X Marks the Spot

How novelist Douglas Coupland transformed a Vancouver hotel suite into a lovingly curated ode to Generation X.

I have always been proud to consider myself a part of Generation X. While this generation has come under fire in recent years for being apathetic and not having properly dealt with the traumas we endured growing up in a pre-Internet age, I still claim being Gen X as a badge of honor. I was born in the early '70s, spent large chunks of my childhood wholly unsupervised, and watched the Challenger explosion on TV. I also went to college in the '90s, attended the first three years of Lollapalooza, saw Reality Bites in the theater (twice), witnessed the dawn of the Internet, and weathered all-things grunge. More importantly, I am actually old enough to own an original hardcover copy of Generation X, the 1991 Douglas Coupland novel that created the moniker that would effectively define my entire generation. For these reasons, I was very excited to spend a weekend in Vancouver staying at the very chic Fairmont Pacific Rim, a gorgeous hotel perched just a stone's throw from the harbour in downtown Vancouver. Even more exciting—and the specific reason for my visit—was to spend some time in Suite X, a beautiful room designed by Douglas Coupland himself.

Though he is still arguably best-known as a writer (his fourteen novels are translated into 37 different languages), Douglas Coupland has spent the past several decades creating an expansive body of work as a visual artist and a designer. While his pieces are shown globally, they are particularly impossible to miss here in his native Vancouver, which is home to several of Coupland's large-scale public installations. A block away from the Pacific Rim is one of his most beloved, The Digital Orca—a towering steel "pixelated" rendering of a killer whale that appears to be made from black and white cubes, leaping from the water—which Coupland created for the 2010 Olympics. Just inside the hotel, guests are welcomed by another Coupland piece, Moneyboy and Moneygirl, two massive revolving sculptures positioned over a lobby fireplace. The figures, which look like exaggerated versions of Japanese toys in the form of a boy and a girl, are both funny and formidable (and eerily reminiscent of the giant doll of doom made famous in The Squid Game). The juxtaposition of seeing them slowly turning, gazing out over the very opulent lobby room, speaks to the general cheekiness of Coupland's work. A visual delight that only gets more interesting and cleverly subversive the more you stare at it.

For a person of a certain age (i.e. mine), the experience of staying in Suite X is not unlike having a significant chunk of your subconscious writ-large—a massive 2,230-square-foot suite with views of Coal Harbour, Stanley Park, and the North Shore Mountains that is packed with art, books, and ephemera. In addition to simply being a beautiful accommodation—an expansive floor plan that includes two full bathrooms, a dining area, a sizable bedroom and separate living room, in addition to a private balcony—staying in Suite X is not unlike spending the weekend inside an installation in which every nook and cranny has been thoughtfully curated. Many of the pieces in the room either feature Coupland's work (copies of his novels translated into various languages) or contain sly references to it (a wall lined with several defaced versions of Andy Warhol's 1967 print series of Marilyn Monroe, a reference to Coupland's 1998 novel Girlfriend in a Coma). For Coupland, the room is not only a way to pay homage to his city (there are countless pieces about Vancouver and its history tucked throughout), but the natural accumulation of his many interests. "This hotel suite is about my life and my city and my world," he explains. "It's the hotel room I wish I could have found during four decades of relentless traveling."

Part of the joy of spending a weekend here was the constant sense of discovery—everywhere your eye lands, there is something new and curious. I was jolted by the nostalgia of the rotary-dial phone mounted on the wall of the foyer, as well as the oversized vintage ads for IBM and Fiorucci. Despite the perfect weather and the city of Vancouver calling to me to come outside, I could have easily spent both days just reading the selection of books dispersed throughout—a collection of polaroids by Linda McCartney, a book of Michael Stipe's photography, the FIT illustrated history of shoes, a treatise on pop art by Jarvis Cocker. I made a list of every title that caught my eye so I could track them down when I got back home.

And while there is much to be said about the amenities and the incredible service of this five-star hotel, my favorite thing about the suite was ultimately the art, particularly Coupland's use of glass vitrines to show off meticulously organized ephemera. In the suite's expansive living area, a glass coffee table contains things like inside-out soccer balls, a rotary telephone, Japanese license plates, a Mr. Peanut penny bank, and a small model of the Burj Khalifa Tower. Nearby, a vitrine in the entryway is home to beautifully organized and embellished ocean debris from the Japanese tsunami, while a Plexiglas display tucked behind the mini bar shows off a collection of retro hair sprays and deodorants, the sight of which struck a chord somewhere deep within my psyche. Everywhere, advertising and pop culture iconography from the '60s and '70s abound, even on the ceiling. "I think of them as a kind of portraiture," says Coupland of the advertising images. "I love their colors, their crispness, and the faces speaking back to us from another slice of time."

It's worth noting that I did actually leave Suite X during my stay—Coupland himself graciously ferried me around town to see the sights and visit a selection of Vancouver's finest thrift stores—though it would have been easy to stay put entirely. The Pacific Rim boasts a gallery space, a private TASCHEN library, and two exceptional restaurants, plus a cocktail lounge, Botanist Bar, that produced some of the most theatrical drinks I've ever seen. Between running out to explore downtown Vancouver and swanning around Suite X trying to mentally catalog all of my favorite pieces, my days would invariably end with a stop at the bar to sample a different drink. My favorite was one in which a smoking bourbon cocktail literally emerges from a sizzling veil of pillowy steel wool that has somehow been set on fire. That cocktail turned out to be the perfect complement to what was ultimately a much-too-short stay—decadent, irreverent, and delightfully unexpected.

— T. Cole Rachel

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How does Douglas Coupland really feel about Generation X?

The term "Generation X" is culturally ubiquitous at this point, but people still love to argue about it. Does the term as people understand it now feel wildly divorced from the book you published in 1991? How do you feel about Generation X these days?

The (long) truth is that the X comes from a chapter in a 1983 nonfiction book written by Paul Fussell called Class. Fussell posited a new class called the "X Class" for people who wanted to get off the class hamster wheel. In the 34 years since, not one reporter has ever written that, or if they did, it got edited out. (Borrring!) As for Generation X, I like that it's now been shrunk down to GenX with no space. It's like a cool new drug.

If you were born after 1959 and don't remember the JFK assassination, then you're X. It's always been so simple. People often want to start it in 1966 because that's when the pill began shrinking family sizes. GenX has morphed into the dutiful generation who cleans up the house once the party's over. There are some really funny YouTube videos on this. We get along far better with the Greatest Generation than Boomers ever did. And I take pride in the fact that I'm technically the first person to ever say "Hey Boomer."

I'm so used to GenX now that it doesn't register the way it once did, but I looked at the book two nights ago and everything in it seems as fresh and real as it did then, so I don't find it divorced from the book. It really did hit nails on heads.