Generation X To Life After God
From 1989 to 1990, Coupland lived in the Mojave Desert working on a handbook about the birth cohort that followed the baby boom. He received a $22,500 advance from St. Martin's Press to write the nonfiction handbook. Instead, Coupland wrote a novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. It was rejected in Canada before being accepted by an American publishing house in 1991. Reflecting on the writing of his debut novel years later, Coupland said, "I remember spending my days almost dizzy with loneliness and feeling like I'd sold the family cow for three beans. I suppose it was this crippling loneliness that gave Gen X its bite. I was trying to imagine a life for myself on paper that certainly wasn't happening in reality." Not an instant success, the novel steadily increased in sales, eventually attracting a following behind its core idea of "Generation X". Over his own protestations, Coupland was dubbed the spokesperson for a generation, stating in 2006 "I was just doing what I do and people sort of stuck that on to me. It's not like I spend my days thinking that way.". Terms popularized by Coupland in the novel, including Generation X and McJob, ultimately entered the vernacular.
His second novel, Shampoo Planet, was published by Pocket Books in 1992. It focused on the generation after Generation X, the group called "Global Teens" in his first novel and now generally labeled Generation Y. Coupland permanently moved back to Vancouver soon after the novel was published. He had spent his "twenties scouring the globe thinking there had to be a better city out there, until it dawned on that Vancouver is the best one going". He wrote a collection of small books, which together were compiled, after the advice of his publisher, into the book Life After God. This collection of short stories, with its focus on spirituality, initially provoked polarized reaction before eventually revealing itself as a bellwether text for the avant-garde sensibility identified by Ferdinand Mount as "Christian post-Christian".
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