SOURCE: “The Dalai Lama of Generation X,” in Saturday Night, Vol. 109, No. 2, March 1994, pp. 8-9.

In the following review, Fraser presents a subjective portrait of Coupland, revealing details of the novelist's biography and relating them to Coupland's fiction.

The day Douglas Coupland hid out under my desk was not the best day for me either. For one thing, the comptroller had snitched to the publisher that my editorial costs were up for the second month in a row. And, as usual, the undereditors were trying to make sure I ruled nothing around this place except my CD player (and that only if I kept the volume low). So this isn't just a cute column opener: it really was a bad day, right up to the moment Doug turned up, singed and distraught from an abrasive CBC interview.

He just barged right in, a bit before four in the...