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Shampoo Planet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 First edition cover |
|
| Author | Douglas Coupland |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Pocket Books |
| Released | 1992 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 304 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-671-75505-6 (first edition, hardcover) & ISBN 0-7432-3153-8 |
| Preceded by | Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture |
| Followed by | Life After God |
Shampoo Planet is a novel by Douglas Coupland published by Pocket Books in 1992.
Coupland's second novel could be read as a thematic prequel to Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991), his first and most famous work. The protagonist of Shampoo Planet, Tyler Johnson, is in some ways, a younger version of Andy from Generation X
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.
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.
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 (1994) explores the options for value systems amid consumer culture.
Interestingly, in Terry (2005), Coupland tells the true story of Terry Fox, a young man who lost a leg to cancer and in 1980 attempted to run across Canada from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador to Vancouver, British Columbia to raise money for cancer research. Fox made it as far as Thunder Bay, Ontario before being again diagnosed with cancer. He died the following year. This story of a true and unambiguous hero is about as far from the ironic, detached characters Coupland wrote about in his early books as one can get.