Listen to this story with Steven Kurutz’s commentary about why he wrote it. In “Generation X,” the 1991 novel that defined the generation born in the 1960s and 1970s, Douglas Coupland chronicled a group of young adults who learn to reconcile themselves to “diminishing expectations of material wealth.” Lessness, Mr. Coupland called this philosophy.For many of the Gen X-ers who embarked on creative careers in the years after the novel was published, lessness has come to define their profession...