X = What? Douglas Coupland, Generation X, and the Politics of Postmodern Irony

This book discusses Douglas Coupland's first four full-length novels: Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Microserfs, and Girlfriend in a Coma. In each of these novels, Coupland contemplates the fraught relationship between Generation X and postmodern irony. Coupland's characters struggle to find meaning and sincerity in a realm where advertising and consumerism are ubiquitous and nearly all aspects of life are commodified. The ultimate consequence of the alienation and apathy that results from such rampant materialism is the emergence of an idiom that privileges irony over affect. For Coupland, the prevalence of this irony is the most problematic aspect of postmodern society, and it is a force his characters grapple with and resist in each of his works. Considered individually, each of Coupland's first four novels portrays a different subset of Generation X and a different approach to irony. Considered together, they form a trajectory that culminates in an escape from, rather than an espousal of, irony."