Player One
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Douglas Coupland (1961-), b. Germany
Raised in West Vancouver
McGill U, Emily Carr
Studied design in Italy and Japan
Journalist in Vancouver
Generation X (1991)
Series of novels, non-fiction books,
articles, art projects
Very contemporary; neologisms
Honorary PhD from SFU 2007
2010 Massey Lecture series
week-long lectures series – 5 hours
Player One – 5 hours represented
Unities
• Aristotle‟s Poetics (335 BCE) on tragedy:
three unities
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unity of place
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unity of time
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unity of story
• Player One: place = airport bar
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time = five hours
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story?
• Peak oil: rate of oil production declines
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33 of 48 oil producers peaked
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demand increasing: 85m barrels a day
• Results?
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collapse of transportation
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death of suburbs
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huge escalation in commodity prices
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collapse of industry
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collapse of industrial economies
• “Cue the flaming zeppelin”
• Loss of confidence in transportation
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiAT9xvTVKI
Narrative structure
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5 main characters
4 have limited 3rd person narratives
Player One - 1st person omniscient
has view of future
Rotation between characters
backgrounds filled in
Overlapping time frames
narratives of same moment
“Rashomon effect”
Creates a time loop; events unfold slower
Setting:
airports as non-spaces
between places, blank
absence of centre
loss of space in postmodern world
airport bar?
Opening: Karen on airplane
Rendezvous with internet date
internet as „non-space‟
Karen & opening
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Opening sentences: time
Subjectivity of experience (1)
Deadlines: salad dressing, middle age
Vs. memories (2)
And apocalypse (3)
Modern knowledge vs. apocalypse
Anti-religious? 4
Lack of romance, sentimentality: 5
So, time passes without end, religion,
romance
6 all perception
Events without narrative/plot/cause
5 - humans‟ curse
Disconnection & desperation 8-9
10 prediction – zeppelin ref. = cab
Bathos
Rick
Ex-alcoholic bartender
expecting secular salvation
choric figure
Others
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Luke the minister
money = time & free will (22)
theft inspired by apocalypse joke
Loss of faith and wisdom (24)
Internet as leveler
Generational gap (27)
Revelation: loss of faith 32, 65FF
Rachel
“neuro-atypical”
High-functioning autistic
Prosopagnosia
inability to assess/understand
what defines individual?
“Martian school” of writing
Attempt to “be human” through
procreation
• Introduces Player One: digital avatar (35)
• Has complete overview and control
• Only possible in digital version of reality?
Minor characters
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Leslie Freemont
self- help guru
Illusion of technique
Bertis
Christian evangelical
faith to hide personal relationship
Two salvations, both with ulterior
purposes
Motivations:
Major characters bound by sex
Karen & Warren
Luke & Rachel
Rachel & Rick
Boy & Karen
Karen & Luke
Anticipated apocalypses 3, 47
Economic apocalypse, chemical
explosion, sniper (79ff)
Characters searching for future, ending
Failure of narrative
• Postmodern theory: death of metanarratives
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progress
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racial superiority
• Individual level: disjointed, uncertain lives
• Lack of coherence; lack of closure
• Luke rejects religion‟s story
• Rick grasps at Freemont‟s story
• Karen planning to have a story (5)
• Rachel – “I‟m going to have a story” (212)
• Player One‟s implied digital narrative,
control
• “Humans weren‟t built to handle a
structureless life” (98)
• But it is the contemporary condition: 211
• Information & possibility vs. coherence
• Bertis 136
• Personality as potato salad (123)
• Novel‟s epigraph
• Definitions at end; list, not narrative
How to create meaning?
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Procreation / romance
family narrative
Caleb (109ff)
God – Rachel (162)
Bertis – saved and damned
Sub-culture – Karen‟s daughter
Fame (141)
Extreme act – assassination
Art (187)
provides narrative forms
can be “omniscient”
structures memory
Failure of memory (129); memory drugs
(174-5)
Alzheimer‟s (196)
Memory defines us as human
Search for meaning in time
Time is the fire in which we all burn (142)
Ending of novel – structured virtual
memory: arbitrary, but provides closure
Defining the new human
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Extremism, terrorism - Bertis
Rachel / Player One:
computer-like
unable to understand music, metaphor
information repository
wants to be “human”
Luke:
searching for a life (198)
abandonment of faith
Rick:
passivity
Karen:
compromise
Pull back -- apocalypse: compromise
(212)
Apocalypse without closure
Endings of novel
recognition of historical change (213)
desire for sentience
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Words of Leslie Freemont (213)
Ironic?
“night-time light of your real world”?
Second ending: Future Legend
“legend” an explanatory table
“attack-moderates” – alterity
“chronocanine envy” – future inevitable,
therefore ending inevitable
• “invariant memory” – vs. Plato‟s cave