Luckily I didn’t own a bath. If I’d had a bath I would have been crying in it, and there were so many tears and so much snot the thing would have started overflowing and I would have floated out and broken a rib on the floor.
Matt Granfield’s girlfriend has just broken up with him, telling him ‘I can’t be with someone who doesn’t know who they are.’. Broken hearted, he decides that she’s right – he doesn’t know who he is – and that it’s time he figured it out. In a moment of clarity he decides that the best way to figure out who he is is to become someone else. He’s always been a bit of a hipster – but now he embarks on a quest to become the hippest person there is – the ultimate hipster.
HipsterMattic, subtitled One Man’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster recounts Granfield’s adventures in his quest to figure out what the ultimate is – and how he can become one. In his wryly witty first person narration Granfield takes us along as he learns to knit, sets up a market school, starts the ultimate hipster band, acquires a fixie (a fixed wheel bike) and overdoses on coffee, all in a slightly mad quest to become more hipster.
This is laugh out loud funny, with Granfield’s self-deprecating, open style making it the sort of book you want to share bits with other people. I found myself reading bits aloud regularly. But along with the humour there’s some self-discovery, with Granfield perhaps coming closer to discovering who he is – or, at the least, who he’s not.
If you’ve ever tried to be cool, or ever searched for who you really are, or perhaps just want a laugh, HipsterMattic: One Man’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster is highly recommended.
HipsterMattic: One Man’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster, by Matt Granfield
Allen & Unwin, 2011
ISBN 9781742377858
This book can be purchased in good bookstores, or online from Fishpond. Buying through this link supports Aussiereviews.