Life After God

On a friend's recommendation I read Life After God by Douglas Coupland. I had heard of his other books Shampoo Planet and Generation X but had not read anything by him. The first half of the book I didn't care for all that much. They seemed like completely disconnected and absurd stories with no real interpretation so I was a little frustrated but then it hit me. This is life after God! Disconnected and absurd stories with no meaning or ability for interpretation! Makes sense.

Anyway, the second half of the book I enjoyed much more as events did begin to get interpreted to some extent and some profound thoughts started to come out. Besides that, he is just a good writer. Let me give you an example:

"My drive continued and worries about vanishing feelings remained like a background radiation. But I guess the nice thing about driving a car is that the physical act of driving itself occupies a good chunk of brain cells that otherwise would be giving you trouble overloading your thinking. new scenery continually erases what came before; memory is lost, shuffled, relabeled and forgotten. Gum is chewed; buttons are pushed; windows are lowered and opened. A fast moving car is the only place where you're legally llowed to not deal with your problems. It's enforced meditation and this is good."

If for nothing else, this book is worth reading simply for the very insightful chapter on Christian radio (pg. 182ff). It's not a rant about it, it's a complete lack of understanding of what these people are talking about and I can't say I don't understand. There is no foundation from which to understand even the language that these people are speaking when you grow up in a life....well, you know. But even more than that, the language the people on the Christian radio are using is becoming a language unto itself in a way no one can truly understand but only pretend to. I'd like to give you an example but i'd rather you read the book and understand what i'm talking about yourself.