SOURCE: "Malaise of the Mall-Raised," in Books in Canada, Vol. 21, No. 7, October, 1992, pp. 44-6.

In the following review, Fawcett favorably discusses Coupland's Shampoo Planet, focusing on its literary characteristics and its insight into the Global Teen culture of the 1990s.

The publication of Douglas Coupland's Generation X early last year announced to North American readers that we could all stop making those lip-bitten Virgilian speeches about the disappearance of literature because, yes, indeed, there is going to be another generation of writers. Generation X also promised that literature in the near future might look different from the antiquated formalism currently pursued, and that Douglas Coupland is likely to be among our leading literary lights in coming years.

Never mind that the book couldn't find a Canadian publisher, that the Globe and Mail didn't review Generation X, or that Books in Canada crammed it into the sleep-inducing critical mill...