New Malcolm Gladwell: How do you win when you’re outgunned by your opponent? Answer: Exert more effort, change the dynamics of the contest. BTW, what’s the point of having a blog when I find out about your new writing from Waxy Banks?
4 thoughts on “New Malcolm Gladwell”
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He should really get someone else to run that blog, and redesign it so it’s not so boring-looking.
I was reading it on the magazine and I couldn’t believe when it extended for pages and pages of the same basketball-team and Lawrence-of-Arabia examples. It could have been five paragraphs long. (I think you did it in one sentence quite well). I don’t get the infatuation with Gladwell. To me it’s just a mixture of half pop-philosopher and half soothsayer of duh-truths. But that basketball team is a Disney movie waiting to happen.
At his best he’s dazzling. And I guess in part because of that it’s interesting when he overreaches or plain gets something wrong (like the time he told you to act on your mistrust of your doctor after showing how that mistrust is probably based on irrelevant factors).
Normally he uses his blog to discuss his essays after the fact. Still, he has been notoriously absent throughout most of ’08 and so far this year.
As for this last piece, I have no idea… my guess is that he was going for the inspirational angle.