Rating: 
Summary: Take a picture
Review: Skeleton fairy tales. Deadheads. Youths who hang around cemetaries. Marilyn Monroe. Fires. All these crop up in Douglas Coupland's atmospheric collection of essays and short stories, "Polaroids From the Dead," topped by the picture of a curiously blank-faced Sharon Tate.Coupland populates "Polaroids" with people who contemplate the past, and how it fringes on the present: mothers telling their children parables, an older woman revelling in a Dead concert, a younger group observing aging hippies. And he himself is in quite a bit of it. There are essays on Brentwood (the site of Marilyn Monroe's mysterious death), a trip to Germany post-Berlin Wall, a letter to late rocker Kurt Cobain, descriptions of Palo Alto, and musings on the human preoccupations with crime, celebrities, fame, aging, death, and dead celebrities. "Polaroids From The Dead" seems like an apt title for this book. Each short story isn't really a story. There's no true beginning and no end. It's just a snippet that shows the outlook and some of the life of the people in it, and their thoughts. While this type of writing is very vivid while you're actually reading it, it makes the characters difficult to remember later. Likewise, the essays show one of the facets of Coupland's outlook. It's pensive, a little sad at times, and at other times just provokes your thoughts and makes you wonder. Likewise, the black-and-white photographs sprinkled through the book are curiously intimate; some of them (like a burning stick of dynamite) don't make sense until you're partway through the story. OJ and Nicole, models of T-Rexes, the Vietnam monument, flowers and skeletons turn up in the photographs. They don't add a great deal, except perhaps to underline the words Coupland writes. "Polaroids From The Dead" is a collection of snapshots of all kinds -- photos, experiences, and stories. Meditative, melancholy and atmospheric.
Rating:
Summary: Take a picture
Review: Skeleton fairy tales. Deadheads. Youths who hang around cemetaries. Marilyn Monroe. Fires. All these crop up in Douglas Coupland's atmospheric collection of essays and short stories, "Polaroids From the Dead," topped by the picture of a curiously blank-faced Sharon Tate. Coupland populates "Polaroids" with people who contemplate the past, and how it fringes on the present: mothers telling their children parables, an older woman revelling in a Dead concert, a younger group observing aging hippies. And he himself is in quite a bit of it. There are essays on Brentwood (the site of Marilyn Monroe's mysterious death), a trip to Germany post-Berlin Wall, a letter to late rocker Kurt Cobain, descriptions of Palo Alto, and musings on the human preoccupations with crime, celebrities, fame, aging, death, and dead celebrities. "Polaroids From The Dead" seems like an apt title for this book. Each short story isn't really a story. There's no true beginning and no end. It's just a snippet that shows the outlook and some of the life of the people in it, and their thoughts. While this type of writing is very vivid while you're actually reading it, it makes the characters difficult to remember later. Likewise, the essays show one of the facets of Coupland's outlook. It's pensive, a little sad at times, and at other times just provokes your thoughts and makes you wonder. Likewise, the black-and-white photographs sprinkled through the book are curiously intimate; some of them (like a burning stick of dynamite) don't make sense until you're partway through the story. OJ and Nicole, models of T-Rexes, the Vietnam monument, flowers and skeletons turn up in the photographs. They don't add a great deal, except perhaps to underline the words Coupland writes. "Polaroids From The Dead" is a collection of snapshots of all kinds -- photos, experiences, and stories. Meditative, melancholy and atmospheric.
Rating:
Summary: FINALLY!
Review: This is the Coupland book I've been waiting for; he's finally begun to fulfill his promise as a writer. Polaroids is experimental AND well crafted, whereas his previous works were either one or the other. This collection of meditations upon contemporary life--the Dead and the people who follow them, OJ, Kurt--are alluring both individually and as a whole. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: FINALLY!
Review: This is the Coupland book I've been waiting for; he's finally begun to fulfill his promise as a writer. Polaroids is experimental AND well crafted, whereas his previous works were either one or the other. This collection of meditations upon contemporary life--the Dead and the people who follow them, OJ, Kurt--are alluring both individually and as a whole. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Ummmm...Doug? Are you OK?
Review: UGH. I don't know. Maybe it was reading it aloud while driving through Southern New Mexico with my best friend at the time, the day after she left her husband. Maybe it was the stories I chose to read aloud. I'm perfectly willing to blame my own choices, partly because I do not want to believe Dearest Doug could produce such a boring piece of CBSNews Dan-I'd-Rather-Not fluff. The stories were tired, overwrought and lonesome. I truly did not want the thought to pop in my head that Doug scribbled these stories out the night before his deadline, as though it were a tiresome English paper. Nonetheless, the thought occured.
Please, read this book only if you are ABSOLUTELY FASCINATED with the grateful dead or oj simpson. NO ONE ELSE should touch it. i love dougie-pie with all my heart for his earliest work, but this was just, well, yucky.
Reading nutritional information held more entertainment value. And I only say that because I love him so much.
Rating: 
Summary: never read it
Review: With the passing of Jerry Garcia, the boomers last relic has dissappeared and, as such, has sixties culture (finally). Coupland shows in Polaroids from the Dead an intellectual's view of dead shows (along with much more, of course). Yeah dead shows are fun, but are they fun for the kids of the boomers who are dragged along while their parents pine over their lost souls and youth? What is important about this book is that it shows the neo-dead heads who only knew the Vince Welnick dead that they aren't missing anything. The kids would probably be better off at home tinkering on the internet and checking their stocks (like me).
Rating:
Summary: the circus is over
Review: With the passing of Jerry Garcia, the boomers last relic has dissappeared and, as such, has sixties culture (finally). Coupland shows in Polaroids from the Dead an intellectual's view of dead shows (along with much more, of course). Yeah dead shows are fun, but are they fun for the kids of the boomers who are dragged along while their parents pine over their lost souls and youth? What is important about this book is that it shows the neo-dead heads who only knew the Vince Welnick dead that they aren't missing anything. The kids would probably be better off at home tinkering on the internet and checking their stocks (like me).
| 
