Girlfriend In A Coma
By Douglas Coupland
Harper Collins, Toronto, 1998


Reviewed By Rick McGrath

Generation ZZZZ

The Scene: Toronto. Saturday night, 6:15 pm outside Maple Leaf Gardens. Wayne picks his way through the scalpers along Dundas Street and spies Bob outside the main gates.

"Hey, Bob, hey man, howsitgoin?"

"Yo, Wayno. OK, you're here. Been waitin ten minutes. Scalpers won't leave you alone. OK. Big game, eh? Go Leafs Go! Crush the Canucks. Tonite we take those Vancouver bastards. Messier is old, man! Tie's gonna eat 'em up. This is good. Thanks, man, for the invite, Wayno. You got the tikkies? Yes. Wonderful. You are the man. A ones. Picture it. Aisle A, Seat one. Quinn the traitor right in front of us. He's gonna love to kick some butt tonight. Hah. Hah."

"You got it, Bobbarino. But first, the suds for the buds."

"All right. Let's get off the street."

The Scene: Inside Maple Leaf Gardens. Wayne and Bob have tickets for Aisle A, Seats 1 and 2. They're directly behind the Leaf player's bench. It's 6:45. The players are making their way to the ice for their pre-game warmup. The boys are getting settled.

"Hey man, watch these beers. Can you believe those prices? Crummy Blue for five bucks! That's an hour burning your fingers frying up Big Macs, man...highway robbery...hey, whad you pay for the seats? $110 each? Jeez, man, if you didn't have a great job you couldn't afford it... you have to be sellin dope to pay for this..."

"Gawd, man, keep it down... shit."

"OK, jeez, check this view. You can tell a lot from the warm-up. Game faces. Lookit those guys. Sundin, you yellow Swede dog, hit somebody tonight!"

"Yeah, nail somebody, you candy ass foreign trash."

 "Wayno, just check it all. Take it in...we're right behind the bench... the buds in blue are warming up right in fuckin front of us... the TV cameras are pointed right at us... two beers each...what could be better, bro?"

"Only Nikki the Queen of Leg, man."

"Good call...so whatcha been up to?"

"Sick from Sunday to Thursday. Puckin up everything. Bad flu. Couldn't work. Laid in bed for five days."

"Boring as hell."

"No so bad. Surfed the net. Read a book."

"What?"

"Yeah, Brandy's friend...you know that granola bar from BC? Works on film sets? Long, scraggily hair, fuckin tits out to here..."

"Yeah, yeah... Manchester... Malissa..."

"Morgan."

"Yeah, her."

"So she gives Brandy this book to read... so she whips through it... said it was sorta sad, said this book had a part in it about some of the characters working on the X-Files set, and Brandy said Morgan worked on the X-Files in Van, too."

"So it's about the tv show?"

"Nah, it's got a coupla characters that work on the show for a year or so...scouting locations and making the aliens...special effects stuff."

"So what's it about?"

"It's a story about a bunch of Gen-X types. You know the writer, Doug Coupland, has made it big writing about the whole generation X shtick. You know, the late baby boomers..kids born between 61 and 68..."

"Like me?"

"Yeah, like you Bob, lazy shitass losers."

"C'mon man, just cause you ended up with the cushy job and I'm makin fries..."

"No, cause I paid my dues and you want it for nothing..."

"OK, OK, gen X, I got it..."

"Yeah, so, the story is all about this gang of high school friends from North Vancouver. Three chicks; three guys. And another guy who sets it up - Jared - yeah, sounds like someone from Krypton, he's a football hero who dies when he's 18  and he's sort of the master of ceremonies."

"So, what's the story?"

"It's really centred on this one guy, Richard. He's got a girlfriend, Karen Ann, who is having, like, real evil premonitions. Just before grad they're up on Grouse skiing one night and the two of them get it off. The next night she's not feeling too well, falls asleep and goes into a coma."

"Drugs?"

"Nah, just drops off. They put her in a hospital but she doesn't snap out of it. Then they discover she's preggers and she pops a kid without waking up. Richard hangs around the whole time - everybody suspects he's the old man, but the psychic strain is too much, and he tries to work but just ends up getting into the booze."

"Here's to beer!"

"The next huge section is all about what happens to all these rest of the gang: Pam, Hamilton, Wendy and Linus.  Essentially, they all end up totally fucked.  Pam goes away and beomes a famous model, lives the exaulted lifestyle, does way too much dope, blows all her money and returns to North Vancouver. Hamilton scuzzes around, gets married, drops the blonde when Pam returns and marries her. Linus gets a job as an electrical engineer, drops out to hitch hike around the US for a couple years, finds nothing, and returns. Wendy beomes an overworked medic. Pam, Hamilton and Linus work on the X-Files for awhile, then Linus and Wendy get married. Pam and Hamilton end up with a huge herion habit. Richard and his kid, Megan, do dick and Megan turns out to be a wild one, drops out of school and hangs around with bikers. Then she has a kid. Finally after 18 years of  missing the boat, Jared returns to the scene and warns all of an impending crisis. And then Karen Ann wakes up. She's totally emaciated, but she's awake and for her, 18 years ago is just a night away. She works her way back to health but the big surprise is coming: one day everyone in the world, no matter what they're doing, suddenly feels sleepy, lies down, and dies."

"Extreme narcolepsy."

"All except the original six and Megan and her kid."

So they got the whole world at their fingertips."

"Directly."

"Jeez, you could lift anything you wanted."

"Precisely. And they do. But it's still boring for these doughheads."

"Howso?"

"They don't change. They just use stuff up. They rob stores and throw jewelry around. They burn money. They rip off pharmacies. They're bored."

"I'd give it a shot."

"But it's not all cool. There's no power. Nothing works. The air is screwed from blown-up atomic reactors. The weather is shot. Then Jared, the ghost guy, comes back and gives them each what they really need: Linus gets a glimpse of Heaven; Pam & Hamilton have the drugs cleaned out of their body, Wendy gets pregnant, Karen's legs are healthy again, and Richard, he's now cool so doesn't need anything.  Meanwhile the landscape is starting to fall apart - Mt. Baker is active again - and Jared returns one last time.  It's time for the deneument, and the deal is this: these zombies have been, and I quote, "more concerned with developing our personalities and with being 'free'. " So the deal is they've always wanted something noble in their lives, but they have no conviction.  Jared gives them this big pep talk about how they should care about things and make stuff better and stick to their beliefs and all this shit, but if they want to survive the impending doom Karen Ann has to go back into the coma. Once she does the world will zap back to normal."

"And...?"

"So the chick goes back to dreamsville and the rest all become model fuckin pansy Reform citizens."

"What?"

"Like I said, they all get gung-ho on life again. The ending is pure crapola: 'We'll be adults who smash the tired, exhausted system. We'll crawl and chew and dig our way into a radical new world. We will change minds and souls from stone and plastic to linen and gold - that's what I believe. That's what I know'."

"Wayno...sounds like my crazy hippie older brother to me. He was always ranting on about higher consciousness shit. Way too much acid. Deadhead."

"Bob, you're a knob, but you're probably right about this. Those Gen-X slackers are always either whining about the 60s or are trying to rip it off. This Coupland guy sounds like a polite Abbie Hoffman. Girlfriend in a Coma, yeah. Should be Generation in a Coma. Avoid this book, my friend."

"You're right, man. Why should I read a book by some fucked up hippie writer about his fuckin band of losers who change into super serious cats. I don't need no lectures, I just want stuff without havin to work. Like bein here with your ticket. Coupland. He sounds like the old man when he starts moanin about the death of Elvis. Same litany. Get a bloody job. Get outta my bloody basement. He should be in a fuckin coma. Then I wouldn't be takin the subway to see Leafs games."

"Right on."

"How's the beer?"

"Dry."

"Five minutes to gametime. Let's grab two more."

© Rick McGrath  11/25/98