In Progress

With the release of Malcolm Gladwell’s third book, Outliers, and accompanying public tour, it seems everyone wants a piece or a punch. We’ve got The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell: A guru for the brain dead, Malcolm Gladwell’s Secrets of Success, and the most considered and thoughtful of the lot (even if the name doesn’t promise much), Geek Pop Star.

Gladwell had a dizzying rise to fame with the publication of The Tipping Point, in which he takes a series of seemingly unrelated ideas and unifies them to excellent end, creating an extended discussion of one of the more mysterious influences in life–momentum. The Tipping Point emerged as not only a runaway bestseller, but also a call to action for social marketers and nonprofit organizations, who took inspiration from its pages to devising new ways to try to advance their causes. Blink followed in 2005, providing musings about a split-second unconscious decision-making process that, Gladwell argues, guides our lives.

It seems the main critique of Gladwell is that his anecdotal lecture style is very enjoyable and easy to follow, even when he’s discussing radical or hard-to-grasp concepts. And the fame. He’s got too much of it. And finally, the consulting, often corporate. He charges too much for his speaking engagements and has become … wealthy. This isn’t to say that there aren’t fair criticisms to be made about Gladwell’s work, but most seem inspired by less than gracious impulses.

The first critique is elitist, implying that easy-to-follow must mean dumbed-down. The second fame argument is similarly sneeringly dismissive of his audiences, suggesting that the people who come to his sold out lectures are too numerous to be smart. If the masses like him, he must be shallow. The final critique has a little too much righteous indignation/sour grapes–it is notable that Gladwell’s income is the first thing mentioned about him in Louis Bayerd’s review of his new work on Salon.com.

And so, we run up against an increasingly relevant 21st century issue: people are smarter in greater numbers, and elitism is an outdated concept. We’ve entered the age of the participatory culture, in which the masses are finally gaining parity in access and education to the elites. This isn’t simply a technological advance, it’s a permanent revolution in how our society is structured, how we interact with one another, and how we conceive of one another.

The irony of the sneers at Gladwell is that his latest book, Outliers, is about smart people, where they come from, why they are successful. Outliers attempts to bust the myth that genius is entirely up to the individual, and at its heart, has this simple message: anyone has the potential to be a genius, given the right opportunities. So shouldn’t we try to give them to everyone? It’s a staggeringly democratizing message, so no wonder some intellectuals are up in arms at having to share their most precious commodity, intellectual prowess. And on a complete tangent, I think it’s funny that no one can write about him without mentioning his fro.

Posted on December 2nd, 2008 by DeepthiW
Filed under: Books, Participatory Culture, Uncategorized