Generation X: Book Club

“Nothing very very good and nothing very very bad ever lasts for very very long.”

– Douglas Copeland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

City Gallery Wellington's infrequent Book Club returns for the final weekend of Generation X: 50 Artwork from The Chartwell Collection. Host Pip Adam will be joined by poet and essayist Helen Heath and writer Giovanni Tiso to celebrate the exhibition and explore its literary influences. Our panel will discuss Canadian author Douglas Copeland’s 1991 debut novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture; and Clinic of Phantasms - Writings 1994-2002, a collection of writings by Giovanni Intra.

In Douglas Copeland’s classic novel about generational ennui; Andy, Claire, and Dag, each in their twenties, have quit pointless jobs in their respective hometowns to find better meaning in life. Adrift in the California desert, they develop an ascetic regime of story-telling, boozing, and working McJobs—"low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no-future jobs in the service industry." Underemployed, overeducated, intensely private, and unpredictable, the trio have nowhere to assuage their fears, and no culture to replace their anomie.

Before his early death in 2002, Giovanni Intra enjoyed a rollercoaster ride through the international art world. Clinic of Phantasms provides a guide to the New Zealand and Los Angeles art scenes of his day though the literary output of this prodigious figure – collected here for the first time. Giovanni’s studded suit features in the show, and his presence is felt throughout in the exhibition though the work of other artists who knew him.


Pip Adam

Pip Adam's latest work is the novel Audition (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023). Audition was also published in Australia by Giramondo and in the UK by Peninsula Press and will be published in the United States and Canada in 2025. Her previous books are Nothing to See (2020), which was shortlisted for the Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction, The New Animals (2017), which won the Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction, I'm Working on a Building (2013), and the short story collection Everything We Hoped For (2010), which won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction in 2011. In 2024, Pip is one of the two Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence scholarships at the University of Canterbury. Pip makes the Better off Read podcast.

Helen Heath

Helen Heath is a poet and essayist from the Kapiti Coast, Wellington. Her latest collection of poems – Are Friends Electric? (VUP 2018) – won the 2019 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2019 Ockham Book Awards. Helen is currently working on a memoir.

Giovanni Tiso

Giovanni Tiso is an Italian writer and reviewer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. He's the online editor of the literary journal Overland.


*From Tuesday 17 September 2024, Te Papa will introduce a museum entry ticket of NZ$35 for international visitors aged 16 years and older. Entry to the museum will remain free for all New Zealanders and people living in New Zealand. Click here to learn more.