A long time ago, I became interested in Douglas Coupland’s works of fiction

One novel he wrote as if it were the journal of a young man traumatized as a child
- his character had lived on a military base that came under a nuclear threat, and everyone was rushed into a shelter
• this had left a lasting and foreboding impression on him
• an entire chapter consists of brief scenarios he imagined of his life interrupted by an atomic explosion
◦ he gives graphic and creative expression to the experience of a flash like lightning, except for it being everywhere, and powerful blast, and the world dissolving into dust
◦ his journal entries in that chapter begin with lines, like:
“I was by the fridge in the kitchen when it happened”
“I was having my hair done when it happened”
“I was at the mall when it happened”
- the feeling he evokes in his powerful images probably has the effect on us as John's vision in chapter 6 had on its first readers