Tuesday, May 19, 2020

#500. JPod


JPod (2006/11 hours): Very evil...very funny. 

A lethal joyride into today's new breed of technogeeks, Douglas Coupland's novel updates Microserfs for the age of Google. 

Ethan Jarlewski and five coworkers are bureaucratically marooned in jPod. jPod is a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver game design company.
The six jPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a boneheaded marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan’s personal life is shaped (or twisted) by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China. jPod's universe is amoral and shameless - and dizzyingly fast-paced. The characters are products of their era even as they're creating it.
Everybody in Ethan's life inhabits a moral gray zone. Nobody is exempt, not even his seemingly straitlaced parents or Coupland himself.

Full of word games, visual jokes, and sideways jabs, this audiobook throws a sharp, pointed lawn dart into the heart of contemporary life. jPod is Douglas Coupland at the top of his game.