2026.10.28
I am always amused/annoyed that GenX is the forgotten middle child between Boomers and Millennials, in part because we kind of invented the new "Generation ___" naming scheme.
So I decided to reread "Generation X" by Douglas Coupland. Appropriately enough, I couldn't find a proper e-book to buy and had to make due with a kind of sketchy and broken PDF version.
This blog article showed me a Coupland Gen-X comic strip that predates his book. It also has a collection of the fun neologism definitions that populate the sidebar, along with kinda cool graphic design slogan exercises.
Overall the book didn't resonate for me as much as I had hoped - it now feels more about being a certain age than a certain generation. In a lot of ways the story is mostly a wrapper for a lot of stories the characters tell to entertain each other - including a memorable "what nuclear war would realistically feel like if it happened while you were out grocery shopping story." - I had forgotten how much the fear of nuclear war loomed for us, and how that shows up a few times in this book.
Open Photo Gallery
Starved for affection, terrified of abandonment, I began to wonder if sex was really just an excuse to look deeply into another human being's eyes.
I wasn't getting much done and was staring at my IBM clone surrounded by a sea of Post-it Notes, rock band posters ripped of construction site hoarding boards, and a small sepia photo of a wooden whaling ship, crushed in the Antarctic ice, that I once found in an old National Geographic. I had placed this photo behind a little gold frame I bought in Chinatown. I would stare at this picture constantly, never quite able to imagine the cold, lonely despair that people who are genuinely trapped must feel--in the process think better of my own plight in life.