Douglas Coupland, Terry
Almost nothing makes me prouder to be Canadian than the enduring power of the Terry Fox Run, virtually all of which is down to the pure, unvarnished qualities that made Terry Fox so automatically iconic in this country.
I'm not sure when I was more moved, deeply moved, by a book, possibly the essay "The Road to Bella Coola" in Theresa Kishkan's Red Laredo Boots, about her dear friend's death which I read aloud to my mother and aunts while my grandmother was dying. Admittedly I can be a weeper when I read, especially when I'm stressed enough (like late in a heavy semester!) that I'll tear up at sad commercials and shed actual tears when watching The Repair Shop, but that's not what I mean. This book's power has nothing to do with the circumstances of its reading.
The photography is stunning, first of all. The pics of receipts, kids' letters, a backyward BBQ along the way that Terry semi-randomly joined: all on their own they're worth lingering over, especially because it's all tied to Terry Fox, but Coupland's mini-essays, captions, and reflections are what push this beyond ephemera.
The photo attached to this post comes from Terry, and it's the sock that Fox wore every day of his run, without ever changing it: "He wore it continuously on his prosthesis from the day he left home on April 7, 1980, to begin his run and he kept on wearing it for about three months after the marathon ended" (p95). Fox insisted that they not spend donations on him, including his clothes, but given the portrait that Coupland gives us throughout Terry, it's easy to think that when he took off that sock, he did so to acknowledge that his journey was truly coming to an end. It would've been only a few weeks later, at a photoshoot that produced the last pictures of Terry that were publicly released, that he said aloud some of the words that have come to define him: "Even though I die of cancer my spirit didn't die and that should influence a lot of people" (p129).
And yes, I did tear up while typing out those words. I have no idea how Coupland managed to look without weeping at "more than a hundred thousand archived items from the Marathon of Hope" (p3).
I don't want to say much about the book itself, because it's very much a case of "if you know, you know," but I can't stress intensely enough that this is essential Canadian reading. It's better than you think it could possibly be. If it isn't already on your shelf or coffee table, you need to remedy that.
But wait, there's a caveat!
I've been a fan of Douglas Coupland's work for decades, even if I'm also an inveterate complainer that his books don't go quite where I want them to. I've read almost every book, though not all of them, and commented here about these ones:
- Life After God (reviewed in 2012, at which time I wrote that "the closing story '1,000 Years (Life After God)' is the clubhouse leader for the best thing he'll ever write")
- Generation A (reviewed in 2009)
- Girlfriend in a Coma (remarked upon in 2010)
- JPod (reviewed in 2008, back when I still had some hope about what the tech industry might bring us all)
- The Gum Thief (reviewed in 2009, though mostly about Chris Ayres' blurb)
- Player One (reviewed in 2011)
- Worst. Person. Ever. (reviewed in 2014. Coupland about this novel: "something that, you know, might actually damage a person's soul if they read it.")
Terry represents Coupland at his most outwardly focused, where he gets to deploy his earnestness and curiosity to the best possible effect. Is my perspective skewed by how much time I've spent in Couplandia? Probably, but try reading Terry anyway. Please.
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