Douglas Coupland interview

In The Independent, Matt Thorne talks to Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland.

The best description of Douglas Coupland is by the author himself in the novel JPod, where he depicts himself as having eyes that look like "wells filled with drowned toddlers". Of course, this is the fictional version of Coupland (in the novel he hints to the main character that he has a body to dispose of), and at the time it seemed like this evil version of himself was intended as a deliberate contrast with the more lovable Doug who wrote the early books and is worshipped by a fan-base who drive great distances for his readings (which are more like one-man comedy shows than the usual stilted events) and have been visiting his website ever since the author established himself as an early internet presence. But his last two novels, JPod and this month's The Gum Thief, to my mind far and away the best novels he's ever written, have seemed like exactly the sort of books an "evil" novelist might write.