Shampoo Planet

First edition cover
Author	Douglas Coupland
Country	Canada
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Pocket Books
Released	1992
Media Type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	304 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-671-75505-6 (first edition, hardcover) & ISBN 0-7432-3153-8
Preceded by	Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
Followed by	Life After God

Shampoo Planet is a novel by Douglas Coupland published by Pocket Books in 1992. Image File history File links Shampooplanet. ... Douglas Coupland (born December 30, 1961) is a major Canadian fiction writer as well as a playwright and visual artist. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative in prose. ... Pocket Books is the name of a subdivision of Simon & Schuster publishers. ... A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, published in 1991, is the first novel by Douglas Coupland. ... Life After God is a collection of short stories by Douglas Coupland, published in 1994. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative in prose. ... Douglas Coupland (born December 30, 1961) is a major Canadian fiction writer as well as a playwright and visual artist. ... Pocket Books is the name of a subdivision of Simon & Schuster publishers. ...

Coupland's second novel could be read as a thematic prequel to Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991), his first and most famous work. The protagonist of Shampoo Planet, Tyler Johnson, is in some ways, a younger version of Andy from Generation X Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, published in 1991, is the first novel by Douglas Coupland. ... See also: 1990 in literature, other events of 1991, 1992 in literature, list of years in literature. ... The protagonist or main character is the central figure of a story. ...

Plot summary

Tyler is completely enamoured with consumer culture. He boasts about his extensive collection of hair care products and calls his room the modernarium, filled with sleek furniture. Tyler seems like an empty shell who is incapable of any deep emotions or of caring about anyone other than himself. As the novel progresses, however, he reveals that he is capable of strong feelings, especially when it comes to his family.

Tyler is a young person raised completely within the world of consumer culture. The inner covers of the book feature a mock periodic table that lists "elements" of modern life like television and pizza alongside actual chemical compounds; the text of the book itself is replete with fake product placement, where Coupland mentions invented brand names, including their trademark symbols. The inference is that in Tyler's world, the real and the artificial are indistinguishable. By the end of the novel, he learns to tell the two apart. The periodic table of the chemical elements is a tabular method of displaying the chemical elements, first devised in 1869 by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. ... Product placement(PPL) is a promotional tactic used by marketers in which a real commercial product is used in fictional media, and the presence of the product is a result of an economic exchange. ...

The protagonists of Generation X are the people who have already learned Tyler's lesson and rejected the falsity of consumer culture but are unsure what to replace it with. Coupland's third book, Life After God (1994) explores the options for value systems amid consumer culture. Life After God is a collection of short stories by Douglas Coupland, published in 1994. ... See also: 1993 in literature, other events of 1994, 1995 in literature, list of years in literature. ...