Honestly, I would love to sit down and have a beer with Coupland. I think we would have a lot to talk about.
Throughout the past 19 years, Canadian author Douglas Coupland has published over 20 works of fiction and non-fiction. He has also published numerous articles and stories for magazines and literary journals. Beginning with his first novel – Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, published in 1991 – and continuing to his most recent – Player One: What Is To Become Of Us, published in 2010 – Coupland has explored various modern human crises including society, religion, identity, and the afterlife. His work has been described as everything from modernist, to post-modernist, to a new, undiscovered genre that has moved beyond post-modernism and into a different realm altogether. Published in 36 languages in countries around the world, Coupland’s unique literary style is proof that even the most eccentric ideas can be accepted by readers.
Player One is set in a dingy Toronto airport cocktail lounge in August 2010. The story is broken into five hours, and during each hour the plot advances. The story revolves around five strangers who are forced to seek shelter in the cocktail lounge after the price of oil rises drastically and results in an apocalyptic end to the modern world. Player One is incredibly difficult to force into a specific genre, but the most obvious categorization would be a cross between science fiction and literary fiction. The aspects of the story that are science fiction include the oil-induced apocalypse and a chemical storm cloud that threatens to destroy everything in its path. The literary fiction aspects are introduced later, when the characters begin to have in-depth, philosophical debates about life. In addition, there are aspects of romance, mystery, and horror present in the later hours of the novel, which make the story even more difficult to categorize.
As events gradually unfold, we learn more about each of the main characters. Karen, the first to be introduced, is a fortyish divorced mother travelling from Winnipeg to Toronto to meet a man she connected with on the Internet. Rick, the lounge’s bartender, is trying to overcome a drinking problem and reinvent himself. Luke, a troubled pastor, is on the run after cleaning out his congregation’s renovation fund. Rachel is a young woman devoid of personality who has come to the bar to find a man to impregnate her so she can attempt to be more human. Finally, the mysterious fifth voice – “Player One” – provides the reader with an overview of what will take place in the future at the end of each hour.
The novel is written in a very unique style. Instead of parts or chapters, Player One is broken into both hours that denote the passage of time and sections dedicated to the thoughts of each of the five main characters. Each section is written to reflect what each of the characters is going through as he or she attempts to survive in the lounge. Unfortunately, overlap between the sections backtracks the story. Even though each character experiences different things and takes part in different activities, they are all trapped together in a fairly small space. It is obvious that the characters will interact with each other frequently. Instead of glossing over what we have already learned from a previous character, Coupland reiterates the same scene from many different perspectives. This style is creative and original, and in some sections it works, but towards the end of the novel it becomes a technique that makes it easy to skip through pages in order to reach the conclusion.
It is evident that Coupland conducted detailed research before he began writing Player One. His efforts are most obvious when reading about Rachel, the beautiful yet emotionless robot of a girl who suffers from a variety of brain defects that prevent her mind from functioning as it should. Instead of glossing over the details, and hoping the reader will simply accept her condition, Coupland provides a list of defects that supply an in-depth account of what exactly Rachel suffers from. Some of her ailments include autism-related facial recognition blindness syndrome (which makes it impossible for her to tell faces apart), right-hemisphere brain lesions (which hinders her ability to appreciate things such as passion and humour), and mild OCD (which allows her to remember pi over one thousand digits) (97). Coupland explains all of Rachel’s brain issues through her own voice, which would be impossible to do if he hadn’t done his homework ahead of time.
Player One had been written for readers that must possess two key attributes. First, readers must be educated adults. This is evident because Coupland writes about deep, philosophical subjects throughout the novel. He assumes the reader is intelligent enough to keep up with the intellectual plot line, and doesn’t make an attempt to tone down his writing style so more people can understand the story. For example, on page 157, Bertis, a sniper temporarily seeking shelter in the lounge, explains to Karen that she has been tricked into not questioning her soul. He says the following: “Karen, tell me, what is the you of you? Where do you begin and end? This you thing... Is it a spirit? Is it electric? What exactly is it?” Even though the language is fairly simple, and the sentences are short and easy to read, the message behind the text is thoroughly complex. It takes an educated individual with life experience to properly dissect it, and conversations similar to the example above are present all through the novel.
Second, Player One readers must either possess a sarcastic sense of humour or a general ability to understand when someone is trying to be funny or ironic. Throughout the novel, Coupland creates many of his own words. He infuses them into the story seamlessly, and doesn’t explain that he is using words that don’t really exist. The back of the novel contains a glossary with definitions to each of the made-up words, but it is up to the reader to connect the two components together. Two of his most interesting definitions include deselfing, which Coupland defines as “willingly diluting one’s sense of self and ego by plastering the Internet with as much information as possible,” and me goggles, which is “the inability to accurately perceive ourselves as others do.” While understanding the words isn’t necessary to understand the novel itself, the reader gets a lot more out of the story if he or she is able to laugh at Coupland’s creative vocabulary.
Overall, Player One is an interesting novel that forces the reader to envision a post-apocalyptic world in an uncommon way. Instead of reading an overview about the decline of life as we know it, the story is limited to the lounge and the areas directly surrounding it. It is a fairly easy read, and at just over 200 pages it can be consumed in one or two sittings. The only downside is that some of the conversations become so long-winded they border on raving tangents. Coupland is obviously opinionated when it comes to discussing life, death, and everything in between, and his opinions shine through clearly in Player One. Some sections could have been shortened, and some conversations could have been left out altogether. The novel is definitely meant for Coupland fans, as well as readers of non-mainstream literature. But despite its shortcomings, Player One is worth reading, and anyone who picks it up will find something worth remembering amongst its pages.
*All images taken from Google.All thoughts are my own, and to not represent the opinions of RRC in any way.
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