Well I must admit, over the Christmas break JPod and I did not get along; we were barely friends actually. I flipped through the strange pages and thought something along the lines of "oh dear, what it this craziness?" and set it aside. Over the next few days I realized that I kept bringing the JPodders up in conversations (weird) and kept wondering what the significance was for the strangely written novel and why I wanted to know more about the characters. Finally I brought myself to opening Coupland's novel again and came to the conclusion that I did not want to put it down, I needed to know what was going to happen in the crazy world of the JPodders!
I had been a little worried about the book at first, when it more or less opens with Ethan's mother killing biker Tim, after discovering she had a grow-op in her basement, but once getting into the novel it becomes clear that this was perfectly normal in the JPodders world and that Ethan's family is simply a highly dysfunctional, biker killing, weed growing, latin dancing, imigrant smuggling family! Yes, this is completely normal.
The JPodders are interesting, socially awkward, and highly functioning game lovers. They spend their lives at work, bringing a whole new meaning to 'lives at work'. Favourite past times of the beloved JPodders included picking out the non-prime number between the numbers of 10 000 and 100 000, googling people, writing love letters to Ronald MacDonald, and many other superfluous things completely unrelated to their actual jobs. The characters begin to realize that they are not 'normal' in the popular culture; others are relating their lives outside of work, other employees have hobbies and don't spend their evenings at work. The 'normal' people are getting married and having children and take their week-ends off, they aren't increasing their work load to create a Ronald MacDonald monster programmed to demolish a video game the JPodders have been creating. The JPod community seems to have arrived on earth a little to late, perhaps they would have been better suited for the 90's tech culture, where it wasn't weird to lead the lives they are leading; where is was 'normal' to live an unbalanced lifestyle. Which is a bit of a shame for them I suppose...
Coupland throws himself into this bizarrely contemporary world of the JPodders, at first as an arrogant prick. As I read on I realized that although he is not the sweetest man in the world he proves to be a mentor, especially for Ethan. In some ways he signifies the cooperate sector of the novel, he does not want the JPodders to change he simply asks them, as well as the readers, to question their own lives and everything in them. For example he tells Ethan to "rebuild his hard drive", to widen his horizons and open himself up for more opportunities then he is at the present time.
Coupland’s JPod is an extremely contemporary, hypo-realistic novel that challenges both his characters as well as his readers to question everything in life and to not take things only at face value but to look deeper.
