Douglas Coupland's Miss Wyoming

Miss(ed) Generation: Douglas Coupland’s Miss Wyoming By Mikkel Jensen Abstract This article presents a reading of Douglas Coupland’s 2000 novel Miss Wyoming. Long before this novel was published Coupland had denounced the Generation X phenomena he had started in the early nineties, and this article examines Miss Wyoming’s intertextual references to Jack Kerouac as a representative of the Beat generation, which was the previous self-labeled literary generation in North America before the Generation X of the 1990s. Taking this relationship as a point of departure, the article also explores the novel’s relationship with the Bildungs- roman, and it is suggested that the novel portrays communicative and emotional immaturity especially in relation to ideas of postmodernism and irony. Keywords: Douglas Coupland, Miss Wyoming, generational literature, irony, postmodernism, Bildungsromane Jensen, Mikkel: “Miss(ed) Generation: Douglas Coupland’s Miss Wyoming”, Culture Unbound, Volume 3, 2011: 455–474. Hosted by Linköping University Electronic Press: http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se Douglas Coupland’s Miss Wyoming When Douglas Coupland in 1991 published his debut novel Generation X, he in- voked the old tradition of using the concept of the generation as a way of con- structing meaning in literature. As such, he made it possible for the label to spread out in a broader sociological sphere beyond the realms of literature and literary criticism, and it soon become clear that “Generation X” did indeed become a buzz phrase in the early nineties in fields as diverse as literature, sociology and marketing. This publication came in the wake of the late 1980s when there had been con- siderable interest in many postmodern phenomena: literature, theory (often with a capital “T”) and postmodernity as a concept to describe contemporary culture. If one looks at the research output in literary studies from the late 1980s and early 1990s one is faced with some (now) very influential works on postmodern literature (McHale 1987; Hutcheon 1988; Maltby 1991). In much of this research, one of the aspects which many critics stressed when describing postmodernist fiction was the idea of fragmentation – it was in this intellectual climate Coupland rein- vigorated the generation as a signifier. That Coupland revisited the generation as a label signifying unifying traits (through its connotations of family and closeness) rather than fragmentation must certainly have added to the interest, which the novel was met with after its publication. In a sense it was somewhat of a postmodern paradox. Before GenX (as the cultural derivative the novel created was soon to be called) there had been a few literary generations in American literature in the 20th century, the most famous being the Lost Generation of the 1920s (Hemingway, Fitzger- ald et al.) along with the Beat Generation in the 1950s (Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg et al.). There had also been a so-called Blank Generation in the 1980s (Easton Ellis, McInerney et al.), but because that generational marker had been coined by critics and not by the writers themselves (making it a so-called other- labeling) it never gained the same currency as the preceding self-labeled generational constructs had (Sørensen 2001: 102). At present, Coupland’s “Generation X” marker is still the most recent successful attempt at creating a generational signifier which has been successful in being broadly disseminated in a North American context. But although Coupland would soon swear off his spokesmanship for the 90s generation,1 stating in a 1994 interview that the term is “beyond a cliche by now” (Lohr 1994), he has nevertheless alluded to ideas of the generation several times later in his career – perhaps the most obvious being his recent novel Generation A (2009). However, in the time between Generation X and Generation A Coupland published another novel which also engages with ideas of generational literature. That novel is Miss Wyoming (2000) – a novel filled with intertextual references to the previous self-labeled literary generation before Coupland’s own Generation X: the Beats and especially to Jack Kerouac who perhaps is still the writer whose name is most often associated with the Beat label, which is not a strange thing consider- 456 Culture Unbound, Volume 3, 2011 ing he is the person who made it popular. However, this poses the question of what exactly it is Miss Wyoming says in these intergenerational comments, both with regard to generational literature as such as well as to Beat Generation literature in particular? Keeping in mind that Coupland already swore off the spokesmanship for his generation long before Miss Wyoming was published, what is he then doing when he keeps writing about generational matters? This article will try to offer an answer to that question. Generationality To establish what is meant by generational literature I turn to Bent Sørensen’s Labelling a Generation – Generationing the Text (2001), which provides an in- vestigation of generational literature from a cultural as well as a literary approach. The work specifically focuses on Generation X as a literary/cultural phenomenon, and as such it seems relevant to use it as my point of departure in order to set up an understanding of what generational literature is. I consider this to be crucial if one is to understand the intricacies of what Miss Wyoming performs in relation to this cultural/literary concept. Sørensen describes the generational novel as being a subset of the so-called Bildungsroman (Sørensen 2001: 10) – a type of novel which portrays various transitions; most frequently transitions from immaturity to maturity – financial, spiritual, intellectual etc. However, Sørensen states that while “all generational novels are examples of/or pastiches of the Bildungsroman … not every Bildungs- roman is a generational novel” (Sørensen 2001: 10). The difference – “the generational twist” – is that generationality “can be pinpointed as a thematic feature con- cerning issues of belonging to (in-group) and/or deviating from (out-group) enti- ties seen as age/cohort specific and involving culturally mutual inter-generational embattlement” (Sørensen 2001: 10). Also, in Sørensen’s defintion a generational novel must be contemporary with the generation it portrays otherwise it is merely a memoir. If a novel is successful in creating and being discussed as a generational construct, the novel will, by extension, make it possible for the author to achieve a spokesmanship for his/her generation. This success depends on whether the generational construct is picked up on in reviews, criticism and cultural debates in general. If it is successful it will subsequently be disseminated into other social discourses than the literary one it originated in. A peculiar trait common to all the literary generations from North America in the 20th century is that the generational label always carries signification of both presence and absence insofar as the very word “generation” carries connotations of family, lineage, and belonging while the particular generational names all sig- nal some sort of absence: Lost, Beat, Blank, X (Sørensen 2001: 21). With this type of generationality, then, labeling becomes important with regard to marketing Culture Unbound, Volume 3, 2011 457 generational cultural texts as goods (music albums, novels, films etc.) – the consequence often being that the counter-language such as that of Generation X and the Beats is “co-opted” – which can undermine the critical potential which origi- nally was central to the work. The idea is that the generational label (which initial- ly starts out as a critical position) is used in so many contexts that its potential as a label of signifying something deviant, subversive or critical eventually is reinter- preted, and that it then becomes laden with so many new different connotative meanings that the term’s signifying potential and significance become under- mined. As a consequence, the generational labels have always been abandoned eventually; this happened both in the case of the Lost Generation, the Beat Gener- ation, and it also happened to Generation X. With this definition in mind it seems clear that Miss Wyoming is not a generational text in Sørensen’s definition like Generation X is. In its reception (i.e. in reviews etc.) the novel was not constructed as a generational work of art. Moreo- ver, we do not find issues of in-group/out-group belonging or deviance, and as for “inter-generational embattlement” there is probably only a single scene which could be read in such a way. But I will get back to that scene at a later stage. Miss Wyoming does, however, participate in the genre of the Bildungsroman. So there is something new on the agenda for Coupland this time. But let us just briefly re- cap the story of Miss Wyoming before proceeding with the analysis. Miss Wyoming The narrative in Miss Wyoming revolves around what is essentially a peculiar love story between two protagonists: actor and childhood beauty queen Susan Colgate and successful film producer John Johnson. Both of these characters are lonesome seekers trying to make some sense of their lives. In chapter one we are told of Susan and John’s first encounter at a Beverly Hills restaurant not long after Susan has returned from a year-long disappearing act: On a trip from New York to Los Angeles Susan’s flight had crashed in a desert leaving her as the sole survivor; she soon grasps this as an opportunity to get away from her then current way of life and she leaves the site of the crash letting the world believe that she too had died. When John and Susan meet in Beverly Hills they are almost immediately attracted to each other, and they take a long stroll together through Los Angeles, eventually agreeing to meet up again at a later point.

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