Miss Wyoming (novel)
Miss Wyoming is a novel by Douglas Coupland. It was first published by Random House of Canada in January 2000. The novel follows two protagonists, Susan Colgate, a former Miss Wyoming, and John Johnson, a former action film producer. Both have experienced early success but now find themselves in terminal career decline and with a host of personal problems. When circumstances intervene to offer routes out of their lives and then to bring them together, they are afforded the opportunity to discover themselves and to brighten their futures. The title concretely derives from a plot point in the book in which a driven stage mother moves the family to Wyoming because it is the easiest state from which to land contestants in national competitions, though it has been noted that the title also comments on the peculiar notion of longing for something a person hasn't experienced herself. Plot

The novel is the story of John Johnson and Susan Colgate. It begins with a meeting between Susan and John after their yearlong absences from the world, and then progresses to tell the stories of their disappearances through flashbacks. The flashbacks have no temporal order. Each chapter is a different flashback, intermixed with chapters of temporally present plot. Susan Colgate
 A former child pageant star, a 1980s television family daughter, a closeted rock star's wife, and a B movie actress. She was on a plane heading across the United States that crashed, but she survives without a scratch. She takes this opportunity to disappear into the night, leaving behind her identity. John Johnson
 A decadent film producer. His life is composed of drugs and women. He dies from the flu, but his death is only temporary. While dead, he has a vision of Susan Colgate. Once revived, Johnson decides to give away his decadent lifestyle and to live on the road like Jack Kerouac. The novel tells their stories, the stories of the characters that they encounter, and the story of their lives after they meet. The novel is written in the third person. Inspiration

The inspiration for Miss Wyoming was a 1998 article in The National Enquirer entitled "Leathery movie producer Robert Evans marries Eighties soap star Catherine Oxenberg". Coupland also based his opinions on celebrity life on his experiences with the rich and famous. "I guess a lot of it's residue from the fact that I've met all these famous people over the years. Some of them became friends. Some of them I met in passing, but I ended up with this huge reservoir of things [about fame] that wanted to be tapped." History

Miss Wyoming marked a radical departure from Coupland's writing style for earlier novels. Previously, he wrote his notes from a notebook filled with observations. For Miss Wyoming, Coupland internalized the note-taking process. It was also his first novel written entirely in the third person. Criticism and Interpretation
Jensen, Mikkel "Miss(ed) Generation: Douglas Coupland's Miss Wyoming. in Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, Volume 3, 2011, pp. 455–474. Direct link: http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v3/a29/cu11v3a29.pdf

References

2000 Canadian novels
Novels by Douglas Coupland
Random House books
Novels set in Wyoming