Here is a post from Dean Allen’s blog Textism.com from 16 October 2002, which was using the publishing CMS: Textpattern.

I know this guy Noël: a standup dude, a straight shooter, a no-bullshit kind of guy. He’s lived in Pompignan his whole life, as have several generations of his family. He speaks in the Occitan-heavy slangy drawl of the Languedoc, in which wine comes out vang, things that are good are bang, and the Village in which we live is Pompeenyang. He is precisely the funny-cranky but skilled misanthropic optimist that I try and fail to be.

Noël is the owner of about 18 hectares of vineyards that lie on either side of the road that runs into town from the North. From this road it’s plain to see that – unlike all of the other 138 members of the Pompignan wine cooperative – Noël grows dense, healthy vines. Big fat grapes. The reasons for this are many: he knows what he’s doing, he works very hard, he loves what he does and – unlike the other 138 members of the Pompignan wine cooperative – he would be unsatisfied to fling a wodge of chemically fertilized garbage into the hopper every September for a cheque.

After Noël was named President of the wine co-op last year, he managed to shake things up quite a bit: he got them computerized (and by that I don’t mean he computerized production, he got a PC for the office), he hired a full-time œnologue (who looks like Danny Kaye and makes goofy faces when sipping), and instilled a policy of actually inspecting grapes before they are weighed and pressed. Many truckloads were rejected for inferior quality. This of course made some growers mad, but for the first time in modern memory the wine was not utter crap. Medals were awarded. Labels were designed. Pallets were shipped. Future options were considered.

But smalltown resentments run long, and this past summer Noël was voted out as President. By September everything was fully back the way it was, the 2002 wine is crap, and the cult of mediocrity reigns once more at the Pompignan wine co-op.

So Noël is telling them to go fuck themselves.

He’s going to build a cave, on his own property. He will get his own appellation. He will make very good wine. This news is recent, and it is very good.

From the Cardigan Industries About pages: Dean Allen is a noted book designer, capable typographer, bad writer and dangerous driver in Vancouver. Since being kicked out of school at 17, he has worked in and around the book industry as a warehouseman, bookseller, marketing drone, industry scandal-monger, acquisitions editor, art director and most recently as founder of Cardigan Industries, an independent publishing concern.

He has lucked into a few awards for the design of trade and literary books, and is a frequent writer and lecturer on issues of typography and editorial design. He peaked in 1989.

BOOK REPORT: CITY OF GLASS

City of Glass:
Douglas Coupland’s Vancouver
Douglas & McIntyre

* * *

Cities are lovely machines. And in the works of those machines, often, there is personality: in the novels of Saul Bellow, Chicago is an exquisitely complex character of modern fiction. Vancouver has no Saul Bellow, but quirkily observant multitasker Douglas Coupland tinkers with our beloved GVRD in City of Glass, albeit declaring right on the front cover that “this isn’t the ‘official’ take on Vancouver, but it’s my take.” Sure, sure, but since every local claims to know more about the place than any other, it better be some take.

In a recent piece on Coupland, the Globe and Mail’s trophy ditz Leah McLaren deemed City of Glass “just the sort of whacked-out guide you wish was available for every great city in the world. (Who wouldn’t love to read about Don DeLillo’s New York or Martin Amis’s London?)” Hard to imagine those two held rapt by the “breathtaking hipness” of “Japanese slackers,” or smirking (as Coupland does about the West End) that “most of the buildings were built during the brief but magic period in 1964 when Suzanne Pleshette ruled the silver screen.” Right.

49 short pieces with faintly monumental titles like “The Everycity” and “Grow-Ops” are organized alphabetically, and two pieces on furlough from Coupland’s fiction appear out of nowhere. With no perceivable structure, there’s a grating lack of flow, reminiscent of regrettable 1980s literary grabs at a post-literate zeitgeist.

The ceaseless irony and droll wordplay that, ten years ago, redeemed Coupland’s blockbuster marketing manual Generation X have long since – blame David Letterman – become ubiquitous. Everything comes with winking subtext. It’s certainly all over City of Glass, though nothing you wouldn’t find in one of those teeth-gnashing neighbourhood lifestyle comparison tables in Vancouver magazine.

A cover blurb invites the reader to “imagine that Doug is at the wheel of a car and you’re the passenger,” which admittedly does sound like fun: he’s a clever guy. Reading through, however, it feels more like you’ve turned a corner and happened upon a local boy who once made good, conducting a walking tour of the city, alone.

Some of the pictures are nice, though.