Next time you hear a voice, run with it

*image: Coupland.com

Douglas Coupland can pinpoint the exact moment he became a writer. The story, as Coupland tells it, is quirky and fantastical—almost like something you’d read in one of his novels. It goes like this:


I was the fall of 1988—the same season he quit smoking. He was leaving the Golden Griddle near Davisville subway station in Toronto just as a storm was ending. The air was cold and wet, but a tangerine orange sunset was lighting up the sky.

It was then Coupland says he heard an external voice that would never return. The voice, Coupland says, told him, “You’re writing now, so you have to put away everything you’ve ever done before and you can’t do it anymore. That’s just the way it is.”


That, Coupland says, is how he moved away from the study of typography and started typing novels of his own. The rest—from art shows to his CBC series—is Canadian pop culture history.

*Douglas Coupland was in town on a tour in support of his latest book, Generation A. Read my news coverage of that here.