Kipling, Saskatchewan

WHEN slackers, decades hence, travel great distances at their own expense to celebrate doers of great deeds — which, come to think of it, would go against the slacker ethos — the saga of Kyle MacDonald, or, as he is known in these parts, the Red Paper Clip Guy, will be told and told again.

Even now, with Mr. MacDonald’s book, “One Red Paperclip,” hitting the stands this week, the Web doth still veritably tremble with his legend: he’s the 27-year-old Canadian who traded a paper clip for a house.

The tale goes like this: It was a dull day in Montreal, two summers past. The young MacDonald, his fair girlfriend toiling at her labors, was Lying About the House in their minuscule apartment, thinking about What a Drag It Is to Pay Rent and how nice it would be to Own Your Own Place and Stuff Like That when a thought occurred. What if he could trade a red paper clip for a house? Not in one swap but in a bunch of swaps, as in the game Bigger and Better, which he did play when he was but a youth.

And lo, on only the 14th trade, after he bartered such treasures as a moving van and an afternoon with Alice Cooper while dealing with a media torrent, the farm town of Kipling (Pop. 973), on the prairie of western Canada, does buy and give Mr. MacDonald a house. The publicity may help the town’s fortunes, the townspeople do think.