of 20 somethings living in the early '90s. Andy, Dag, and Claire have gone through a “mid-twenties” crisis and decided the usual life path of college to career to marriage to house to kids is not for them.

I can relate. As a middle-class kid you always feel like you have to aim for the same life your parents had. If you don't, I suppose you delay “adulthood.” Of course if you delay too long, your life can still seem kind of empty. The characters in this book share the notion that the pursuit of status and material objects that their parents engage in wasn't going to give them a real life. So they withdraw and live underemployed, doing jobs they are too smart for and just getting by. Still, are they happy? Coupland isn't offering you a solution here, just showing you how this generation may have looked at the world.

I love the chapter titles, “ I Am Not a Target Market”, “Shopping is Not Creating,” and “Remember Earth Clearly” are a few favorites. I'm still thinking about my moment of how I want to remember Earth. One story that stood out in my mind was about the three sisters and the astronaut. In a “fairy tale” the sister who went with him would have been rewarded with a fantastic new life for her faith but in this cynical Gen-X tale, it is assumed by the other two sisters, and the reader, that she dies for being a trusting fool.