Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity (Paperback)

From the Backyard Wrestling Federation, to the "million dollar retreat" back-to-the-land-movement era, to the curious case of 18-year-old Muslim convert John Walker, Niedzviecki carves out a bracing portrait of a culture of painful anonymity, followed by the discovery of potential to earn some kind of distinction to escape said anonymity, leading to self-delusion. A smarter alternative, he implies, would be to accept that it's OK not to be idiosyncratic and to not become a minor celebrity. And it would be smarter not to believe that the era of mass customization and wider opportunities for sudden celebrity means that the individual enjoying such distinctions is really a VIP or really famous. If these distinctions and their availability (how many of you now qualify for a platinum Amex?) improve the quality of life, fine. The hilarious part is when people cop an attitude as a result of their possession of widely available "distinctions".

As I found out later, this book overlaps nicely with Heath and Potter's The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't be Jammed. They argue, in a nutshell, that "cool" is a positional good (not all can be there, by definition). So cool costs money. And the endless cycle of competitive consumption in an effort to achieve distinction plays nicely into the hands of large companies who sell stuff. (So rebellion is in fact not rebellion, but profitable.)

I was also struck by the maturity of the writing, insofar as Niedzviecki reaches out to those (including his own brother) who have embraced sensible (if apparently stodgy) forms of traditional belonging.

As some of us get close to turning 40, Hello, I'm Special maintains a reasonably satisfying edge in rejecting the outlandish claims to "Specialism" of trivial deluded American Idol also-rans (actually, Canadian Idol, which makes it even funnier), while offering a conciliatory message to those who seek community through traditional (but not fundamentalist or spooky) institutions. This amounts to Gen X settling down, while maintaining the same critical distance from schlock culture that was described so well so long ago by Douglas Coupland.

(Did you know that bluesman Jeff Healy attends my mother-in-law's church? But I digress.)

And I say all this having not liked much of anything Hal has written to this point. Until his recent maturing, he seemed like a slouchy complainer; he acknowledges as much in the early part of the book.

I suppose some readers (like those who gave this book 1 star, who for all I know belong to the Backyard Wrestling Federation) might feel looked-down-on... but honestly, who cares?

I noticed this book is not available at all on Amazon.com.

It is not merely a "Canadian" book. This book deserves global distribution.

The author repeated himself over and over again throughout the novel. He could cut out about half the writing with descriptive vocabulary that was not necessary. I got through to part two of the book and couldn't continue. I undertand the point he is trying to make with the novel, but he just took an idea or preception that he has that just isn't that interesting or factual.