This cluster celebrates the 2021 30-year anniversary of Douglas Coupland’s contemporary literary classic, Generation X (1991) focusing on the literary, visual, and broader (counter)cultural aspects of the novel and evaluating its legacy in the twenty-first century.
Each of our panelists contributed a short essay on Generation X and the ‘extreme present’ (Shumon Basar), irony (Mary McCampbell), work and futurity (Diletta De Cristofaro), the role of narrative (Andrew Tate), and, in the case of artist Makoto Fujimura, a painting inspired by the novel. We then came together, thinking with each other, in a virtual roundtable that spanned from our earliest encounters with Generation X to the keywords we each take away from the novel.
Our celebration of Coupland’s oeuvre will continue at the Douglas Coupland online conference on 23-24 April 2021. Do consider joining us!
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This is one of six pieces in “Thirty Years of Generation X,” the latest installment in the Thinking With series. Explore the other pieces here:
Thirty Years of Generation X / Generation X Rewind / Makoto Fujimura
Thirty Years of Generation X / Isolated Little Cool Moments: the Life/Death of Irony in Generation X.” / Mary McCampbell
Thirty Years of Generation X / Generation Extreme / Shumon Basar
Thirty Years of Generation X / McJobs and Veal Fattening Pens: Work and Futurity in Generation X / Diletta De Cristofaro
Thirty Years of Generation X / Generation X: Deceleration and the Necessity of Narrative / Andrew Tate