Shampoo Planet

Shampoo Planet is a novel by Douglas Coupland published in 1992.

Related Topics:
Novel - Douglas Coupland - 1992

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Coupland's second novel could be read as a thematic prequel to ', his first and most famous work. The protagonist of Shampoo Planet, Tyler Johnson, is apparently the younger brother of Andy from Generation X, but in some ways he could be a younger version of Andy.

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Tyler is completely enamoured with consumer culture. He boasts about his extensive collection of hair care products and calls his room the modernarium, filled with sleek furniture. Tyler seems like an empty shell who is incapable of any deep emotions or of caring about anyone other than himself. As the novel progresses, however, he reveals that he is capable of strong feelings, especially when it comes to his family.

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Tyler is a young person raised completely within the world of consumer culture. The inner covers of the book feature a mock periodic table that lists "elements" of modern life like television and pizza alongside actual chemical compounds; the text of the book itself is replete with fake product placement, where Coupland mentions invented brand names, including their trademark symbols. The inference is that in Tyler's world, the real and the artificial are indistinguishable. By the end of the novel, he learns to tell the two apart.

Related Topics:
Periodic table - Product placement

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The protagonists of Generation X are the people who have already learned Tyler's lesson and rejected the falsity of consumer culture but are unsure what to replace it with. Coupland's third book, Life After God explores the options for value systems amid consumer culture.

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Interestingly, Coupland's latest book, Terry - The Life of Canadian Terry Fox, tells the true story of a young man who lost a leg to cancer and attempted to run across Canada from St. John's Newfoundland to British Columbia to raise money for cancer research in the early 1980s and made it as far as Thunder Bay, Ontario before being felled by cancer again. This story of a true and unambigous hero is about as far from the ironic, detached characters Coupland wrote about in his early books as one can get.

Related Topics:
Terry - The Life of Canadian Terry Fox - Cancer - Canada - St. John's - Newfoundland - British Columbia - Thunder Bay, Ontario - Ironic

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