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Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture was Coupland's first novel. This article describes it has a "Serious" novel, that is actually popular! Such a surprise that people would like a serious novel about the middle-class. The journey that Andrew Palmer goes through culture degrading.

Argument: Coupland illustrates the characters in Girlfriend in a Coma as confident and collected while simultaneously demonstrating their struggle to find their place in the world. Each chapter interrupts the flow of the story, often jumping from one major event to another, skipping the minor details in between. Hamilton is concerned that they are not doing anything to change the world on their own but rather wasting their time with careers such as modeling that have no positive impacts in the world around them. Karen's fears transform into a reality when she falls into a coma for seventeen years. As time passes, her friends lose all of their dreams, hopes, and passions for their careers. An apocalyptic event has not taken place so Coupland takes his story Girlfriend in a Coma to the extreme by inventing and transforming the book from a story about teenagers into a story about teenagers whom are trapped in adult bodies. Evidence: "And they don't cope well. "There's nothing at the centre of what we do," Hamilton complains, and Coupland homes in on his true subject. Waking from her coma, Karen is alarmed that her friends mirror the new soullessness she sees in society: "Their dreams are forgotten, or were never formulated to begin with...they seem at best insular, and without a central core, which might give purpose to their lives." "Coupland successfully raises the pitch to the apocalyptic with his sarin-style, X Files-ish mass sleeping, but then stumbles headlong into adult fable by pursuing his Big Moral Question. Why are our lives empty? Jared, a ghost, takes over from Richard as narrator, introducing a dangerously glutinous, pan-Christian murk of cosmology as he leads the adult-kids though fumbling dissolution towards an ethical gravitas." "Such chapter headings as "Reject Every Idea" (familiar from Generation X) slice across the continuity of Couplan

In the introduction to her novel Dissecting Stephen King: From the Gothic to Literary Naturalism, author Heidi Strengell discusses the various influences on Stephen King's writing style and how these influences manifest themselves in his novels. According to Strengell, Puritanism, Gothicism, naturalism, and personal experiences are the primary recurring influences present in King's writing. Each manifests itself in a different manner, yet they are often inextricably linked to one another in one form or another. Strengell's first focus is on the religious undertones of King's writing, which she attributes to both King's personal religious views as well as the Puritanical religious frenzy that resonates in early American history, particularly during the era of the Salem witch trials. Characters such as Sylvia Pittson from The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger serve as physical manifestations of King's views on religion in his writing, for it is a recurring trend in King's novels to include a character overcome with some form of religious frenzy. King's past experiences growing up as a member of a lower middle class family also play a key role in his writing; indeed, another character stereotypical of a King novel is the "common man," a seemingly ordinary character plunged into a situation beyond the bounds of his daily existence. This stereotype ties in with one of King's prominent world views, the notion of free will versus fate. Along with the notion that there are inherently good and evil forces in the world, this is perhaps the most recurring element in King's writing, appearing in both his individual novels, such as The Dark Half, as well as his book series, such as The Dark Tower. Over the course of her introduction, Strengell references various historical and philosophical ideas in order to provide background to the influences which she attributes to King. This background information is provided at the beginning of each section, thus placi