Polaroids from the Dead: And Other Short Stories

by Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland takes his sparkling literary talent in a new direction with this crackling collection of takes on life and death in North America -- from his sweeping portrait of Grateful Dead culture to the deaths of Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe and the middle class.
For years, Coupland's razor-sharp insights into what it means to be human in an age of technology have garnered the highest praise from fans and critics alike. At last, Coupland has assembled a wide variety of stories and personal "postcards" about pivotal people and places that have defined our modern lives. Polaroids from the Dead  is a skillful combination of stories, fact and fiction -- keen outtakes on life in the late 20th century, exploring the recent past and a society obsessed with celebrity, crime and death. Princess Diana, Nicole Brown Simpson and Madonna are but some of the people scrutinized.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Essays, Canada, Music, Pop Culture, Cultural

212 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Douglas Coupland is Canadian, born on a Canadian Air Force base near Baden-Baden, Germany, on December 30, 1961. In 1965 his family moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he continues to live and work. Coupland has studied art and design in Vancouver, Canada, Milan, Italy and Sapporo, Japan. His first novel, Generation X, was published in March of 1991. Since then he has published nine novels and several non-fiction books in 35 languages and most countries on earth. He has written and performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, England, and in 2001 resumed his practice as a visual artist, with exhibitions in spaces in North America, Europe and Asia. 2006 marks the premiere of the feature film Everything's Gone Green, his first story written specifically for the screen and not adapted from any previous work. A TV series (13 one-hour episodes) based on his novel, jPod premieres on the CBC in January, 2008.

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Retrieved 07:55, May 15, 2008, from http://www.coupland.com/coupland_bio....

Reviews

[Hank Stuever · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essays, some of them quite good, all of them with the same Gen X asceticism that is sometimes mistaken for pure irony.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories and essays that analyses 90s culture in North America from the perspective of somebody living through it.

Douglas Coupland is right up there as one of my favourite authors and this was my first experience of his short writings; a selection of themed pieces told in such a way that even the fiction felt like reality.

Dissecting the evolution of the generation he had previously inadvertently christened Generation X and the way we choose to connect with others whilst remaining disconnected, he uses found photographs to enhance the message at the collections core. To use a quote from Downton Abbey, "things are changing."

As always Coupland writes well but my attention wavered from piece to piece and as a whole it failed to sustain my enjoyment.

[Steven Godin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The essays were good.
The short stories were rubbish.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

My least favorite Douglas Coupland book so far. This is for Coupland's die hard fans ONLY. Reading it in 2017 is a little redundant and weird as most of it is about subjects that were very much relevant in the 90's, and may seem ridiculous to read about these days, after all that has been happening since its first publication. Grateful Dead concerts, the first days of the internet and upheavals in celebrity culture - In hindsight, I think I should have read it much earlier. The Brentwood part was the best part of the book and perhaps the only reason to read it (except maybe some stories in the first part). Coupland's breakdown of different aspects and ingredients of Brentwood is remarkable.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Coupland's best, in my opinion.

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whatchoo Talkin' 'bout, Bruce Willis?

"What's with all these hippies kissing my girl, why don't they ever wash? What did we ever do to that cult that made them so violent? Whoo-hoo, I look just like Charlie Manson, oh-whoah, and you're Sharon Tate...I don't care what they grok about us anyway, I don't care about that!" - Weezer

Those MTV Buzz Bin friendly lyrics from the 90s are what I remember most about the 90s. That, and the couch potato friendly, Beavis and Butthead target-marketed, hit MTV video wherein rising auteur Spike Jonez integrated video of the band into the Eyes Wide Shut orgy scene.

Yeah. Okay. I'm just poking fun, extrapolating from a quote in this book wherein a character states out loud that all the females at the day-glow rock show look like Tate, all the males look like Manson. But, seriously, I do congratulate myself on the fact that this mish-mosh of images, parody, irony, timeslip, timeslap, etcetera is what we all took out of the 20th century and left orphaned (and/or partial-birth abortioned) at the doorstep of the First Days of the Last Days of the Church of the Twenty First Century once this communal Rosemary's Baby began to cry, beg, talk, stare silently, claw, foam at the mouth, etcetera. A state of mind that we're only now starting to reclaim, feverishly waving our rain-soiled ticket stubs at the confused lady behind the counter at the Overly Socially Mediated Chinese Laundromat and Internet Cafe Sex Robot Emporium and Dollar Store.

Anyways. This is a pleasant collection of essays by Douglas Coupland, wherein he remembers the 90s as a series of Grateful Dead concert short stories, Kurt Cobain's death, half-hearted backstage political involvements and intrigues (circa 1992), Vancouver bridges, post-Wall fall German tourism, and O.J. Simpson. Needless to say, Coupland's experience of the 90s is not mine (and probably not yours) but exactly what you'd expect from a razor's edge, upper middle-class white-privilege art-major Baby Boomer. Nothing here about Austin Powers, Stone Temple Pilots, rap or Ross Perot. Lollapalooza and Zooropa. Fuckin' Phish and Blues Traveler and the forever-spiral of porn site pop-up windows that no amount of corner-X clicking would terminate, eradicate. Indeed, that clicking? That would only accelerate the bombardment of come-ons. Nothing. Nothing here about these more common experiences of the...of the 90s.

Maybe I'm just being cranky. ...Yeah, I'm just being cranky. I'm being cranky and a jerk. But, Coupland? I put off reading this for years because it looked like a picture book, not a book proper. Sorry I did, because it's actually pretty darn good once you realize the whole "spotlight on the 90s" angle was a publisher's demand, a joke.

[Mind the Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

Den här boken är SÅ bekant; formatet, färgerna. Har jag eller någon i min närhet ägt den och haft den framme synligt? Kanske bläddrade jag i den på något bibliotek på 90-talet för att läsa brevet till Kurt Cobain?

Känner mig inte nostalgisk över det årtiondet och inget annat heller, förutom 60-talet - som jag missade, så hoppar nu över många texter och fokuserar på det Vancouverrelaterade. Den om Lions Gate Bridge finns även publicerad här. Två världar kolliderar när jag nu noterar att Coupland gillade att "haroldera" i sena tonåren, d.v.s. hänga på kyrkogårdar, som Harold i filmen. Särskilt Capilano View Cemetery och vi styrde genast hyrbilen upp dit.

[Donnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a gift. It was terrible.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting.

[Ty Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a very interesting format, as it consists of a series of short stories centred around Grateful Dead concerts as well as a collection of essays on generational change, societal norms and Douglas Coupland's experiences. I found the stories had an interesting depth to them, as they made the reader consider the ephemerality of every moment. It was also nice to see the different perspectives and experiences of all the characters. The naivety of the young people and the depravity of the old. The essays were a little bit boring overall. Somewhat fun short read, but not one that I would particularly recommend to others. Fun fact: the term "Generation X" comes from this book.

[Elizabeth Roberts-Zibbel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was written when the 90s were only half over, but certainly the early 90s were very concerned with leaving the decadent 80s behind and also a bit obsessed with both the 60s and the future. These essays were pretty hit or miss for me and it was kind of painful to read them knowing how much of an incredible shift would be coming with Bush vs. Gore, 9/11, and Obama’s election. And then Trump. What an insane 20 years it’s been.

[Susan Strickland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe Polaroids from the Dead was Coupland's fifth book, but I'm glad I never read it until now. It's a real treat for a long-time fan! A mix of essays, "Microstories," letters, memories, and travel writing, this book is visual (typically) and personal and very revealing.

Young Douglas discovers James Rosenquist at age 8, and making his own "Rosenquists" becomes his new hobby. Years later he is driving through Washington State, crying for Kurt Cobain in a coma. A middle-aged Deadhead-turned-software-millionaire attends a Dead concert with his surgeon pal, and mourns the evaporation of the middle class; meanwhile the Shampoo Planet-esque kids flee the Dead concert to listen to "songs about robots - written by cash registers." In Brentwood, Los Angeles (a real place that does not technically exist), lives of people are "denarrated," and history is as irrelevant as morality. The lack of storyline is static, no matter what Marilyn Monroe, Lisa Marie Presley, or O.J. Simpson might be up to. In contrast, Palo Alto is a charming and gracious "dreamscape."

We all know D.C. is a master of perfectly capturing moments in history (a blurb on the jacket calls him a "zeitgeist chaser") but in this case, he takes the early years of the 1990s and shows how their stories repeat themselves, through the past and into the future. That being said, don't read this book until you're ready to return fully to 1994 for a day or two. The nostalgia may overwhelm you.

[Rand · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to understand the tenuous transition with which western culture entered the 90s, read this book.
it is excellent.

[Kieran · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't bother..

[Garrett Zecker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Polaroids From The Dead remains as a time capsule stuffed from the era and author that defined my generation. But is it a true time capsule of the nineties and generation x as it was and remains thirty years in the past in 2022? I have read many of Coupland’s other books and enjoyed them somewhere in my late teens, but somewhere around there I stopped after discovering Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, Joshua Cohen, and even more recently, Karl Ove Knausgaard... Arguably a group of postmodern writers managed to take the same thing and the same time and do it astronomically better. Recently at a book sale, I picked up Polaroids and JPod – the copy of Polaroids I purchased for a dollar was even a signed first printing – and decided to dive into nostalgia under Coupland’s capable pen.

I guess the question I asked myself not one paragraph in, is it a time capsule or a relic? And how well does it capture the atmosphere we all experienced?

Rambling on the subject of sprawl as it begins to take its toll on the American identity seems to be the method to Coupland’s observations, in a world that is seemingly more and more overrun by money-making schemes piled one on top of another in the monoculture of shopping centers that contribute to our rapidly deteriorating world. It’s almost quaint to look at this nihilism in hindsight when the world was once so bright and the future wasn’t concerned with global warming, 9/11 hadn’t happened, and even the direst of observations now seem beautifully optimistic.

My favorite piece in the collection was a meditation on Harold and Maude that I didn’t even know existed. My favorite film of all time and a cornerstone to my philosophy, Coupland does an impressive job reflecting on the meaning of life and death, the differences between that culture and ours, and the ways in which true loss vibrates through time. I also liked the piece on Cobain. One funny thing about the collection is Coupland’s attachment to California and the decidedly Canadian lens through which everything is experienced regardless of having moved here full time.

I think this collection manages to be all of these things at the same time... For better or worse... Of course, reading it provided some slanted and dizzying nostalgia, but somewhat of a strange foreignness as well. Was it time? Coupland’s prose? Who knows what it is, but it is a book that was fun to make my way through like an old polaroid wondering what exactly that fuzzy thing was in the corner... I am not sure; however, this will be remembered. Maybe that’s the point.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Like most consultants profiting from the burgeoning world of political technology, Tim worships the database. He knows how to narrowcast information into persuadable sectors of what he calls the "simian population base;" he can merge TV-viewing databases with voting databases. He is proud not to be just another twenty-eight-year-old burnout case from the Hill."

At first glance, this has the feel of a collection quickly cobbled together on the heels of the author's wildly successful first outing (and I suppose it most likely was), but on reading it in 2020, some of Coupland's observations and the book's Instagram-sans-Polaroid size (and Sharon Tate cover) feel eerily prescient. While a few of the essays are less than compelling, the essay on Vancouver's Lions Gate Bridge remains a timeless stunner. Less so is the last section on Brentwood and OJ Simpson. What do you do with Coupland? Where do you place him? He's a little bit Warhol, a little bit Wolfe, and in true Gen X fashion, never had any intention to be a spokesperson for anyone or anything. But yet here he is, calling it in 1996, almost a quarter-century before a lot of other people.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got lost in a little time warp, having found this book at the library, where the new releases usually are displayed. Apparently, the staff picks were shelved right nearby.

I read this in one day (lots of photographs included) and wondered what time period the fiction was supposed to be set (I mean, there have been fires and mud slides and drought in California recently, but these are described like some sort of future hellscape).

The other essays seemed more tethered to the 1990s. I would like an update of the The Brentwood Notebook please. Then I checked the publication date and it all snapped into place. Still, I wonder how a 90s baby would receive this. I knew all the references because I’m almost as old as Douglas Coupland.

[John Carlsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

En novellsamling med tio korta noveller. Gemensamt för dem är att de alla utspelas på en och samma Grateful Dead-konsert i Kalifornien, någon gång under 80- eller 90-talet. Här får vi samma upplevelse skildrad ur olika perspektiv: de unga som aldrig fick uppleva 60-talet men som antingen fascineras eller vämjes av den tiden, de äldre som var med som tycker att allt har gått nedåt sedan ungdomsåren och en rad andra.

I dessa skildringar ges uttryck för ett antal tankar om svunna tiders ideal kontrasterade mot det som är berättelsens nutid. Som ofta när det gäller Coupland är generationskonflikterna ständigt närvarande, och Grateful Dead-konserten utgör en bra projektionsyta för dessa.

Boken bör läsas från pärm till pärm eftersom historierna förstärker varandra.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a series of short stories with its main characters post-collegiates encountering and reacting to events of the day (i.e., Kurt Cobain’s suicide, OJ Simpson’s murder case) and their lives in general. Contained therein are a sort of commentary by the author in a detached, sometimes snarky, and often witty manner. The book is a sort of Salinger for the 90s with the angst and ennui brought on by the early dotcom years where the aforementioned events become the characters’ defining moments absent the grander events of previous generations (i.e., WWI/II, the Depression, Vietnam).

[Hollie Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a collection of essays - many centered around likely fictional Dead concert attendees. Amusing imagination at work here. really enjoyed this line of thinking - Pg 179 - about the importance of having a story, a narrative of your life and how, if you lose that, you are denarrated – or not having a life.' So-and-so doesn't have a life. How can you have a story when you have no religion, no family connections, no ideology, no sense of class or location, no politics and no sense of history? America gives us no clues on how to cope with personal storylessness.

[Dori · Rating 5 out of 5]

a stop-off in my amblings through Gen X lit; fascinating to see the beginnings of irony-monoculture documented and commented on as though anomalous; one story, about a Deadhead young mother raised by hippies, charts the failures of Boomers to commit to a new way of life and our failures to understand how close they came. most of all, this is a barbed and at the same time loving examination of the West Coast, “land without history”

[Jesús Rivas · Rating 2 out of 5]

La manera de escribir se me hizo demasiado rebuscada, puede que mi nivel de inglés no sea el ideal para este tipo de lecturas pero no pensé que fuera a ser tan tedioso. La verdad no me gustó y no lo recomendaría.

Cuando me prestaron el libro pensé que se centraría en la fotografía pero no es así.

[Kelly Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

a+ nostalgia and cultural critique

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good I liked the one with the journalist and the Brentwood story.

[Larry Scarzfava · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although some of the pieces in this book are mediocre, others are among Coupland's finest and most beautiful work, especially "The German Reporter."

[Brett Grossmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times amazing!!! At others I found myself drifting and bored like I was given the book as homework to read

[Bennett Starnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it affected me more because of where I am in life & where I was when I first read it.

[Sam Fallone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn’t really get into it. The last part of about Brentwood was interesting but his writing style just wasn’t for me

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the photos were interesting but the stories were boring and some what pretentious.

[Aaron Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories and articles. Good stuff, but far from J-Pod.