{"id":1207,"date":"2006-06-24T18:42:58","date_gmt":"2006-06-24T22:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2006\/06\/24\/couplands-life-after-god-up-to-god\/"},"modified":"2011-03-19T11:14:18","modified_gmt":"2011-03-19T15:14:18","slug":"couplands-life-after-god-up-to-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2006\/06\/couplands-life-after-god-up-to-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Coupland&#8217;s Life After God (up to God?)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m out of books to read. I&#8217;ve read everything I have, some things two or three times. Today I reread Douglas Coupland&#8217;s <em>Life After God<\/em>. These are the two passages that struck me, compellingly, again.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Our conversations are never easy, but as I &#8212; we &#8212; get older, we are all finding that our conversations must be spoken. A need burns inside us to share with others what we are feeling.  Beyond a certain age, sincerity ceases to feel pornographic. It is as though the coolness that marked our youth is itself a type of retrovirus that can only leave you feeling empty. Full of holes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211;Douglas Coupland, <em>Life After God<\/em> (1994), p. 280<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You know what people will probably think of when they think of these days a thousand years from now? They&#8217;ll look back upon them with awe and wonder. They&#8217;ll think of Stacey &#8212; or someone like Stacey &#8212; driving her convertible down the freeway, her hair flowing back in the wind. She&#8217;ll be wearing a bikini and she&#8217;ll be eating a birth control pill &#8212; and she&#8217;ll be on her way to buy real estate. <em>That&#8217;s <\/em>what I think people will remember about these times. The freedom. That there was a beautiful dream of freedom that propelled the life we lived.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211;Douglas Coupland, <em>Life After God<\/em> (1994), p. 340<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?tag=virushead-20%26link_code=xm2%26camp=2025%26creative=165953%26path=http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html%253fASIN=0671874330%2526tag=virushead-20%2526lcode=xm2%2526cID=2025%2526ccmID=165953%2526location=\/o\/ASIN\/0671874330%25253FSubscriptionId=0EMV44A9A5YT1RVDGZ82\" title=\"View product details at Amazon\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/06\/0671874330.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg\" alt=\"Life After God\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m out of books to read. I&#8217;ve read everything I have, some things two or three times. Today I reread Douglas Coupland&#8217;s Life After God. These are the two passages that struck me, compellingly, again. Our conversations are never easy, but as I &#8212; we &#8212; get older, we are all finding that our conversations must be spoken. A need burns inside us to share with others what we are feeling. Beyond a certain age, sincerity ceases to feel pornographic&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2006\/06\/couplands-life-after-god-up-to-god\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5,14],"tags":[852,2343,2344,158,2345,2346,1744,231,1348,2347],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative","category-culture","category-virus-related","tag-birth-control","tag-convertible","tag-douglas-coupland","tag-freedom","tag-insights","tag-life-after-god","tag-literature","tag-postmodern","tag-quotations","tag-sincerity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4152,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions\/4152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}