The article must be having its fun with trying to _argue_ like Gladwell because it surely gave me the Gladwell roller-coaster ride. A strong, surprising, provoc

The article must be having its fun with trying to _argue_ like Gladwell because it surely gave me the Gladwell roller-coaster ride. A strong, surprising, provocative claim gets you into the car; the winch drags you in train of qualifications and hedges up the ramp, only to let you down, so to speak. Despite the title and content of the article, the central claim is that "Gladwell is the epitome of the way non-fiction has replaced fiction as a transmission mechanism for important new ideas" which I understand as: a) non-fiction has replaced fiction as an important transmission mechanism for important new ideas, and b) Gladwell is merely incidental to the claim, a mere examplar of the claim. No effort, however, is put into showing that novels were ever an important way for transmitting new ideas or what important means here. I added "important" because otherwise we are talking about trivialities. Does "important" mean how ideas are first exposed or how they are popularized? I've seen the claim that novels offered an occasion to exercise moral intuitions, but never as any kind of channel for conveying information. Or that that mechanism actually changed from novels to sub-genre non-fiction. Sure, there's a grand gesture towards comparison between a 19th century novelist and Gladwell. They are both financially successful, Gladwell provides "information" (just like Dickens?), so things must have changed from conveying information from novels to sub-genre non-fiction. The ensuing article tries not at all to address its central claim which held me with avid interest. I guess the claim served only as pretext and provocation.