I've been reading Paul Hanna's book You Can Do It quite closely, because he will form the basis of one of my chapters. I really want to write something about the migrant experience and self-help authors, but Hanna doesn't mention it, at all. Frustrating for me. I shall have to read all of his other books very closely to see if I can make a case! It's interesting because throughout the book he refers to himself and his experiences regularly (which is characteristic of the genre as a whole), but he is normally only positing himself as teacher or catalyst for another person's realisation. An interesting way to cast oneself, and it's something I will be exploring further.
It's actually quite a good book - simple but effective. In real life (I've attended one of his seminars) Hanna is quite a charming man, and this unpretentious charm comes across in the book.
It has helped me make a case for the place of the ""Struggle" autobiography always present in Self-Help books. In this one Hanna details how he reached a low-point in his life when he didn't even have a car in which to drive to his cousin's wedding in Sydney's Western suburbs. This was his Scarlett O'Hara moment, and he vowed to himself that he'd never be car-less again.
This kind of scenario appears again and again in self-help literature, frequently framed around a struggle with serious illness (Hanna does this, too, in his seminars).
Hanna is big on attitude adjustment, goal setting and the power of affirmations - all standard ingredients of any self-respecting self-help book.
Ultimately the book is about enthusiasm and approaching one's life with passion - emotions more easily fired up in a seminar than a book, but Hanna does his level best to achieve it here.
