Shopping in Jail: Ideas, Essays, and Stories for the Increasingly Real Twenty-First Century by Douglas Coupland is eye-opening. While the writing and delivery is very Coupland, the medium this time is unique.
This collection of essays isn’t random. It all belongs together and reflects where Coupland and we as a human species were when this was published in the fall of 2013.
The Amazon blurb includes the description, “This collection of nonfiction essays provides an illuminating meander through what we call culture today.” What we call culture changes constantly, but this book is a good reflection of the early 2010s culture and outlook.
It’s still a little mind altering in that, normally, Coupland creates long-form narratives with unique characters that enable him to share perspectives and observations that will make you think. Here, in Shopping in Jail, that exists in a far more rapid-fire way than in his novels, and I really loved the change of pace.
Additionally, the book also contains a section that is a behind-the-scenes look at his biography of Marshall McLuhan. It’s almost a short DVD commentary track to a book he previously wrote, and for Coupland that seems perfectly normal.
The ideas in this book are prescient. Maybe not all of them – there will always be some dated material in a book that’s a decade or older – but Coupland is a forward thinker. The introduction written about Coupland by Shumon Basar calls him “the heir apparent of McLuhan–for the Internet and, now, post-Internet world.”
But this unassuming McLuhan disciple is on the ball with some truly enduring gems:
“The subconscious is actually a lot like Antarctica: it’s huge, we know very little about it, it’s incredibly hard to reach, and it can be visited only if you have access to lots of money.”
“In an ever-flattening world of downloaded nonphysical experiences, the crafted object is in the ascendant, and ultimately might prove to be the trunk of the tree that gives rise to the next dominant wave of modern art.”
“The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening.”
“Once you get used to a certain level of connection, there’s just no way to go back to where you were before. The thing about 2012 is that people are more connected than they’ve ever been before–except they’ve been tricked into thinking they’re more isolated than ever. How did that happen?”
And perhaps one of my personal favorites from this book:
“Ahhh … meetings. Those spiritual cattle slaughter facilities where so many of our cherished dreams go on to die hideous protracted deaths.”
And while this book is perpetually low in stock on many bookselling sites, I would urge anyone interested in the history of yesterday, as opposed to last century or the distant past, to pick up Shopping in Jail. It may just make you nostalgic for a time that just kind of felt, in hindsight, like a go-between. Moreover, I recommend this book to many because of his musing that, if possible, “everything before 2001 will be considered the Age of Content, and all the time thereafter as the Age of Devouring.”
That, my friend, is a thought that will linger on in my brain for a long time, and you should read the book to discover how he logically arrived at such a musing.
Also, as a postscript, Coupland writes, “I was surprised and remain surprised to this day that so many people clicked with X–or with any of the books I’ve written–because it always seems, in the end, that writing is such a desolate, lonely profession and it never gets less lonely.”
The X he’s referring to is his breakout first novel Generation X. It’s kind of wonderful, but not in a celebratory way, to know that one of your influences also feels “that writing is such a desolate, lonely profession and it never gets less lonely.” Perhaps this book will push me to lean more into podcasting than writing, because there’s a profession that is slightly less lonely!