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.
