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How to Write a Malcolm Gladwell Book
- aaronbrethorst 14y agoI bet you could go through the same process with Thomas Friedman: 1. Come up with a principle long-since scientifically proven false. "Hmm, how about 'The World is Flat'" 2. Write a book called "My Dull, Platitudinous Travel Diary" "Indians in call centers can talk with Americans! Amazing!" 3. Now change the title of that book to the long-since disregarded principle. "Everyone will want to read this because the editors at the NYT are inexplicably required to keep me on staff, offering me undeserved credibility for the rest of time!"
- sramsay 14y agoThe Friedman process goes like this: 1. Take a massively complex, world-historical economic process. 2. Ignore it. 3. Write a story about a shoe factory in Bangalore that massively oversimplifies, but overturns conventional thinking on, #1. 4. Profit!
- neilk 14y agoOverturned conventional thinking? Friedman? Maybe his conclusions seem unconventional (or at least, mildly inhuman) because Friedman always oversimplifies with the view from the boardroom. Never the street. Otherwise your formula could well apply to Chomsky or Taibbi, on their worst days.
- Yhippa 14y agoThis was pretty funny. The concept of his books are pretty cheesy but I think what makes him successful is that he actually writes the books vs. sitting around and poking holes in it.
- tomasien 14y agoI could not agree more. I'm pretty sure the author of this post spends the day patting him/her self on the back.
- to3m 14y agoWell... the post IS amusing...
- songrabbit 14y agoThe author of this post writes smbc [1], an extremely popular webcomic, among a variety of other things. [1] http://www.smbc-comics.com/ http://www.smbc-comics.com/
- hackerpolicy 14y agoJust browsed some of the comics, and between Gladwell's popularity and smbc's, I take the former.
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- Lewton 14y agoZach Weiner is one of the more productive people on the internet. He has a daily webcomic at http://www.smbc-comics.com http://www.smbc-comics.com He's also the man behind http://www.captainexcelsior.com/ http://www.captainexcelsior.com/ and writes the script for this comic: http://www.snowflakescomic.com/ http://www.snowflakescomic.com/ He creates sketch comedy at http://www.smbc-theater.com http://www.smbc-theater.com Writes the weinerworks blog has a podcast at http://www.weeklyweinersmith.com/ http://www.weeklyweinersmith.com/ currently working on a space opera: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smbctheater/smbc-theater-goes-to-space http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smbctheater/smbc-theater... also this choose your own adventure book: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/999790007/trial-of-the-clone-a-choosable-path-gamebook-by-za http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/999790007/trial-of-the-c... And that's only the stuff that I'm aware of
- MaxGabriel 14y agoI haven't read much Gladwell, so I'll set aside factual accuracy of criticisms of him. But I don't think your comment is responsive to the OP. If the OP's argument is true, Gladwell is sharing ersatz knowledge and distorting reality. That he's successful at doing it is irrelevant to the truth of what he writes.
- dkarl 14y agoAs do many other people, but the difference between Malcolm Gladwell and the many, many successful authors who have written much more (and much better) is that Gladwell lets his readers buy the vicarious enjoyment of success. It's just like watching an action-hero movie and feeling the thrill of being that brave, that strong, that resourceful, that much tougher than the bad guys. Except that Gladwell has managed to combine the best parts of reading a book about Vietnam and watching Rambo: First Blood Part II. You get the virtuous smart-person feeling of the former and the escapist fantasy of the latter. If Gladwell has any value, it's that he inspires us to imagine ourselves rising above our current limitations. He does for us as adults lusting after career success what books like the Hardy Boys adventures did for us as kids. And maybe we might elevate ourselves by acting out these fantasies in reality. However, in his article in the latest New Yorker (about the distance runner Alberto Salazar) he steps back from inspiration and embraces the vicarious, voyeuristic nature of his work. After taking us through the vicarious thrill of being so committed to winning that we run through our self-protective mental limits all the way up to the true limits of our bodies, eliminating all slack, he absolves us of responsibility: Salazar's competitive career ended ten years too early; Gladwell himself abandoned competitive running because he couldn't take the pain; we need feel no self-consciousness about failing to follow Salazar's insane example. The perfect time to read it would be while taking a nice break at work.
- crafter 14y agoGladwell has managed to combine the best parts of reading a book about Vietnam and watching Rambo: First Blood Part II. You get the virtuous smart-person feeling of the former and the escapist fantasy of the latter. I think you nailed it here. This is why I enjoy reading Gladwell - his writing inspires me, and without the fist pumping bravado of motivational speakers.
- orta 14y agoI'm glad to see that someone commented his S.H.A.M.E project link in the comments down under the original article, to the point that it's worth re-linking here: http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ I read the Tipping point and found it quite an interesting book, but I've not bought anymore of his books after I had read his profile/sources linked above.
- kenjackson 14y agoI never saw the Shame Project, but after reading the above link I think they're over-reaching way more than Gladwell's worst stories. For example they say, "In 1990, a Gladwell article in the Washington Post warned that laws banning cigarettes could “put a serious strain on the nation’s Social Security and Medicare programs.”" I read the article (as they link to it), and frankly it's not as inflammatory as their quote would lead one to believe. Gladwell brings up a reasonable point that smokers tend to die younger and hence may reduce total costs in the health care system. And he, rightly IMO, says that we should move the anti-smoking movement as a health issue rather than a cost-cutting issue (And 22 years after this article was written his position has been borne out. Few people view smoking as a cost issue.) Regarding the American Spectator -- this was apparently one of the few places he was offered a job. This "3rd Party" list he's on also includes Penn Jillette and I suspect many other names we know. Being an open ear isn't the same as being a shill. John Gruber is a shill, while Nilay Pital is an open ear.
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- danso 14y agoNot to comment on Gladwell specifically, but it seems to be well-accepted that lifespans in excess of the average retirement age are a huge cost to the system, particularly because of the disproportionate sums used in the very last few years of treatment. It may be cruel to say so, but it is logical that longer lifespans are costly.
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- paulsutter 14y agoHilarious and accurate. The biggest benefit to constructing Gladwell books is that everyone is able to discuss the book at cocktail parties even if they haven't read it. This means that people can put the book on their shelf and feel as if they've read it, without actually having to do the work of reading it. Genius, really.
- pessimizer 14y agoNot only that, but the concepts as stated are 1) so bad that people can already hate the books without having read them - so it's not only part of the conversation at parties, but also the loudest, most contentious conversation at parties, and 2) so vague that they have to be referred to by their short, pithy names, loudly and repeatedly, or else everyone would forget what they were arguing about, and 3) those names are also old tropes that everyone has heard or the essential words in old tropes that everyone has heard, so people feel like the books or concepts must have been around longer and have more basis than they actually do. Of course, this is really the list of the biggest benefits to publishing Gladwell books:)
- tokenadult 14y agoMalcolm Gladwell, who has said in an interview that he writes to try out ideas http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html "Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little? "A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them." is good, while trying out ideas, at crediting his sources. Any reader of a Malcolm Gladwell book (as I know, from being a reader of the book Outliers) can check the sources, and decide from there what other sources to check and what other ideas to play with. Gladwell doesn't purport to write textbooks, but I give him a lot of credit for finding interesting scholarly sources that haven't had enough attention in the popular literature. He is equaled by very few authors as a story-teller who can tie ideas together in a thought-provoking assembly.
- majormajor 14y agoI don't know if I'm too cynical, or if he's too optimistic, but the "as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think" part is where I think he misses the mark. I know too many people who read them as gospel.
- firebones 14y agoIf Gladwell Published in Nature or some other primary journal, I could understand the hate, but he publishes in The New Yorker and writes popular books. There is a place for people who expose ideas to broader audiences, and in fact it is important for catching the interest of people who might one day go deeper and challenge some of the ideas. I would liken him to my exposure to Martin Gardner and AK Dewdney in the back pages of Scientific American as a kid. They weren't setting out to use their platform to do basic research in math and computer science, or to write definitive texts, but instead were popularizing interesting and though-provoking ideas in these area in a manner that was challenging yet accessible to a broader audience. I know that I definitely would have been far less likely to pursue a career in science and technology had it not been for those who popularized the biz, like those two, Hofstadter, Tracy Kidder, et al. As for people blinding taking what they consume as gospel, that seems to be a fairly universal human characteristic, whether the source is a cable news outlet, a religion, etc. It is a high bar to set to require all written communication to be immune to misinterpretation or over generalization, and the burden rests more on the audience.
- drumdance 14y agoPro tip: pretty much all of Gladwell's books started as an article in the New Yorker. If you read the article, you can pretty much skip the book.
- danso 14y agoPro-tip: virtually all non fiction books start off as articles, though the New Yorker has a much higher rate than other news orbs. Typically, in a long form story, the printed matter is directly dependent on just about 1% of the body of research and interviewing you actually did. To put it another way, think of how much the LOTR movies left out.
- drumdance 14y agoI was talking about Malcolm Gladwell specifically.
- swatkat 14y agoThis reminds me of The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator: http://malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/ http://malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/
- appleflaxen 14y agoI /kind of/ respected Malcolm Gladwell until I found out he is just a shill for big tobacco. http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
- blakestein 14y agoThanks for posting this. I was amused by the other conversations going on here, but this actually changed my mind about him.
- mrobataille 14y agoI wonder what your friends would think about you if there were a website exposing inconsistencies between your public and private persona.
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- incision 14y agoAmazing how you could change a few phrases here and there and turn this straight into a Michael Lewis how to. Just trade business for high finance with a pinch of major league sports and spend your anecdotes on overwrought descriptions of your main character's idiosyncrasies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lewis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lewis
- danso 14y agoI had never heard the last aphorism in the OP before; it got the biggest laugh out of me: Remember the old joke among social scientists – “Predict the future? It’s hard enough to predict the past!” However, those social scientists haven’t realized that it’s easy to predict the past as long as you’re talking about one story at a time.
- forgottenpaswrd 14y agoHow to write a cynical blog: 1-Think about a famous author that sells a lot of books; 2- Criticize him-her like if he were stupid, putting yourself like you are much better than him just from criticizing him in the security of your house, risking nothing. 3- Attract all the haters of the author on Internet. Mentally masturbate listening those people repeat what you said as they already believe the same that you do. 4- Feel like you had done something of value while you have not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWmQYxCgchY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWmQYxCgchY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IvnptQJ__U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IvnptQJ__U
- shuri 14y agoI liked outliers. It could have been more direct but I liked it.
- nir 14y agoIt's disappointing to have this as #1 story in HN. Hacking is about doing stuff, not putting down (or hyping) people who do stuff. I never had any trouble simply avoiding Gladwell when I wanted to.
- tptacek 14y agoIt's plainly evident that as journalists and pop- social- science writers go, Gladwell is spectacularly successful. This article posits that the reason for that success is that he has hit on a formula of catchy titles and appeals to lucrative audiences. Do any of you actually believe this? If so, square that belief with the fact that the author of this blog post could clearly apply the same formula. Why isn't he spectacularly successful too? My guess: however easy this blogger thinks it is to come up with the theme of a Gladwell book, it is far, far harder to write that book as compellingly as Gladwell does. Put differently: Gladwell is just an extremely talented writer. Jab at him all you want for the superficiality of the ideas he's trafficking in, or for being beholden to corporate sponsors. I'm not sticking up for what he writes. But what he writes isn't the key to his success. Gladwell could write the phone book and it'd be more convincing than this post was.
- spindritf 14y agoMalcolm Gladwell obviously does much more than just applying this formula. First of all, he applies it well. And we know here that ideas are nothing, execution is everything. He also plays and looks the part of a sophisticated modern intellectual, publishes in the New Yorker, gives inspiring speeches, even if they're just excerpts from his books. None of that means that his works don't follow a predictable pattern. And none of his achievements should stop anyone from poking fun at that.
- kmfrk 14y agoThere's also an ethical constraint that prevents people like the author from copying Gladwell's model. And it's plainly obvious that things in general are much easier, when you don't have to adhere to a set of ethics. Gladwell is clearly a talented writer - the guy can make an entertaining presentation about condiments, which is no small feat. Mike Daisey is a gifted spoken-word artist as well. Yet he is someone whose example I doubt many here would aspire to. Gladwell might be a compelling - albeit extremely formulaic - writer, but how does he fare as a journalist?
- telemachos 14y ago> Gladwell might be a compelling - albeit extremely formulaic - writer, but how does he fare as a journalist? In fairness, we probably shouldn't judge him as a journalist. He's a storyteller and a popularizer instead: someone who reads scholarly works and whips them into a shape that larger audiences can and will read. Case in point: in 1985, Timothy Wilson published an amazing article called "Strangers to Ourselves". Years later, he turned it into a book (of the same title). But most people haven't heard of Wilson or that book, certainly nowhere near as many people as have heard of or read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. By Gladwell's own admission, most of the ideas in Blink start from Wilson's work.[1] [1] http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/tp_reading.html http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/tp_reading.html
- ericdykstra 14y agoGladwell says himself, in his own books, that he writes not to change the minds of his readers, but to make his readers think. The stories he presents alongside the ideas he presents are just illustrations. Every situation, whether it's Bill Gates' success, the problem of choosing NFL Quarterbacks, or the rise of Hush Puppies has an incredible amount of variables that can never be fully grasped. The common theme of Gladwell bashers seems to be that they take every idea presented as if he were presenting it as unilateral truth. I mean, just take a look at this Quora page: http://www.quora.com/Malcolm-Gladwell-author/What-are-some-claims-by-Malcolm-Gladwell-that-are-incorrect http://www.quora.com/Malcolm-Gladwell-author/What-are-some-c... If you look at the top answer there, the writer is clearly missing the point of Gladwell's writing on a number of issues. The one complaint about his writing I've seen the most often is about the 10,000 hour rule. The writer of the Quora answer puts it this way: "[Gladwell is wrong in saying] That 10,000 hours of practice will turn you into a genius on the order of Mozart or Michael Jordan". He never says anything like that in Outliers! The main arguments that I got out of the 10,000 hour rule is that the most successful people of any area tend to follow a similar trend: born into an exceptional situation to lead to greatness in that area, dedicated practice for thousands of hours, above average IQ (but IQ past ~120 is not too important). Saying that dedicated practice alone will turn anyone into the top 0.001% of a given profession is absurd, and Gladwell doesn't say that at all. Maybe if Gladwell bashers stopped taking everything he writes as if he were prescribing ideas of thought, they could enjoy his compelling writing and thought-provoking ideas.
- utopkara 14y agoI had my own hypothesis of a Gladwell recipe: he takes a well-executed research paper, and expands on the references, and their references, and then adds links to other pop-science books. The original idea could be told more precisely within 15 pages, as exemplified by the journal article, and his 300 page books give little glimpses of that clarity when they are verbatim from the original, and mud the water elsewhere.
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