JPod by Douglas Coupland is the first book I read for the book club I joined this year (the first rule of the book club is don't talk about the book club... don't tell them I told you!). It is also the first Douglas Coupland book I ever read, I borrowed it 6 years ago in high school from my then international business teacher who had brought it in for his classroom bookshelf which provided books for students who forgot one during B.E.A.R. B.E.A.R stands for Bell Excels at Reading, it occurred every Friday for the last 20 minutes of your second period class and was instated shortly after the Grade 10 literacy test was introduced in Ontario to improve success rates (unfortunately my school had a low pass rate in comparison to others in the city). Rereading JPod was just as fun as the first time I read it, especially since it is a peculiar book to read.
Filled with pages of the digits of pi and no overarching plot line it can sometimes be a little disorienting of a read. Not only is Coupland an accomplished author he is also an artist; creating such eccentric pieces as enlarged, label-less detergent bottles. So I can see why he did not go with the traditional layout for a book. Instead of having boring chapter titles, or even chapter numbers, he had pages filled with sayings, definitions, snippets of information laid out across a page in a visually engaging manner. Sometimes I found them to be superfluous, other times I found they enhanced the book. Needless to say the flow of the book was unconventional, I liked how he thought outside of the box.
The cast of characters in JPod were amusing as well; a group of six people within a video game company, who all have last names beginning with "J", end up grouped together in a cubicle pod due to some loophole in the HR system. The main character, and narrator, Ethan has a hilariously dysfunctional family. His mom has a extremely lucrative grow-up in her basement, his father leads a hopeless acting career (yet to get a speaking role), and his brother specializes in realistate for rich business men from Asia (whether that business is legal or not withstanding). A funny romp including a hugging machine (since all people in the tech business are "slightly autistic" so dislike physical contact with their peers yet as human beings, social creatures, still need that reassuring physical contact), rescuing a heroin-addict from China, sabotaging boring video games, murder cover ups, and Asian crime lords.
I think that Coupland definitely imparts some social criticism in JPod. Some of which include the tech industry and workers in Canada, the marijuana use in British Columbia, working conditions for labourers in China, the evolving workplace (i.e. no more smoking at your desk), and relationships (of the following varieties: help you bury a body, affair, self-discovery, one night stand).
I will say that I can never walk past a picture of Ronald McDonald again without thinking of the disturbing menace that JPod wanted to Easter egg into the video game they were developing. Gives me the heebee geebees just thinking about it!
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