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City of Glass: Douglas Coupland's Vancouver Douglas Coupland Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and Mclntyre, 2000

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City of Glass: Douglas Coupland's Vancouver Douglas Coupland Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and Mclntyre, 2000 I32 BC STUDIES City of Glass: Douglas Coupland's Vancouver Douglas Coupland Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and Mclntyre, 2000. 152 pp. Illus. $24.95 paper. GRAEME WYNN University of British Columbia ANT TO UNDERSTAND ironic twist) there is a Japanese trans­ Vancouver? Hoping to lation of the book available - for sale, W learn what the city "feels no doubt, in what Coupland refers to like to someone who lives" there? as "the gravitational warp of souvenir Anxious to make a purchase that will shops" (107). remind you of the place? Need a gift The premise of the book is simple. for a distant relative? Looking for a Coupland offers a series of short tex­ guidebook that spares you details of tual commentaries on facets of the museums and galleries, hotels and city, arranged somewhat quirkily into restaurants? Keen to show that you are an alphabetical series. He has trouble up to date in the celebrity stakes? with vowels. Although the book begins Searching for something to decorate with "ABC ...," a brief (and alpha­ the half-size coffee table in your tiny betically somewhat forced) meditation condominium or Kitsilano suite? Part on the ignorance of Torontonians who of the postmodern crowd, a "slacker," refer to the city as "Van," there are no a "microserf," or a "mallrat"? Then entries for "I," "O," and "U." Even "E" City of Glass is just what you need. Or gets short shrift compared with "C" so, it seems, Douglas Coupland and and "G" (four entries each) and "W" Douglas and Mclntyre would have (five). But then "Q/ "IT, "X," and "Z" you believe. are also ignored. Musings on Feng Shui, City of Glass is a thin, soft-cover, Fleece, Monster Houses, Salmon, small-format, brightly coloured little Sushi, Trees, Wreck Beach, "YVR," and book designed to sell. The promise of its some forty other topics are loosely subtitle - Douglas Coupland s Vancouver matched with approximately twice as - is alluring because Coupland is one of many illustrations, most of them the city's famous young sons, raised contemporary and in colour. A few of in one of its tony north shore suburbs, these would not be out of place in a graduate of its college of art and more traditional "coffee-table books." design, a noted sculptor, and a prolific But most are sui generis: among them author whose most widely known are pictures of houses and streetscapes work has earned him recognition as gone to seed; a stack of containers on the midwife (if not, indeed, the in­ a wharf; a close-up of a diner eating ventor) of "Generation X."The book's sushi, all chopsticks and gaping mouth; layout is varied and often arresting. a marijuana "grow-op"; and syringe Most of its illustrations are fresh, and wrappers, tiny plastic bags, and bleach many have a whimsical quality. The bottles - the detritus left behind by text is short and light. And (in a nicely hard drug users. All of this is wrapped Book Reviews ijj around two short essays reprinted "come to a head the same week that from Coupland's earlier collections, various Asian scenarios go critical and Life after God (1994) and Polaroids from the Big One hits, Vancouver is going the Dead(1996). to be one heck of an interesting place What then to make of this melange? to be" (131). In placing "his" Vancouver Striking as some of the illustrations are, on display, Coupland also reveals his they hardly cohere. Too many of them ignorance of many parts of the city, are left to stand alone, unexplained. and his partial and misunderstandings Coupland s two essays are very different, of many of the things about which he though both are intensely personal. "My writes. Among many questionable Hotel Year" recalls acquaintances made assertions and plain inaccurate state­ when Coupland spent time, years ago, ments in the book, perhaps the most living in a cheap, "cold water" hotel obvious and egregious are the repeated downtown and is in some sense a claim that the British handed over rumination on "the meaning of life." Hong Kong to China in 1999 (22,126) "Lions Gate" - a.k.a. "This Bridge Is and that members of the Sto:lo Nation Ours" - celebrates the "endlessly re­ were the first residents of Vancouver newing, endlessly glorious" view from (although most Native communities the bridge (114) and the structure's at the mouth of the Fraser River have metaphoric significance as "one last elected not to affiliate with this grand gesture of beauty, of charm, and upriver Halkomelem group). of grace before we enter the hinter­ None of this may count for any­ lands, before the air becomes too thing. In the end, and for all my brittle and too cold to breathe" (119). criticisms of this book, it can be seen Together these short sketches reveal as an almost perfect postmodern re­ something of Coupland, of his versa­ flection of "post-modern Vancouver." tility, even of his Vancouver; but at It is all about surfaces and effects, best they are no more than tiny appearances and ornaments. Neither evanescent fragments. context nor coherence matter over Much the same is true of the short, much. History ("History ... or lack vaguely alphabetical, commentaries. thereof") is simply a foil against which Coupland can write, and he is no fool. to indulge the new (the mountains Occasionally he reminds us of this north and east of Vancouver "act as with an arresting phrase or a thought- buffers to keep away the taint of the provoking metaphor. On Wildlife, the Past" [58]). Pastiche and irony are coyotes and raccoons who inhabit the favoured over systematic analysis and city: "they probably think of us as big, careful inquiry. Who cares if this or noisy insects that attack without even that is not quite right (or just plain being provoked" (150). On Mt. Baker: wrong)? Why bother to separate truth "It's a metaphor for the United States: from nonsense, insight from dross? seductive but distant, powerful and at These are only matters of personal least temporarily benign" (91). But opinion. No "grand theories" or much of the text is flat, its engagement "metanarratives" here. Just Coupland's with the city superficial. Striving for casual, careless view of Vancouver as effect, Coupland tumbles occasionally "a fractal city - a city of no repeats" into banality and foolishness: should (151). Thank goodness. the question of Native land rights .
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