Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Continuing the trend of Author-events, Josh and I went to see Douglas Coupland last Tuesday (the 9th) - it was again at the Bloomsbury theatre, where we’ve seen him once, maybe twice before. It all blurs together, to be honest. We got there early and sat in the familiar, shitty canteen attached to the side admiring the rubbish architecture of the buildings opposite (mmm…50s utilitarian) before buying copies of the Special Edition of The Gum Thief, which comes with probably the most excellent gimmick I’ve seen for a while - a second book, written by one of the characters in the first book. Coupland’s experiments with metafiction continue unabated.

We then netted ourselves premium seats right at the front of the hall. Naturally we hung on Coupland’s every word. There was no Q&A this time, and eventually he announced that he wouldn’t be doing any more of these kind of readings, saying “that part of my life is over.” - which, while fairly upsetting, means at least I got to see him as much as I possibly could over the last few book releases. When I got my book signed, I asked him what he thought of the Simpsons movie (It was like 4 episodes, but only when it was doing comedy, he didn’t like the bits where it tried to be a movie, referring specifically to Marge’s plea to Homer.) He also signed the copy of the book-within-a-book with the name of the fictional author, and explained how one day a few weeks ago he’d gone to a cafe and practised the signature over and over again so that it looked better than his own. Josh then spoke to him, partly about cross-media translation of his work, partly about how the 90s were becoming cool again, and we went back home. On the way back I couldn’t help but note the similarity to the situation, wandering around Bloomsbury in the drizzle in the dark, to when we left Tedstock in February. It doesn’t seem so long ago.