Generation A
Author: Douglas Coupland
Release: November 10, 2009
Tagline: A Novel
Publisher: Scribner
Genre: Fiction, Satire
ISBN-10: 1439157014
ISBN-13: 978-1439157015
Main Character(s): Zack Lammle, Samantha Tolliver, Julien Picard, Diana Beaton, Harj Vetharanayan
Synopsis: “Generation A is set in the near future in a world where bees are extinct, until five unconnected people from around the world — in the United States, Canada, France, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka — are all stung. Their shared experience unites them in ways they never could have imagined.”
Declassified by Agent Palmer: Coupland is Ever-Timeless in the Buzzworthy Generation A
Quotes and Lines
Terrorize, threaten and insult your own useless generation. Suddenly you’ve become a novel idea and you’ve got people wanting to join in. You’ve gained credibility from nothing. You’re the talk of the town. Develop this as a story you can sell.
–Malcolm McLaren
Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago.
–Kurt Vonnegut, Syracuse University commencement address May 8, 1994
What is a prayer but a wish for the events in your life to string together to form a story–something that makes some sense of events you know have meaning.
Man, humans are a nightmare fucking species. We deserve everything we do to ourselves.
Fame without the money to insulate you from it is one of the most wretched human conditions possible.
I got choked up as it dawned on me that what was to me an annoyance was a ray of hope for a hope-starved world.
I think the modern world isolates people–that’s its job–but there are so many different ways to be lost and there was a unity to the texture of all our lives when the stingers went in. It was a moment when relationships with the planet were in full play: Zack and his satellites; Sam and her Earth sandwich; Julien and his World of Warcraft; me with the air rights above Mitche’s property; and Harj and his call with the New York Times–a coincidence? I didn’t think so.
Ideology is for people who don’t trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.
“Isn’t it weird that Hotmail accounts still exist?”
“That is a deceiving statistic, sir. Amazon increases the need of humans to own books, but not necessarily to read them.”