Some interesting thoughts from Douglas Coupland, the Canadian novelist who popularized the phrase “Generation X,” in an interview this week in the New York Times.

How would you define the current cultural moment?
I’m starting to wonder if pop culture is in its dying days, because everyone is able to customize their own lives with the images they want to see and the words they want to read and the music they listen to. You don’t have the broader trends like you used to.

Sure you do. What about Harry Potter and Taylor Swift and “Avatar,” to name a few random phenomena?
They’re not great cultural megatrends like disco, which involved absolutely everyone in the culture. Now, everyone basically is their own microculture, their own nanoculture, their own generation.