Tag: Andrew Ferguson

Bookmarked Malcolm Gladwell Reaches His Tipping Point by Andrew Ferguson (The Atlantic)

I can’t imagine the typical Gladwell reader will be satisfied with this agnostic shrug. But Talking to Strangers can also be seen as an advance for the author—an unexpected step in the right direction. Rather than offering made-up rules and biases and effects, Gladwell has chosen to issue a plea, asking that we recognize how difficult it is for us to understand one another.

Of course, if Malcolm Gladwell had practiced epistemological humility for the past 20 years, he would have sold millions fewer books. But let’s pass over the irony. When you’re talking to millions of strangers, as Gladwell does, saying nothing in particular is better than telling them things that aren’t so. He may have embarked on an exciting new career.

In a review of Talking to Strangers, Andrew Ferguson unpacks Malcolm Gladwell’s pivot from rules and biases to questions. According to Ferguson, the thesis for the book is never actually achieved. Although Gladwell touches on issues with translation and default to truth, these never actually achieve the clarity of previous books.

In a separate piece, Tom Tey pushes back on Gladwell’s use of the Penn State scandal to prove a theory:

Gladwell’s after nothing more than his own gratification here, and the fact that he’s willing to use two infamous sexual assault cases as rhetorical springboards tells you all you need to know about how shallow his well of ideas has gotten.

After reading this section of Gladwell’s book, I was left with the impression of a writer furiously and desperately working backwards. It seems to me that Levine’s “Truth-Default Theory” captured Gladwell’s imagination, which sent him combing through recent history to find the sort of culturally important moments to which the theory could be applied in a way that would grab readers’ attention. The Penn State scandal! That was a big deal, right? Let’s take it for a spin!