SOURCE: "Puberty Blues: An Author Scans a New Generation," in Maclean's Magazine, Vol. 106, No. 34, August 24, 1992, p. 60.

In the following review, Dwyer provides a brief overview of Coupland's life and career and compares the bleak picture of twenty-something life in Generation X with the positive view of the future in Shampoo Planet.

Ever since he characterized the outlook of his generation as one of "lessness—a philosophy whereby one reconciles oneself to diminishing expectations," Douglas Coupland has been a case study in success. With the 1991 publication of his first novel, Generation X in which he coined several such expressions and spun a story of three twenty-something friends living in the shadow of the older baby boomers, Coupland has become the unofficial spokesman of people born between the early 1960s and early 1970s. The book climbed to the top of best-seller lists, sold 150,000 copies in North America, and was translated...