Book report: The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
Is that epistolary in your pocket, or am I just glad to see a writer pull it off? Yes, I am impressed, not only for a novel comprising journal entries and letters — and e-mails — but also a novel within a novel.
Discovering a solid comic novel is such a euphoric event, and learning of Douglas Coupland is a coup. How good? Let’s put him up on the shelf with Kurt Vonnegut. To clarify: Doug may not have Kurt’s angst, sardonicism or genius. Maybe he does, in other books, written and future. What I mean is flipping each page gave me the same thrill as when I first read Kurt in junior high. This is high praise. It’s recognition of a kindred soul, though cleverer.
In the course of 275 pages, we get to know Roger. He’s in his 40s, and his self-destructiveness (ruining his marriage and heavy drinking) lands him in a floor job in an office big-box store, specifically Staples, somewhere in Canada. Bethany works there, too. She’s in her early 20s and following an adolescence wrecked by the deaths of close relatives and a good friend, she too feels little point in living. Roger accidentally leaves his journal in the store break room, and she peeks. She unintentionally leaves her journal on a table there, too, and he peeks. He also leaves a pathetic attempt at a novel that he works on during breaks.
After their discovery of mutual snooping, they decide to go on “meeting” like this, leaving notes. Roger even tries to write like Bethany. No budding, sordid romance, he turns fatherly. Turns out he went to high school with her mother, who is disappointed in her own life as well. She writes letters.
Where’s the comedy? All three characters have senses of humor, and we recognize in their observations our own lives. The secondary figures are the ridiculous people you see in such stores. Second, Roger’s attempt at creativity, “Glove Pond,” succeeds in being so bad it’s, well, almost good. I’ve read other novels with the protagonist-writer’s efforts excerpted (if the library gave me access to my own record I’d name the last one, now forgotten), and I end up skipping the fake manuscript; this is one tough trick to pull off. Coupland even raises the ante by having Roger hilariously plagiarize Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
This is Coupland’s 11th novel. His first was Generation X, by which he meant those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s, not later. His name comes up on nanowrimo circles, so on a recent library visit I was drawn this, his latest (2007), over in the new fiction display. Now, I’ll be checking out some other Couplands this year. -30-
