Shampoo Planet

by DOUGLAS COUPLAND | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0671755064 Global Overview for this book
Registered by katn77 of North Reading, Massachusetts USA on 6/26/2002
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4 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by katn77 from North Reading, Massachusetts USA on Wednesday, June 26, 2002
I'm a big Coupland fan, courtesy of my brother's recommendation, and this book may be my favorite of his that I've read. The protagonist, Tyler, is the younger brother of the main character in "Girlfriend in a Coma." Coupland's eye for youth & young-adult culture in the 90s and beyond is very sharp, and his writing is both piercing & hilarious.

Journal Entry 2 by katn77 from North Reading, Massachusetts USA on Monday, July 29, 2002
I'm sending this to bookcrosser jess1 today as a bookswap.

Journal Entry 3 by jess1 from Cincinnati, Ohio USA on Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Just received this last night from katn77! Thank you!! I will read it as soon as I can and send it back out into the world.

Journal Entry 4 by jess1 from Cincinnati, Ohio USA on Monday, August 12, 2002
Received this in the mail and it looks like fun! Will make another journal entry and release again when I'm finished.

Journal Entry 5 by jess1 from Cincinnati, Ohio USA on Tuesday, August 27, 2002
A strange book, vaguely remeniscent of J.D. Salinger, that luckily got better halfway through. I was glad to see that the character changed through the course of the book, learned a few lessons, etc. I probably would have appreciated this book a bit more back in college, but there were still things that I could relate to and laugh about. I will probably release this again at one of the local college campuses.

Journal Entry 6 by wingcestmoiwing from Hamilton, Ontario Canada on Monday, November 25, 2002
Just received from jess1. Will post again when I read it. Thanks!

Journal Entry 7 by wingcestmoiwing from Hamilton, Ontario Canada on Sunday, December 22, 2002
This was a fun, light and easy read. Since I was going thru my twenties in the 90's, it was fun to relate to Tyler and his friends and their trials and tribulations.

This is on its way to another BCer amynsperry.

Journal Entry 8 by amynsperry from Tulsa, Oklahoma USA on Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Thank you C'est Moi for sending this book. It's going up near the top of my "to-read" books.

Journal Entry 9 by amynsperry from Tulsa, Oklahoma USA on Saturday, February 15, 2003
A WITTY & UN-ROMANTICIZED VIEW OF THE PRESENT & WHERE WE'RE ALL GOING

The question that seems to burn in the mind of Douglas Coupland is "What Will the future of the world be like?" Unlike most authors who see a future of progress, Coupland tends to favor a future of regression. We live in a consumer's world -- a world with 100 different types of shampoo to choose from. And we buy, not the best, but the best advertised. Are we even able to think for ourselves anymore, or are we becoming a slave to the degenerating devices of modernity?

SHAMPOO PLANET is set in the early '90s. The small town of Lancaster, Washington, is beginning to shrivel into near-oblivion after the "plants" close down. The once-rich now live in RVs, stripped of their wealth. No one has a job, but no one leaves. The mall only has a few stores left open. The town is dying.

The past seems more promising than the future, so Tyler leaves the town in search of the past. He travels around Europe, only to find that the young people there have become complacent and content to party by night and take jobs as civil servants by day. History seems more exciting and progressive than the impending future of Generation Xers.

Tyler returns to Lancaster but then leaves again in search of his own past. He travels to the small island in Canada where he was born in a commune to hippie parents. All that is left to suggest that the island was once inhabited is a crumbling stone chimney. All other signs of human habitation have rusted and rotted, returning to the earth.

He then travels to California to seek his fortune. Like everyone else around him, he struggles to make it and finds himself only a-day-at-a-fast-food-restaurant away from being on the streets. He's working just to survive so that he can go back to work another day.

Coupland sees a future where consumerism leads to shallow existence. Perhaps we are regressing back to a a new series dark ages rather than progressing. Here's a bit of food-for-though from the book:

"...'I wouldn't mind if consumer culture went POOF! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The WORST? . . .. If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet -- with just one person inside even -- I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either EVERYONE slides back into the Dark Ages or NO ONE does.'"

Coupland has, once again, written a witty and thought-provoking novel that gives a candid and un-romanticized view of what the present looks like and where it could be leading us. For the sake of humanity, I hope that he's wrong.

I'm a real Coupland fan, so this book is part of my PERMANENT COLLECTION. If you would like to read it, PM me and I will organize a BOOKRING for this book. I only ask that you treat it with respect and don't dog-ear the pages or take it in the bathtub with you! :)

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