SOURCE: Review of Polaroids from the Dead, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 243, No. 20, May 13, 1996, p. 66.

In the following brief review, Stultaford provides an outline of the plot, themes, and style of Polaroids from the Dead.

A cult writer for the disaffected (Generation X), Coupland combines manic poetry and scary precision in his dazzling, deft takes on modern life and non-living. Illustrated with 42 black and white photographs, this collection [Polaroids from the Dead] of 24 mini-essays and short fictions (all but three of which ran in Spin, New Republic, etc.) opens with several pieces on a series of Grateful Dead concerts that will mainly interest Deadheads, but it picks up speed as Coupland roams the former East Berlin in 1994; files a bittersweet, sunset-drenched dispatch from the Bahamas; meditates on James Rosenquist's enormous pop painting F-111; visits the nuclear tourist sites of Los Alamos; and spies on yuppies and political consultants in...