Writer's Almanac says, "Coupland started off as a sculptor, working with wood and fiberglass, earning his degree in studio sculpture in 1984. He did all kinds of jobs to make money, working as a gas station attendant, making copies of blue prints, and even designing baby cribs. Coupland's writing career began mostly from luck, when an editor at Vancouver magazine read a postcard he had written to a friend. He liked Coupland's style and hired him to write for the magazine. And that was the beginning of his career as a writer."
In 2000, on the way to a reading at my local bookstore, Annie Bloom's Books, Coupland blogged about how his media escort's Volvo wagon died in I-5 rush-hour traffic and she "flipped out, like Annette Bening in American Beauty." Then she tried to use her "Soviet-issue cellphone," with no luck. After hitching a ride to the reading with a passerby in a U-Haul, the writer discovered there was no microphone at the bookstore and proclaimed himself "Mr. Guy with a Projecting Voice." But the bookstore is fairly teeny - no projecting voice truly needed. I kind of felt like he was kicking folks when they were down.
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