Inspiration
Girlfriend wasn’t a consciously planned book. It pretty well erupted out of me. I started writing it at the start of 1996, during what was probably the darkest period of my life. I’d just returned in December 1995 from that disastrously exhausting European tour.
Coupland, from a letter sent to members of the mediaIn late 1995, Coupland was touring for Microserfs throughout Europe. Coupland returned from his tour burnt out and very fatigued mentally. The period after this tour was, for Coupland, “one of the darkest periods of life”. “I could barely open a can of soup or put gas in the car tank”. During this dark period, Coupland began to write a new novel. This novel became Girlfriend in a Coma; however, he wasn’t sure where the novel was going to take him when he began to write it. The novel “pretty well erupted out of ”.
The novel is set in Vancouver "because brain was so incapacitated decided had to be set in own neighbourhood."
Comas were also an inspiration for him. "Comas really are peculiar only to the late 20th century. Before, say, 1960, people who might have gone into a coma simply died. Comas are more modern than plastics or TV. I like the notion that comas can allow a person to radically reinvent themselves upon awakening. I think we all want to do that—radically reinvent ourselves—I think it's our deepest need."
Karen's full name is Karen Ann McNeil and the circumstances of her lapse into a coma are similar to those in the famous case of Karen Ann Quinlan.
The title, a Smiths song title, was chosen because “It's clearly descriptive of the book, but it's also a little salute to those points in my life when I was melting down to soundtracks provided by British gloom rockers.”
Read more about this topic: Girlfriend In A Coma (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word inspiration:
“Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognise the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)