Shy Coupland wows the crowds with his words

For those that don't know, Coupland, 39, is the so-called 'zeitgeisty' author of such modern classics as Generation X, Microserfs and Girlfriend in a Coma. In the 1990s he, along with others such as film director Richard Linklater, was credited with capturing the spirit of the slacker generation - bright young things with no idea where they were going.

Whatever his influence on modern culture, he very definitely captured my imagination at a time when I - fresh out of university - had little direction in life. I remember spending an entire Christmas day about six years ago with my head buried inside Generation X. I have loved his novels ever since.

His characters are real and loveable, yet despite their familiarity, full of surprises. No other author has brought me such pleasure, so many genuine moments of recognition, so many laughs and just such a desire to keep turning over the pages.

So, you get the picture: I like this man's work a lot. The idea of meeting him - let alone interviewing him - was both exhilarating and daunting.

After seeing his name in the literature festival brochure I immediately called the event organisers and requested an interview. They said they would do their best but warned me that Coupland was an intensely private man who would only do a limited number of interviews per book tour. My fingers and anything else available were firmly crossed.

In the weeks coming up to the festival I had little time to worry about talking to him due to an important journalism exam I was sitting just days before his appearance last Thursday. But I did torture myself by buying a copy of his latest book - All Families are Psychotic - and leaving it in its wrapper. I knew that if I started a Douglas Coupland novel my revision would go straight out of the window.

The exam - horrible as it was - came and went and, two days before his appearance, I called the festival people again to check that the interview was really going to happen. "Er, hopefully..." was the answer.

The next afternoon I sat at my desk nervously with - possibly for the first time ever - a list of hand-written questions already prepared. A call came through from the press office of Coupland's publishers. He was on the train right at this moment travelling to Leeds and would I call him on his publicist's mobile phone?

Of course I would - when I had calmed down a little. This clearly wasn't going to be the intimate tte--tte I had hoped for but I still needed to steady my nerves before dialling the number. His publicist answered and said she would pass the phone over for a 'very quick' interview.

Herein my nightmare began. Coupland came on the phone - softly spoken and, it seemed, ill at ease with the whole situation. I kicked off with a couple of bog-standard questions about why he was coming to Ilkley, how he was enjoying his visit to England and so on.

From the word go, the reception on the phone line was terrible. Coupland could hardly hear my questions and his answers were barely audible to me. I don't want to come over like a 14-year-old Westlife fan - I wasn't screaming or about to faint - but I really did find it hard to believe I was speaking to Douglas Coupland. And yet, we really weren't having a proper conversation...

He told me he was enjoying touring the country by train. "I like doing it in England because you get to go on the trains," he said. "In the States you get to fly everywhere and that lessens the enjoyment you get from the actual event. I love the trains - great food, lots of space."

He began to explain how nervous he had been flying in America after the events of September 11, but a tannoy announcement that his train was reaching York meant the words were lost.

I did manage to find out that he loves doing readings for his fans: "The readings are the only time I actually meet the people who read what I write. They are quite wonderful. The people that come to readings are probably the people who I would become really good friends with in any other situation."

And that he prefers not to discuss work he's got in the pipeline: "It's kind of a jinx thing."

But the insights were few and the chat did anything but flow. He seemed rather put out that I hadn't finished his latest book (my explanation of why I hadn't got lost in the crackle of the phone line) but told me a little bit about it.

"I very much enjoyed writing it and was very much in love with the characters and the book. I think that shows," he said. He cited his pal director Spike Jonze's film Being John Malkovich as one of his favourites and said he was writing All Families are Psychotic at the same time the film was being finished.

"The notion of carrying a universe within the book which has its own laws seemed a wonderful challenge. There's a lot happens in the book. Something happens on every single page. It seems filmic but it's not really. People say 'oh, that'd make a great movie'. My books aren't filmic for all sorts of reasons."

I asked him how it felt to be described as a superstar in the festival brochure. "I live in a world now where I have no idea of how I'm perceived," he said cautiously.

And then, just as things could have got interesting, the phone line began breaking up every two seconds. As Coupland's voice trailed off into oblivion for what felt like the fiftieth time, I began to say that actually I couldn't hear a thing.

"No, it's this phone," I heard him say. And the line went dead. I tried ringing back but the call went straight to voicemail each time. I later found out the battery had died.

I felt pretty upset.

My one chance to gain an insight into the psyche of this great man had gone. It had been awful. My colleague Vivienne summed it up pretty neatly when she said I probably felt as bad as I did because before I spoke to him I already felt as if I knew him.

When his press officer said that he wasn't doing any more interviews, I put away my notebook and pen and went along to see him read at the Playhouse the next night - this time just as a fan.

From the moment he stepped on stage it was clear that he was a deeply unusual man. Something about his stance and demeanour was just a little off-kilter.

He looked nervous at first but when he spoke it was clear he was calm and thoughtful and entirely happy in front of the packed audience.

He started out with a couple of jokes - perhaps I should have? - and very quickly the quirky humour and slightly surreal take on life which is so prevalent in his books became evident.

He explained that he had slept on the 'lulling' train from Leeds to Ilkley but that this was a common occurrence for him. "I have this real trouble with sleeping and I have trouble with waking up. It's called hyper-somnia," he said, adding that he was taking a drug which occasionally made him 'gap' ie lose track of what he was saying, take a break and move onto something completely different.

In fact, he did do that a number of times, but it was the kind of random behaviour which only endeared him further to his audience.

For such a private man he spoke at surprising length about his family, in particular about how both his 'mom' and his niece - born last year with her left hand missing - had inspired his latest book.

"It very quickly made our family revise everything we hadn't been talking about till then," he said of his niece's birth.

"I wrote the book to give my niece something to look forward to. The novel features a character called Sarah - an over-achieving astronaut with a missing left hand."

He chatted anecdotally about his life before he became a writer - he used to be a baby-crib designer - and gave tips to budding authors: "Never write a book without knowing the exact wording of the final chapter. Otherwise you are going to be lost."

But for me, the best part of his talk was when he admitted that he had been incredibly nervous at the thought of meeting one of his favourite authors, Joan Didion. Doug, I know the feeling.

After about an hour and a half, a signal from the back of the theatre told him it was time to wrap up his talk. He seemed reluctant to finish, explaining that he had grown up with two older brothers who dominated the dinner table every night.

"I love readings because I have got the dinner table for once," he admitted, before adding, "It's been a lovely, lovely night here for me in Ilkley."

I queued up in the foyer after the reading to have my tattered and worn copies of his books signed.

I explained I was the reporter who had spoken to him the day before and he seemed nervous again - very sweet, but quite different to the confident, endearing man up on stage. Perhaps everyone who was there had hoped for an immediate connection with Coupland. I certainly didn't get one but I was fairly thrilled just to shake his hand and watch him scrawl his name across my beloved books.

On the drive home I suddenly realised my jaw was aching - possibly from grinning fixedly at Coupland as he signed the books. And it dawned on me with a jerk that I hadn't said to him the one thing I had most wanted to.

I had simply forgotten, corny as it would undoubtedly have sounded, to thank him for writing his books and for sharing them with the rest of the world.

So, while I'm certain Coupland won't be a subscriber to this newspaper, there's a tiny chance he may see this article.

Just in case he does: Douglas, thanks for the novels and, for what it's worth, I had a lovely night too.