has been there ever since and published five
books since 2000: The Tipping Point: How
Little Things Make a Big Difference; Blink: The
Power of Thinking Without Thinking; Outliers:
The Story of Success; What the Dog Saw: And
Other Adventures; and the new David and
Goliath. His latest tome took more than two
and a half years to write while he was also
working on stories for The New Yorker.
Taking time to reflect
The way Gladwell views the world is
refreshing. Whether he’s discussing how a
spontaneously strategic Vietnam vet beat a
highly prepared Pentagon team during pre-Iraq war games in Blink, analyzing the time
and place factors that led to Bill Gates rising
to prominence in Outliers or chronicling
underdog ascensions in David and Goliath,
the author espouses clarity of thought, learning to sift through and filter out the noise of
the world to focus on what is essential to one’s
life, and to perceive people and situations for
who and what they are rather than what one
thinks they are.
“I feel that people are experience-rich and
theory-poor,” asserts Gladwell. “That is to say,
most people have lots and lots and lots of
experiences but don’t have the time to try to
make sense of them. It’s a luxury to be able to
sit and theorize and read psychologists, soci-
ologists and historians and to attach explana-
tions to events. The reason people read books
like my own is that they’re searching for those
kinds of explanations, of ways of making sense
of things. There is this tremendous body of
knowledge in the world of academia where
extraordinary numbers of incredibly thought-
ful people have taken the time to examine on
a really profound level the way we live our lives
and who we are and where we’ve been. That
brilliant learning sometimes gets trapped in
academia and never sees the light of day. I’m
trying to give people access to all of that bril-
liant thinking. It’s a way of going back to col-
lege long after you’ve graduated.”
Ideas have always propelled Gladwell’s
writing, which is clear when interviewing
him. While some authors or intellectuals ges-
ticulate dramatically, he is rather soft-spoken
and thoughtful, but still passionate, in his
delivery, sometimes surreptitiously
fiddling with his utensils as we
await our meal. He quips
that if you think going to
a library is an exciting
event, you will probably
enjoy his books.
“I write for people
who are curious and
who don’t mind having
their beliefs challenged,”
he says. “I don’t shock
people’s belief systems, but I
do nudge them sometimes.
Some people are fine with that, and
those are my readers.” Several authors and col-
umnists have challenged assertions or claims in
his books, but that at least proves he knows how
to stimulate debate among his readers.
Has his work on all of his books given him
a new worldview or altered the one he has?
“The last three books in particular have made
me very suspicious of the way that all of us as
human beings react to the world,” the author
replies. “The assumptions that we carry around
in our head aren’t very good. Our first impres-
sions of things can sometimes be really terrible.
This book is basically about how we look at
situations and misread them. The more I write
these books, the less convinced I am of my own
inherent wisdom. I’ve convinced myself that
I’m pretty bad at making sense of the world and
need a lot of help.”
Accidental achievements
Appreciative of the supportive, nurtur-
ing middle-class Canadian background from
which he emerged, Gladwell does not take
his position for granted. “I come from a very
unpretentious family,” he says. His older
brothers, Jeffrey and Graham, and his par-
ents still live in southern Ontario. Jeffrey,
two years older, is an elementary school prin-
cipal, and Graham, four years older, works
in the chicken business.
“It’s funny: I read recently that Canada
has never produced a luxury brand,”
Gladwell notes. “It’s kind of fascinating, but
we can’t do it. It’s not in our DNA. Canada is
a deeply unpretentious place. You can’t grow
up in Canada and have all kinds of airs.”
Looking back at his remarkable journalistic journey thus far, Gladwell acknowledges his good fortune and favorable
circumstances. “I never had any great desire
to be well-known or to sell a lot of books,”
he confesses. “I’ve only ever just wanted to
do my own thing, and all of this happened
just as an accident. Maybe that’s paradoxically one of the reasons why I’ve done well.
People sense that I’m doing things out of
pure enjoyment. I’m not pandering to an
audience or following a formula, I’m just
writing about cool stuff that interests me,
and people respond to that.” C
Bryan Reesman (
www.bryanreesman.com)
has read many books this year, by everyone
from Malcolm Gladwell to John Saul to
Oscar Wilde.
MALCOLM GLADWELL
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27
WHEN IT COMES to inspiration, Malcolm
Gladwell says that he simply writes
about topics that he has been interested
in over the years. His unique perspective
comes from looking at people and events
that fascinate him yet are often removed
from his personal experience.
“I’m always an outsider in these
worlds,” he stresses. “When I write
about the field of psychology, I’m not
bound by any of the assumptions and
preconceptions within the field. I’m just
looking at it as a kind of tourist, and
that’s very freeing. I spend a lot of time
in libraries. What’s great about a library
is everything is all mixed up together.
There isn’t a sociology library and a psychology library and a history library;
there’s one building with all that stuff in
it. So that’s how I see the world of ideas:
It’s all mixed up together. There’s no reason to just hang out in one corner of the
intellectual world. You should be able to
go all around.”—BR
The Gladwell school of thought
MEDIABAKERY
Although described
by many friends as shy,
Malcolm Gladwell has
become a celebrated
public speaker, presenting his ideas in
arenas ranging from
colleges to corporations and TED talks.
