cda
20th June 2006, 15:02
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland.
Microserfs concerns itself with the lives of a group of Microsoft computer programmers at the beginning of the 1990’s, who decide to leave the company in search of something better – this can be seen as an underlying theme within the book as a whole. Written by Canadian-born Douglas Coupland, the book has much the same snappy, zeitgeisty feel as the author’s more famous earlier work, Generation X.
A common misconception about Coupland’s writing is that it is cynical, satirical or ironic in detailing the idiosyncratic day-to-day minutiae in the lives of certain types of people. Microserfs is as far as you can get from Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama or Martin Amis’s Money, what with their in-depth detailing of the lives of the unquestionably shallow and messed up that exist in modern society.
Microserfs takes the form of a near-daily diary written on a computer. Seen from the point of view of our narrator, Dan, we are introduced to housemates Bug, Abe, Todd, Susan and a little later, Dan’s girlfriend Karla. The prose is tight – hardly anything is surplus – and almost immediately we are given a taste of the style that continues throughout the book: constant references to TV programmes, brand name consumer products, notable ‘tech’ music (Kraftwerk and Gary Numan crop up a number of times) and popular toys that almost everyone should identify with.
Coupland has the ability to tap into a rich cultural vein and tag ideas and emotions onto aspects of our pasts that we all share and understand. For example, when describing his own and his housemates lives, Dan does so by listing seven dream Jeopardy! categories:
I am danielu@microsoft.com. If my life was a game of Jeopardy! my dream categories would be:
• Tandy products
• Trash TV of the late 70’s early 80’s
• The history of Apple
• Career anxieties
• Tabloids
• Plant life of the Pacific Northwest
• Jell-O 1-2-3
This is an excellent device, as it is original and amusing in one. However, Coupland takes this a stage further later in the book when characters define emotions and happenings in relation to their work. When telling Dan that she always thought she would be alone, his girlfriend Karla explains: “I thought I was going to be a READ ONLY file. I never thought I’d be…interactive.”
This kind of subject listing and defining of feelings by referring to more easily understandable terminology on the part of the characters is certainly an observant device, as people who spend all their time working in all-enveloping areas with little time away from them are sure to define themselves by and within that work.
An interesting and perhaps slightly surprising aspect to note about the book is that it matters little whether the reader is British or American, as the references within it work for both. TV programmes, toys, food products and celebrities mentioned throughout the book are all recognisable. Perhaps this is a deliberate ploy on Coupland’s part, and he is making a comment on the ever-increasing prominence of American culture around the world.
Where the book falls down is where it has aged slightly: email is described as ‘the email system’ (a term that would never have been used by the likes of Dan and co.), computer memory and speed seem ridiculously small and slow, and the computer games mentioned that were once state-of-the-art are now played only by those who like to reminisce. This is no-one’s fault though, as technology moves so fast there is no way around the fact that the book will at some point be out of date. Perhaps it would have been better to leave out any terms or references to technology that are era-specific, but then again maybe it is preferable after all that the book should remain a testament to the early 90’s world of the ‘techie’.
Microserfs is is an example of Coupland at his best. It succeeds in capturing a snapshot of a world at a time before a lot of what we take for granted in terms of technology now had even been conceived, along with telling a tale of basic human need within the realms of what some consider a cold and inhospitable environment: that of the computer and technology.
Microserfs concerns itself with the lives of a group of Microsoft computer programmers at the beginning of the 1990’s, who decide to leave the company in search of something better – this can be seen as an underlying theme within the book as a whole. Written by Canadian-born Douglas Coupland, the book has much the same snappy, zeitgeisty feel as the author’s more famous earlier work, Generation X.
A common misconception about Coupland’s writing is that it is cynical, satirical or ironic in detailing the idiosyncratic day-to-day minutiae in the lives of certain types of people. Microserfs is as far as you can get from Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama or Martin Amis’s Money, what with their in-depth detailing of the lives of the unquestionably shallow and messed up that exist in modern society.
Microserfs takes the form of a near-daily diary written on a computer. Seen from the point of view of our narrator, Dan, we are introduced to housemates Bug, Abe, Todd, Susan and a little later, Dan’s girlfriend Karla. The prose is tight – hardly anything is surplus – and almost immediately we are given a taste of the style that continues throughout the book: constant references to TV programmes, brand name consumer products, notable ‘tech’ music (Kraftwerk and Gary Numan crop up a number of times) and popular toys that almost everyone should identify with.
Coupland has the ability to tap into a rich cultural vein and tag ideas and emotions onto aspects of our pasts that we all share and understand. For example, when describing his own and his housemates lives, Dan does so by listing seven dream Jeopardy! categories:
I am danielu@microsoft.com. If my life was a game of Jeopardy! my dream categories would be:
• Tandy products
• Trash TV of the late 70’s early 80’s
• The history of Apple
• Career anxieties
• Tabloids
• Plant life of the Pacific Northwest
• Jell-O 1-2-3
This is an excellent device, as it is original and amusing in one. However, Coupland takes this a stage further later in the book when characters define emotions and happenings in relation to their work. When telling Dan that she always thought she would be alone, his girlfriend Karla explains: “I thought I was going to be a READ ONLY file. I never thought I’d be…interactive.”
This kind of subject listing and defining of feelings by referring to more easily understandable terminology on the part of the characters is certainly an observant device, as people who spend all their time working in all-enveloping areas with little time away from them are sure to define themselves by and within that work.
An interesting and perhaps slightly surprising aspect to note about the book is that it matters little whether the reader is British or American, as the references within it work for both. TV programmes, toys, food products and celebrities mentioned throughout the book are all recognisable. Perhaps this is a deliberate ploy on Coupland’s part, and he is making a comment on the ever-increasing prominence of American culture around the world.
Where the book falls down is where it has aged slightly: email is described as ‘the email system’ (a term that would never have been used by the likes of Dan and co.), computer memory and speed seem ridiculously small and slow, and the computer games mentioned that were once state-of-the-art are now played only by those who like to reminisce. This is no-one’s fault though, as technology moves so fast there is no way around the fact that the book will at some point be out of date. Perhaps it would have been better to leave out any terms or references to technology that are era-specific, but then again maybe it is preferable after all that the book should remain a testament to the early 90’s world of the ‘techie’.
Microserfs is is an example of Coupland at his best. It succeeds in capturing a snapshot of a world at a time before a lot of what we take for granted in terms of technology now had even been conceived, along with telling a tale of basic human need within the realms of what some consider a cold and inhospitable environment: that of the computer and technology.