Microserfs

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Summary: Reading Microserfs is like treating your brain to a massage.
Review: I was reading Microserfs on a long train ride. A rather loud passanger looked over and saw what I was reading. "Just what we need," he said. "A Canadian telling us what it's like to live in America." In essence, he was critisising Coupland for painting a picture of contemporary society that doesn't exactly match his life. This guy entirely missed the point. Coupland isn't about defining generations or creating a specific place in time (although he does both skillfully.) Coupland's novels are collections of ideas. They are speculative fiction in the literal sence: the characters spend considerable amounts of time speculating. "What sort of computer applications would a cat use?" "How is our body like a hard drive?" Fancifull, to be certain, but also very human and very touching. He is dealing with very real emotions and doubts. There isn't any need for intricate plotting. Coupland can have a character pluck an observation out of thin air, and it comes across as a revelation to the reader. It makes Microserfs a constantly surprising read. Highly recommended.

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Summary: Highly readable insight into the minds of a new generation
Review: Douglas Coupland's Microserfs Douglas Coupland's Microserfs is an interesting and witty critique of the newest generation of people working in the newest high technology companies; following the lives of a group of friends who quit their jobs and their structured, irksome lives in search of a new level of fulfilment; looking for the thing which is missing in their lives. The book is very topical and although being fiction, it represents a real culture which is accurately portrayed by Coupland's acute attention to detail and his own experiences. Through my own understanding of the people he portrays in the book, I found that I could relate to their feelings, while being able to comprehend much of the subtle detail which enriches the text. The narrator's frustration in being trapped in a constraining, stereotypical life is easy to relate to and their attitudes to love, friendship and work make his quest for fulfilment more interesting. I have therefore decided to explore the factors at work in the main characters' quests for fulfilment. The start of the book explores a normal working day for the characters at the software company Microsoft; jobs to which they are very committed, but at the same time are painfully aware of the conflict between their role in actually working at a firm like Microsoft and that what they actually do is, at best, monotonous and unfulfilling. Their work consumes their time and they realise that there is no substance to their lives outside of work, but they are ensnared by a powerful binding force, one which plays on the 'nerd' side of their character. The description of the Microsoft 'campus' demonstrates this: "22 buildings' worth of nerd-cosseting fun...its streets quiet as the womb: the foundry of our cultures deepest dreams". This quotation culminates the feelings of those at Microsoft: the capitalism, the new age technology - all part of the American dream, which inhibits the characters' fulfilment. When Coupland tries to be serious, the writing tends to become rather clichéd and he is evidently more comfortable when the tone is kept light and informal as he is trying to capture the characters' thoughts and attitudes in his writing. The characters feel oppressed in Microsoft and they feel a fear - a fear of their disposability. The oppression and fear that they feel are surmised in one quotation "Abe gets home late, feeds his neon tetras sprinkles of ground up, freeze-dried poor people, chides us all for not showing more enterprise and then sleeps." His word choice here is interesting: his sharp attention to detail sums up their fear of becoming poor. The narrator's dissatisfaction soon boils over with his "cramped, love-starved, sensationless existence" in "the pursuit of code, in the pursuit of someone else's abstraction". He wants to "forget the whole business and get on with living- with being alive". In his pursuit of this, when the opportunity arises to leave Microsoft and start up on their own, they take it, and start their pursuit for fulfilment. The characters are evidently on a quest for fulfilment - or as they put it, a rather ironical quest for "love, redemption and venture capital", and they feel conflict between the changes in their lives and the stability of Microsoft. Silicon Valley is similar to Microsoft in that they both sum up the essence of the American capitalist dream, but the attitudes and expectations of the people that live there are entirely different. In Microsoft, "there was no peer pressure to do anything except work and ship on time, whereas in the valley, you are supposed to have an exciting, value added job....and extra money to throw parties that the whole world can observe what life you have, indeed. It makes me miss Redmond, but it is kind of inspiriting. I feel conflicted.". Throughout the book, the writing is colloquial and with the diary structure, Coupland can use a particularly direct which makes the reader feel more involved. Part of what was restricting the characters at Microsoft was their ability to become introverted in their work. In the valley, there is "no excuse anymore to introvert. You can't use tech culture as an excuse not to confront personal issues for astounding periods of time". By his satirical tone and his casual style, Coupland disguises his concern with the young person's need to create a sense of community or family with what is available when the traditional structures break down, which is what underlies the whole book. Many of the situations in the book are taken to the extreme; there is no normality in the lives of the characters which does eventually become a little oppressive to the reader. Despite their yearning sometime for the life they once new, the characters are being pushed by the attitudes of the "Valley Culture" in their quest for a life outside that of coding and sleeping, which at times is difficult as they have to confront issues which they could once push away. However extrovert the characters become, a central force binds them together which can never be forced out of them and must be integrated with their new lives. The characters rely on computers and machines for security; they rely on themselves living in an abstract world of 1s and 0s; their lives are lived "day to day, one line of bug free code at a time". The computers with which they are so entangled are, on the one hand "powerful agents of revolution" and on the other are a restraint to the characters' fulfilment as they can never shrug off their binding influence. Many of the characters in the group come from "dysfunctional" families and their love of computers bonds them into the most caring family that they have known. Coupland uses a word here that is so insuited to its purpose as families are not usually described as dysfunctional, which underlines the fact that technology and machines underlie all they do. In one passage, before the group leave Microsoft, Daniel is asked if he feels like a cog, and he corrects himself - "The term cog is outdated - a cross-platform highly transportable binary object". When, as at Microsoft the characters feel dissatisfied they rely on their work to escape, talking to machines instead of other people. Throughout the text, Coupland specialises in this kind of fine-tuned one-liners, ironic aphorisms or jokey lists. He is trying to map the thinking of his characters, which turns the book into something of a journal rather than a novel. This level of detail which Coupland focuses highlights that even the smallest thing can upset the characters' balance in their quest for fulfilment. As the central characters' quest for fulfilment and desire to find out what is missing in their lives unfolds, the reader can sense that Coupland is not writing the book from a detached, on-looking stance, but his style, characterisation and structure of the book show that he is thoroughly involved with what he is writing, and that much of the book is based on his own personal feelings and experiences. At the start of the book, the characters have a structured, overwhelming purpose which revolves around their work, but when they move to their new environment that structure is broken down and they feel all the other pressures - friendship, creativity, and ambition - which are thrust upon them. Through his strong characterisation, he demonstrates the importance of relationships as a crucial part of the narrator's quest for fulfilment. With the diary structure of Microserfs, Coupland has found the best vehicle for his talents; he writes essentially more like a journalist than a novelist with the book rapidly jumping from one scene to another again demonstrating the haphazardness of the characters' lives. Coupland is trying to calculate technology's effects on culture, personal feelings and faith and he emphasises that in the quest for wealth, fame and recognition, life itself can be cast by the wayside. This is Coupland's ultimate message: that life is not a dress rehearsal. He is emph

Rating:
Summary: defining novel, must have for techies
Review: The first part of the book, the chapter entitled "Microserfs," is the best. I have been in and around Microsoft quite a bit, and it's very evocative. _________ Reading Coupland's book was a relief: you mean I'm not the only techie who loves Nerf, Legos, Jurassic Park, and OOP? ________ The plot, after the characters leave Seattle for Silicon Valley, is fairly mixed. I can see why Wired devoted the first 43 pgs. of the book to their Jan '94 issue. ________ The first part deserves a 10, the second a 7, so I give it an 8.5. The subconscious file is good, but the conversations on theology of the information age are pretty dull. Karla is interesting, so is Bug, but Todd and Dusty and Susan aren't as well done. ________ The ending is powerful, and forcefully conveys the meaning of the book: that man and ocmputer can live together without a self-destructive infotainment culture

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Summary: Coupland is GOD
Review: There is a ghost in the machine. And that ghost grips you. Maybe you don't feel it first but slowly and surely it will come to you. This book is the definition of renewed love in the 90ies. Life after God, Shampoo and GenX were just warm-up rounds compared to this book. Do not, I repeat, do not miss it

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Summary: Douglas Coupland is the best and this is his best work
Review: I love Douglas Coupland and I think this is his best novel, he weaves the sub-conscious with the real in an incredible manner The characters are believeable and thoughtful. At first, I was turned off because I thought the book only applied to "techies" but then I realized that that inrerpretation was a surface one. The characters are so believeable and Coupland manages to capture the thoughts that the average person was insignificant and make it incredible real. I am very impressed with this work as I am very impressed with Coupland. He is an immensly talented writer.

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Summary: Great scenario, mediocre writer
Review: I read the whole book within 2 or 3 days, so somehow it got me. The scenario is as up to date as possible, there are really funny passages and some good observations. So why isn't it a 10? It's because Coupland lacks some writing skills. His characters are not close enough to life. There remains an unsatisfying distance. I always had the impression: ok, it's fiction. The last 2/3 of the story lack some ups and downs and the ending is close to tv-soaps. This dream-file-thing left the impression of just being a trick to make the book longer

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Summary: Douglas Coupland - The legend
Review: This book is very very good. Coupland mixes narrative with a '"thought" file which shows the feelings of the main character. Very good. I give it a nine and a half

Rating:
Summary: Scarily correct
Review: Clearly, Coupland knows whereof he writes. My programmer boyfriend read my copy of Microserfs and returned it with this comment: "I want it on record that nerf balls, inflatable dinosaurs and flat foods were an established part of our company's culture as early as 1989."

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Summary: A wonderful look at the world of technology.
Review: Even better than "Generation X". More than just a window on the world of technology (from someone who's been in it for 30 years), but also a survey of North American culture at the end of the 20th century, which this book made me realize I'm glad to be part of, Microsoft notwithstanding. A wonderful quirky book

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful look at the world of technology.
Review: Even better than "Generation X". More than just a window on the world of technology (from someone who's been in it for 30 years), but also a survey of the whole North American culture at the end of the 20th century, which, despite its annoyances, I'm really glad to be part of. A wonderful quirky book