Howard Jacobson richly deserved his Booker prize, but so many other novels divided cultured opinion
By Katy Guest
At the back of Douglas Coupland’s latest novel, Player One, there is a glossary of made-up modern vocabulary which doesn’t, but easily could, include the term “The Coupland Perception Incomprehensibility Paradox”: the increasingly frustrating realisation that well-read people whom one cares about and respects quite frequently nurture opinions about literature which are inexplicably contrary to one’s own.
