Generation storytelling: (Counter-)narrative identity in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Abstract

Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture is about the generation born between the early 1960s and 1980s, who grew up in the economic decline of the period as a generation who experienced “having less” (economically as well as in terms of future prospects) than their parents, the “baby boomer” generation. Told by the character Andy, representing the X generation’s worldview, it is a story of coming to terms with and laying distance to the pervasive materialism and societal expectations of contemporary culture – and of searching for one’s own identity. Here, storytelling is an important element. The novel has been read as illustrating the postmodern debates concerning the end of history, the death of the grand narratives of Western society, and the upcoming of their replacements, the little narratives. In this article, this perspective is developed by including the concept of “master and counter-narratives,” which are approached as social and cultural expressions of and reactions on the grand narratives governing society. The binary relationship between grand and little narratives clearly invites reflections on master and counter-narratives within postmodernity. In addition to interpreting Coupland’s novel, the purpose is to elucidate the connections between these two conceptual pairs (grand/little and master/counter) and propose ways they can be applied in literary research.