Polaroids from the Dead [Paperback]

Douglas Coupland (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 20, 1997

Douglas Coupland takes his sparkling literary talent in a new direction with this crackling collection of takes on life and death in North America -- from his sweeping portrait of Grateful Dead culture to the deaths of Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe and the middle class.

For years, Coupland's razor-sharp insights into what it means to be human in an age of technology have garnered the highest praise from fans and critics alike. At last, Coupland has assembled a wide variety of stories and personal "postcards" about pivotal people and places that have defined our modern lives. Polaroids from the Dead  is a skillful combination of stories, fact and fiction -- keen outtakes on life in the late 20th century, exploring the recent past and a society obsessed with celebrity, crime and death. Princess Diana, Nicole Brown Simpson and Madonna are but some of the people scrutinized.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A collection of essays by Douglas Coupland, whose first novel Generation X received critical acclaim. In his mid-30s, Coupland writes about what it means to grow up and the realization that he is not young anymore. Essays include observations on parents his age at Grateful Dead concerts who seem intent on preserving a youthful reckless and carefree lifestyle at the expense of their children, to the "gristled leather bachelors" and "straw-permed sex androids from Planet 1971," to mourning his own sense of youthfulness as he revisits old haunts in his native Vancouver. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A cult writer for the disaffected (Generation X), Coupland combines manic poetry and scary precision in his dazzling, deft takes on modern life and non-living. Illustrated with 42 b&w photographs, this collection of 24 mini-essays and short fictions (all but three of which ran in Spin, New Republic, etc.) opens with several pieces on a series of Grateful Dead concerts that will mainly interest Deadheads, but it picks up speed as Coupland roams the former East Berlin in 1994; files a bittersweet, sunset-drenched dispatch from the Bahamas; meditates on James Rosenquist's enormous pop painting F-111; visits the nuclear tourist sites of Los Alamos; and spies on yuppies and political consultants in seamy Washington, D.C. In Palo Alto and in his native Vancouver, Coupland celebrates middle-class stability, which he views as a fragile construct that shields us from our animal nature. The "secular nirvana" of Brentwood, Los Angeles, to him seems an inevitable site for the O.J. Simpson/Nicole Brown saga and for Marilyn Monroe's death. Coupland teaches survival of the hippest as the world plunges toward a "new thought-based economy." $100,000 ad/promo; translation rights: HarperCollins.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (September 20, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060987219
• ISBN-13: 978-0060987213
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.6 x 7.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,775,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A narrative travelogue of several Gen X subcultures. August 4, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Douglas Coupland is at it again. Having probed the religious impulses of the post-boomer generation in Life After God and profiled the techie-geek subculture in Microserfs, Coupland now offers a series of short essays about the Deadheads and the lingering neo-hippie subculture of the 1990s.

However, only one-third of the book is about the Dead. The second section are snapshots of various people and places, ranging from young politicos in Washington, D.C., to musings on post-Communist East Berlin and the architectural landscape of Vancouver. The third section is devoted to a socio-philosophical analysis of the Brentwood community and its residents from Marilyn Monroe to O. J. Simpson. Here he provides his keenest observations on the poverty of wealth and celebrity, something like a Gen X version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

While introducing several interesting themes regarding the nature of identity in what he calls a culture of "denarration," the reader senses that Coupland's latest outing is merely a hodgepodge of his random thoughts and observations. This book lacks the thematic coherence of his earlier works, primarily because this is a collection of articles and essays rather than a novel. The quality of his material varies widely from chapter to chapter, as if illustrating his own struggle to portray life as a narrative. This book, like life in general, has its good and bad days. Worth reading, but not Coupland at his best.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Take a picture February 22, 2004

By E. A Solinas HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Skeleton fairy tales. Deadheads. Youths who hang around cemetaries. Marilyn Monroe. Fires. All these crop up in Douglas Coupland's atmospheric collection of essays and short stories, "Polaroids From the Dead," topped by the picture of a curiously blank-faced Sharon Tate.

Coupland populates "Polaroids" with people who contemplate the past, and how it fringes on the present: mothers telling their children parables, an older woman revelling in a Dead concert, a younger group observing aging hippies. And he himself is in quite a bit of it. There are essays on Brentwood (the site of Marilyn Monroe's mysterious death), a trip to Germany post-Berlin Wall, a letter to late rocker Kurt Cobain, descriptions of Palo Alto, and musings on the human preoccupations with crime, celebrities, fame, aging, death, and dead celebrities.

"Polaroids From The Dead" seems like an apt title for this book. Each short story isn't really a story. There's no true beginning and no end. It's just a snippet that shows the outlook and some of the life of the people in it, and their thoughts. While this type of writing is very vivid while you're actually reading it, it makes the characters difficult to remember later. Likewise, the essays show one of the facets of Coupland's outlook. It's pensive, a little sad at times, and at other times just provokes your thoughts and makes you wonder.

Likewise, the black-and-white photographs sprinkled through the book are curiously intimate; some of them (like a burning stick of dynamite) don't make sense until you're partway through the story. OJ and Nicole, models of T-Rexes, the Vietnam monument, flowers and skeletons turn up in the photographs. They don't add a great deal, except perhaps to underline the words Coupland writes....

"Polaroids From The Dead" is a collection of snapshots of all kinds -- photos, experiences, and stories. Meditative, melancholy and atmospheric. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique and thoroughly enjoyable June 2, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Coupland writes several beautiful tales that give true insight to the phenomena of following the Dead.He also writes from the heart his feelings on the death of Kurt Cobain and explains his emotional and spirtual ties to his homeland of Vancouver.From Charles Manson to O.J. Simpson, this book has something for everyone.Coupland really makes every item interesting.My favorite piece, "Lions Gate Bridge" is reminescent of his best book, Life After God

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Middle of the road August 16, 2002

By "deadkerouac"

Format:Paperback

Lukewarm collection of stories, essays, and observations from Generation X's primary author and voice. The first part of the collection (the titular "Polaroids") consists of short vignettes involving Deadheads at a Grateful Dead concert, of which only "How Clear Is Your Vision of Heaven?" seems to be effective. In that tale, Columbia tells her young children a bedtime story (about an enchanted city beset by drought that continues on a downward spiral with the appearance of a skeleton) as they all bunk inside an Econoline van while Columbia's husband Ezekiel enjoys the concert alone.

The middle of the book is the best read. "Portraits of People and Places" is a collection of essays, letters, postcards, pictures, and rants about different places that Coupland has visited and experienced. His piece of Lions Gate Bridge is perhaps one of the best pieces I've ever read about Coupland. I loved the image he created with the trumpeter playing tunes for the gridlocked drivers/passengers while the suicide jumper teetered over the edge of the bridge. Coupland's descriptions of Palo Alto, CA, Los Alamos, NM, and Vancouver are magnificent. I've never been to these places, but Coupland effectively recreates them without much effort.

The final part is the "Brentwood Notebook," an interesting piece on suburban Brentwood, California, site of Marilyn Monroe's suicide in 1962 and the Nicole Brown Simpson-Ron Goldman murders in 1994, of which football great OJ Simpson was tried and acquitted in what has become the trial of the 20th century. Coupland goes through every detail of the suburb, from the fact that it is NOT an actual city, just a suburb, to details about nearby cemetaries and places of interests. A map would have been nice, however....

Overall, I have to give this one a three. The first part did nearly next to nothing for me. The middle was wonderful; the end was anti-climactic. The numerous photos helped, especially the cover photo of the beautiful actress Sharon Tate, who, within the book on pp. 14-15, eerily shares space with the man who had her killed, infamous murderer Charles Manson. Read more ›