Malcolm Gladwell S/D C/D

I've looked in vain for a Gladwell substitute, and there really isn't anyone writing in the same vein who doesn't bullshit and isn't boring (especially a lot of the source material Gladwell uses -- the one for his latest book is fantastically boring.) I mean, there's Oliver Sacks, but I get the sense he deploys narrative BS, too. Also, that movie Awakenings was shit.

I'm convinced that there is no entertaining way to write about these subjects without the lubricant of BS, just like documentaries are often edited and cut deceptively to heighten drama and arcs that might not really be there.

re: 'the desire to avoid a "win-at-all-costs" mentality is a "bogus sportsmanship ground"?'
It's bogus because the Goliaths are complaining about this tactic because they started losing because of it, I'm guessing. That's the chronology suggested by the article. Maybe it's BS.

― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, July 14, 2009 5:02 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

so you'd like oliver sacks' writing more if a movie made 20 years ago was better?

I wouldn't deny hardly any of what you say, but I'd say a lot depends on how important you think that is. Personally I don't think they are important, because what I'm looking for from him is: i) a plausible argument, and ii) great storytelling. The flaws don't matter because I kind of know I'm getting an unrigorous work and I'm pretty confident that I can see through it - I don't take it all that seriously and I can take what I need from it and enjoy the ride. If I want a scientific study of this stuff, I could read a sociology journal, but I'm not going to do that because primarily I want to be entertained. Could a single work do both? In theory yes, but I suspect the detail and footnotes needed to make such a work bombproof would seriously inhibit readability for the layman. When I'm a layman, I'll take the pop version every time, and let the experts do the dismantling.

I'd take issue with him being a bullshitter, however. To me that's someone trying to hoodwink me, using all sorts of irrelevancies to intimidate me into according him and his views more deference than they deserve. Gladwell isn't that to me, he's honest about his value and I feel like I can engage with it on my terms. Noam Chomsky, that's a bullshitter.

I like Chomsky.

Gladwell is the world's most prominent dilettante.

Gladwell bullshits about bullshitting.

Although that Moth story is hilarious, if you listen to him deliver it.

"so you'd like oliver sacks' writing more if a movie made 20 years ago was better?"
The movie felt icky and exploitive, and that ickiness retroactively tainted the book. It is a dark, malevolent prism!

If Moneyball the movie portrays Billy Beane as a slobbering OCD savant, I might just like the book a bit less.
Oh yeah wasn't Michael Lewis unmasked as a BSer w/r/t Iceland or something?

xp Yeah but it not being true takes all the wind out of it.

Gladwell's articles always come off to me like "I just finished reading about fishing, which if you think about it, is one of the few single-minded pursuits, so I asked a neurologist about indirect concentration and its connection to tasks, which Maori tribesmen are actually really good at.."

It's all about finding something novel, or something that is so completely un-novel that you wouldn't normally use it as a data point, and then conjecturing around that while throwing in some cushy quotes.

yeah it's probably like reading a goddamn 300 page book composed of ilx posts

Gladwell's books could use more animated GIFs.

"I like Chomsky."

what's his funnest book? I've been meaning to read some but they all look pretty dry.

http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Reader-Noam/dp/0394751736

Steven Pinker:

Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out for those igon values.

^That link reads like an Arts and Letters Daily blurb!

hard to argue with though.
i find gladwell entertaining but hard to take seriously, he's always looking for some neat simple solution.

exactly

Ultimate nerd battle: Steven Pinker vs. Malcolm Gladwell.

The original New Yorker article actually spelled "eigenvalue" correctly:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/IgonValue2.png

i was wondering abt that! thought it was weird the fact checkers wouldnt have caught it

Yeah, it suggests that for the book, Gladwell just put in his pre-copyedited draft. But why?

How do we know the misspelling originated in Gladwell's draft? Couldn't it have been inserted into the book version by some over-eager spell-check program or sloppy proofreader?

it's wrong on his website

http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm

Oh, well, I guess that's pretty damning then. Or would be if anyone really cared whether or not Gladwell knows what an "eigenvalue" is.

http://velvetpenguin.blog.friendster.com/files/egon.jpg
Maybe he means egon value

I still think this is the essential Gladwell profile:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-13/the-love-guru/

Gladwell's response to Pinker:

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/pinker-on-what-the-dog-saw.html

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/05/10/100510crat_atlarge_gladwell

Interesting, grumpy essay in the latest New Yorker about why social-media "activism" is a pisspoor substitute for real, risk-inviting activism. More like a long newspaper column than his usual research-heavy pieces - the closest you can get to a rant while still meeting New Yorker style guide, I'd say. But hard to argue with. Just a shame he didn't mention the fucking twibbon - the acme of meaningless protest.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

Have we covered this on another thread? Apologies if so.

why social-media "activism" is a pisspoor substitute for real, risk-inviting activism

has anyone ever said any different? i didnt even bother reading this article because i couldnt really understand why it had been written

i like this piece bcuz usually i see him advocating in 'chill out, bros' kinda rhetoric & it was nice to see him a lil :-( tense

Hey, I met Lois "Six Degrees" Weisberg last night.

The Tweaker
Steve Jobs and the nature of innovation.
by Malcolm Gladwell

Didn't he just write a piece on basically that (Xerox and PARC) a couple of months ago?

The Tweaker
Steve Jobs and the nature of innovation (meth amphetamine).
by Malcolm Gladwell

imagine he pulled a few all nighters to get that piece out the door asap

piece is an extended metaphor comparing SJ to other guys who stayed up all night in their garage perfecting a new product

http://www.applegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/jobs82.jpg

where is all my shit

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/11/bank-of-america-hired-malcolm-gladwell.html

Steven Pinker writes that Gladwell is a writer of "many gifts... He avoids shopworn topics, easy moralization and conventional wisdom, encouraging his readers to think again and think different. His prose is transparent, with lucid explanations and a sense that we are chatting with the experts ourselves."[46]

an intriguing amalgamation of david brooks and xhuxk eddy

gladwell is all lolz until he writes abt something you know http://daringfireball.net/2011/11/getting_steve_jobs_wrong

mark ames gunnin for u

http://shameproject.com/

...and yasha levine, who is another exiled alum i think

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-into-the-life-work-of-americas-most-successful-propagandist.html

didn't know any of this!

s.h.a.m.e. on u malcolm gladwell

theres some good stuff in there, itd be cool if they didnt use so much breathless conspiracy type logic all over the place tho, also a lil more context as far as how wide spread these types of behavior are

never read a gladwell tome myself; it's revealing enough to know that he was marinated in the same rightwing PR bootcamps that produced much more downmarket fox/radio/regnery types

gladwell is generally k a dubious character imho (although the s.h.a.m.e. people could def take some pointers from him as far as the efficiency of his prose) but im a lil bit skeptical of the guilt by association narrative they present here, couldnt you just as easily tell a young struggling writer attempts to break into industry story, and its not like they present a comprehensive biography of his formative journalism years so we can judge what % corrupt his upbringing was, also as far as his crimes in his present day media superstar manifestation there are like two sentences shown as proof of his utter debasement, i mean maybe theres more idk, i tend to think of his transgression as being more in the 'lightweight contrarian' tradition

it's a great piece if you're already predisposed to disliking gladwell, but i can't imagine it convincing any of his legion of fans

i dislike him, but i didnt think it was great, tho it did have some interesting facts

not only does he have an aesthetic style and fanbase that rankle me, but here's a bunch of evidence that show he's legit a bad human being!

1. he associates w/bill simmons