Vol. 93: Patron saint of the obvious

Would you buy a used book from Malcolm Gladwell?

         Just when you thought it was safe to venture outside again, the monster is back.

         (No, not Donald Trump. He never left. And regardless of next week’s outcome, he’ll never leave. Win or lose next Tuesday, Trump will find ways to demand our attention at least until the Grim Reaper arrives, at which time Trump will no doubt hire someone to die in his place. Face it: He’s too smart for the likes of us!)

         I refer of course, to the New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell, aka the patron saint of the obvious, whose rampages over the past quarter-century have laid waste to thousands of innocent trees while boring millions of readers to death by telling them things they already knew.

Bill Gales vs. Barak Obama

         In The Tipping Point (2000), Gladwell informed us that little changes can have large effects. That is, when small numbers of people start behaving differently, their behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached. For example, when enough people buy The Tipping Point to land it on the best-seller lists, everyone else will buy it, too.
         In Blink (2005), Gladwell concluded that less input is often better than more— that a single bright individual's gut reactions yield better results than the collective wisdom of a large and unwieldy committee whose minds are cluttered with technology, bureaucratic hierarchy, and best-selling books by New Yorker staff writers. For example, a committee of famous art scholars failed to identify a forged painting even after weeks of meticulous inspection, whereas a single great art detective spotted the fraud in an instant (an instant that excludes, of course, the several preceding decades he had spent marinating himself in the company of famous art scholars).
         In Outliers: The Story of Success (2011),  Gladwell made the remarkable discovery that overachievers like Mozart and Bill Gates were not self-made men, but enjoyed special advantages of background, education, and just being in the right place at the right time. In other words, nobody makes it alone!
         Bill Gates, for example, had the good fortune to be the son of a prominent lawyer and the grandson of a bank president. What’s more, he attended junior high school in 1971, at the dawn of the computer age— and not just any junior high school, but one of the few that had a computer on the premises. So, you see, Gates had a head start in his chosen career as a software gazillionaire, whereas Barack Obama, a man with a very high IQ, lacked the supporting network of a privileged family and consequently never got anywhere.

Lenin, Jesus, and me

         This strikes me as a valid point, although Gladwell could have provided stronger examples. The young Vladimir Lenin, as a boy, dreamed of becoming a Communist revolutionary and dictator of a very large country. In his case, all the necessary career building blocks were already in place: Karl Marx had written his manifesto a generation before Lenin was born, and when the Russian Revolution came along, Lenin just happened to be living there. Do you think anyone today would have heard of Lenin had he grown up in, say, Sweden?
         The effect of background, timing, and luck is even more telling when we consider the careers of aspiring messiahs. In retrospect, Jesus of Nazareth enjoyed certain advantages— "some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky," as Gladwell puts it. Although Jesus came from an ordinary family, his parents had the good sense to make sure that he was born in a manger— on Christmas Eve, yet. And his antagonists, the Romans, obligingly granted Jesus a very conspicuous martyrdom that was easily replicated in small trinkets people could wear around their necks. Had Jesus preached his gospel in, say, colonial Philadelphia, the Quakers would have sentenced him to six months' community service, and that's the last anyone would have heard of him.
         Or consider the contrasting careers of aspiring pro football heroes. Beginning in eighth grade, I spent hours each week assiduously practicing straight-ahead placekicking in the hope of becoming a professional football star. By my senior year of high school, I was the leading extra-point kicker in New York City. Meanwhile, Pete Gogolak, who was exactly my age, never played American football at all as a schoolboy in Hungary; his game was soccer. But after the Hungarian revolution of 1956 failed, Gogolak and his family fled to America, where he introduced American football to soccer-style kicking, which endowed football kickers with greater distance and accuracy. Overnight, my hard-earned specialty was rendered obsolete. If only I had grown up in Communist Hungary, I might have become a sports celebrity like Pete Gogolak instead of a struggling wordsmith. And you wonder why I’m bitter. Malcolm Gladwell, at least, understands.

Revenge of the critical mass

         In David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013), Gladwell made yet another remarkable discovery: Some people turn adversity into advantages, while others are “crushed by what they have been through.” In other words, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Who knew?
         Presumably because his life was threatened by mobs of angry book-buyers demanding refunds, Gladwell hasn’t been heard from for the past decade. But this year, at the age of 61, he emerged from his bunker with yet another work of faux philosophy. In Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering, Gladwell informs us that in epidemics (whether of illness, addiction, or mass shootings), a few people— Gladwell calls them “superspreaders”— account for most of the spreading. Also, the stories that such people tell about their hometown or country shape what happens there. Also, if these people develop into a critical mass, they could reach a tipping point.

         I warned you this is heavy stuff

         (Full disclosure: I haven’t read Revenge of the Tipping Point. There is little I won’t do for readers of this column. But the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, so in this case my hands are tied.)

Gladwell vs. Tolstoy

         Gladwell recently gave the New York Times a lengthy interview in which he cheerfully acknowledged that he could be mistaken. “The fun of reading one of my books is not to be converted to a way of thinking,” he insisted. “The fun is to meet a new idea and play with it and decide whether you like it, right?” But suppose you find some activity that’s even more fun, like meeting and playing with your pet parakeet, or watching re-runs of the Andy Griffith Show?

         “I don’t have any hesitation about saying I was wrong,” Gladwell told the Times interviewer. “If you’re reading a book that is 25 years old, stuff should be wrong. If you don’t recognize that the world has changed in 25 years, there’s something wrong with you.”

         And here I’ve been wondering why I could never finish War and Peace. Thanks to Gladwell, I have the answer: It’s not my fault; it’s Tolstoy’s, for writing his book more than 25 years ago.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s newest book, The Price We Paid: An Oral History of Penn’s Struggle to Join the Ivy League, 1950-55. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com