Worth Asking Again: Is Malcolm Gladwell A Hack?
At this point, it feels like virtually every TV hit that Gladwell does before a new book comes out almost has to address the question of, "Hey, like, are you proving anything or just reinforcing common sense?" Here's an example of that from just a few weeks ago:
I myself have read most of his books (I stopped maybe in 2018 or 2019, so whatever is after that, nope) and once, when I had about a month of experience blogging in 2013, I wrote a long post about him. It's not very good , but it does address some of the core concerns, namely:
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I grew up in Manhattan, which is a cool place but sometimes it can feel like a lot of phony people discussing things they saw or read once and have no real context for. It felt like this with Vance's book (Hillbilly Elegy) that supposedly elucidated us all on the rise of Trump. Manhattan parties that my parents used to get invited to, those types of parties love Gladwell's stuff. "Did you see the one about boys' birthdays and sports performance?" It's cocktail party gold. But like, is it really advancing anything? Or just making one guy a little bit richer?
I worry about this more broadly in terms of some modern authors, who sometimes will gain fame or a following based on short IG and TikTok for Business clips. It's cool when authors can distill complexity into 30 seconds, because the world does move fast and people have competing commitments, but I worry that's too much of "author fandom" nowadays. I think about Richard Reeves and his stuff on masculinity. It's good, and many a "boy mom" I know will reference him, but all they' really know of him is a few clips they've seen. They haven't read the books or thought critically about the ideas in there (they are too busy preventing a tantrum or trying to find a way to watch another episode of Monsters on Netflix.)
Gladwell, in that way, might be perfect for our modern moment: he's just an easy happy hour topic toss, not signifying very much more, and not leading to any actual change in action, behavior, or perception.
What's your take?
Chief Information Officer and Vice President Supply Chain at Independent Can Company … currently building out KPI dashboards based on Bram Desmet’s “Strategy Driven Supply Chain”
1 个月H is a great story teller … he does provide context … I find his insights to be well founded … it provides me with one perspective … I look for others and build my own position on the topics
Business System Analyst at Roche
1 个月I read several of his books as well. He's such a great storyteller. When I read books, I place tabs on the sections I like to refer back to. The more tabs, the more I learned and valued from that book. I do not refer back to Gladwell's books. I did enjoy reading them though. I also felt disappointed by Daniel Pink's book, "When." I enjoyed reading several of his other books, but this one felt I could copy and paste your article in a book report for "When." Also, I like that you referred to the "cocktail party" banter. Reminds me of the cliches they used to wear out in business schools about how the Post it was invented. If the content is that cliche, I do not want to catch myself echoing that noise.