All Families Are Psychotic (2002) - Plot & Excerpts
Despite its rather rambling plot, I actually have a soft spot for All Families are Psychotic. It has something to do with the zaniness of the characters being so realistic. And the ending always chokes me up.As the title implies, the book's about family and the tribulations one's family undergoes as the wheel turns and one generation supplants another. Yet it's also about all the motifs surrounding family: growing up, maturity, dealing with mortality, and realizing how screwed up the world actually is. Douglas Coupland doesn't pull any punches when he depicts the Drummond family, but I won't try to summarize each character with a one-line description. I'd just end up making them sound like stereotypes, and they aren't.Where All Families Are Psychotic excels, more so than some of Coupland's other books, is sandwiching pithy observations about life in between the actions of the book's characters and the consequences of those actions. The Gum Thief didn't do nearly as well in this respect. Coupland has some very valid observations about life, and by having two generations of adults in this novel, he can explore the shift in attitudes toward life between the 1950s and the 21st century. Janet Drummond, past middle age and wondering what the hell she's done with her life, is finally breaking free of her housewife shell and becoming a person. Her children, on the other hand, are all discovering they're unhappy with who they are right now, that their identities have been subsumed in favour of their roles in society.Chronic and terminal conditions play a large role in All Families Are Psychotic, as almost every member of the Drummond family has one. Janet and Wade (and later, Wade's stepmother, Nickie) have HIV/AIDS. Ted has liver cancer (although we don't learn that until the very end). Sarah was born without a left hand as a result of Janet's use of thalidomide. Interestingly enough, the third Drummond child, Bryan, lacks any sort of outright condition. This is fitting for Bryan's character, however, since he lacks any sort of life. As Janet observes, Bryan, even as an adult, is still a child.These chronic conditions help define the Drummonds but don't encapsulate them. The struggle to determine an identity beyond one's medical condition is a huge part of the book, but unlike some "inspirational" literature, Coupland never tries to make it sappy. There's a twist near the end concerning Janet, Wade, and Nickie's HIV status, but this is, after all, a work of fiction. Coupland uses the twist to ask questions we don't always ask ourselves.All Families Are Psychotic is nothing if character-driven, yet almost all of the characters are actually devices rather than people. Take Florian, for example, a Wizard-type whose money and affluence allows him to do anything he wants. Coupland has a habit of introducing such omnipotent characters into his novels--take Kam Fong or even Douglas Coupland, both from JPod, as an example. He does this for two reasons: firstly, because everyone loves an omnipotent badass; and secondly, because they let him crank up the absurd to eleven.Coupland sprinkles his novels with absurdity like it's a cherished condiment, and that only improves the tone of his writing: cheekily irreverent, because he's not trying to make your heart bleed or your eyes water (even though this is often the end result). He's trying to shock and amuse, to create an instant catharsis. And that's what I appreciate so much about All Families Are Psychotic: it manages to be deliciously outrageous and incredibly accurate all at the same time.
Well, for that matter, what was the purpose of my first sixty-five years? Maybe the act of wanting to live and being given life is the only thing that matters. Forget the mountain of haikus I can write now. Forget learning to play the cello or slaving away for charity. But then what?Yes, then what, exactly? All Families Are Psychotic is the third (and second best) Coupland novel I’ve read this year (and I would have never picked up the author’s work without goodreads so, um, thanks, Otis and Co.). The novel revolves around the exploits of a supremely fucked up family converging on Florida to witness and celebrate the “good” daughter’s accomplishments. The Drummonds’ Jerry Springer-worthy history never stops, really, and the remarriages, bad blood, and simmering avoidances spill over around the matriarch’s illness and clear, somber reflection on her existence.Coupland’s outlandish dues ex machina habits recur in this book (for chrissakes, main characters run into each other at random fast food restaurants) but the preposterous developments feel as if they nearly could be real in the wake of the Drummonds’ bonkers behavior. And Coupland’s gift, his ability to take mundane and flat-out depressing scenarios and piece together bits of authentic hope and meaning from the sparse resources, is present as well. Listen. None of Coupland’s characters are likely to die in African war camps or live in third world squalor or even a ghetto tenement. They’re more likely to exist in faded, dispiriting apartment complexes and take the bus to shitty jobs as telemarketers or counter help acutely aware that they’ve made some seriously damaged choices and the road back to happiness is either going to take a whole lot of fucking work or some miraculous Zen reframing of surrounding conditions. And that, I think, is a feeling to which most of us, on some level, can relate. And even if we dodge a higher percentage of the “bad decision” bullets, well, as Coupland says, then what, exactly? Does that make better people? Are many of us just as dispirited but in better residences and slightly more expensive shoes? Coupland explores these questions around a curious mix of the recognizable (anonymous hotel rooms, interstate strip malls) and the borderlands of magical realism (untouchable but rather friendly drug dealers and the twisted paths of seemingly predestined bullets). Florida, by the way, is a main character. The hazy, oppressive heat and pervasive sense of decay inherent in the location (sorry, Ben!) become both the novel’s backdrop and part of the atmosphere. I hate alligators and temperatures above eighty. I fucking hate Florida. But I only visit for family and professional conferences so perhaps my judgment is unfair. I don’t care. So I’d return to Coupland, sure. I don’t love his work but he’s carved a reasonable niche to which I could return when I needed something quick, insightful, and easy to read but not all that light. I don’t see other authors covering this terrain as well as Coupland. Life After God next, maybe, but not for a while.
What do You think about All Families Are Psychotic (2002)?
Argh. This book was maddening. Coming off the heels of Generation X and Microserfs, I suppose my expectations were pretty high but this really felt like the literary equivalent of bottoming out.With All Families Are Pyschotic, Douglas Coupland thrusts us into this absurdly over-the-top comically dismal present tense-ish Florida that just doesn’t ever seem to come together. It’s unreliably realistic that’s as much a future-proofed snapshot Now as it is an immediately dated fantasy of yesterday’s tomorrow.Sure, there are a few choice lines but every time it seems like it is starting to ramp up, we discover that he is feeding us a false start. It was like vintage GenX-era Coupland was rearing his head every 10 pages or so, about to start the novel only to find that he had lapsed into … I don’t know, some feeble attempt at co-opting Oprah’s book club. It was like reading a book that hemorrhaged interest and the further I got, the more desperate I became to enjoy it. By page 201, I had my enthusiam defibrillator paddles out and was shocking myself. Clear! *BZZZT!* Is it good yet? No? Clear!I suppose I am not sure what else to say about this one. The surreal nihilism of Generation X overlaid on the mortality subject matter? Mushroom clouds instead of pill caddies? Was I looking for Microserfs‘ sensitive onion layers of humanity trying on some new clothes? Costco lamentations instead of preposterous bullet wounds to the liver?The mind reels.[http://blog.founddrama.net/2007/07/al...]
—Rob
This isn't a funny book. I don't know why they tag this primarily as funny book. Cause for me, it's not. That's why people get disappointed. They expect something this book can't always give.This isn't mostly about family matters as well, however the title of the book suggests.This is about insights on general things. Human things. How we keep on being slaves of our ideas about the world."Janet's mother had, for a human being born without a penis in the year 1902, done quite well for herself, whereas Janet, given an infinitely larger array of options and freedoms, had blown it. Blown it? By what standards? If I'd played my cards right I'd be what, now - a judge? Wearing shoulder pads while heading some electronics corporation? Owning a muffin shop? That's success?"I love how this book tackles the HIV issue. And being inflicted with a fatal disease, in general. How death sitting beside you can literally change the way you look at everything.This isn't a funny, family-oriented book so please stop reading Goodreads reviews and treat this book seriously.
—Luis
I might be biased because this book carries elements I'm a huge fan of: dysfunctional weird families, dark comedy, and thought-provoking introspections. Having the characters (even the minor ones) be intriguing and well-written is a plus. This is one of the few books out there that would translate SO WELL being made into a film. I would be excited to see it. I mean, what a ride. The story escalates in a fantastical manner, with crazy character development and it's funny how unexpectedly events evolve but with great flow. Nothing makes you think "WAIT, WHAT?", and the way things progress really feel like the only way they could. I have no idea how Douglas could write psychotic yet very loveable and relatable characters. All that said, I found the book to be so feel-good. Am I the only one?For the past year or so, I stopped enjoying reading as much as I used to, but this is the book that made me remember just how much I love turning pages. I actually had to pace myself and savor it; and with that I finished it in 3 sittings. I'm beginning to think that Douglas Coupland is incapable of writing a bad book, simply because I've started with his least popular works, and I'm glad I made that decision. It can only get better from here.
—Yasmine Alfouzan
