Being Malcolm Gladwell

Today on the Scroll: On a day when the only news anyone is really interested in concerns the future complexion of the USA, best we can offer by comparison is preparation for another round of jealously evaluating Malcolm Gladwell, two weeks prior to the publication of his next book, Outliers: The Story of Success.

Gladwell appeared twice last spring at Convocation Hall on the campus of his alma mater, the University of Toronto, where he remains the most famous Trinity College history graduate of 1984. Both events were framed as debates. The first, on the topic “Canada: Nation or Notion?” seemed an efficient way to get Gladwell and ex-pat New Yorker colleague Adam Gopnik to contribute to Maclean’s without paying them to write. Six weeks later, an earnest discussion on social change found him seated across the stage from local philosopher Mark Kingwell. The turnouts for these fundamentally dry discussions indicate that, regardless of the topic, Gladwell’s brand alone has become enough of a draw.

Outliers, his third book, will get an American print run of 750,000, rivaled on that day only by Burning Up: On Tour With the Jonas Brothers, and only exceeded in aspiration by The Christmas Sweater by conservative crank Glenn Beck, a memoir by media crank Ted Turner, and a follow-up to the book YOU: An Owners Manual. (Lest you wonder why big booksellers are feeling totally hopeless about this holiday season.)

But none of those other authors can claim a year of genuine anticipation for what ends up between the covers. Jason Kottke, probably the most loyal of Gladwell fanbloggers, initially had the topic of the book pegged as “the future of the workplace with subtopics of education and genius.” Close, sort of, but not really.

Following the sleeper success of The Tipping Point, and Blink earning back its million-dollar advance many times over, Gladwell’s stature as star correspondent for The New Yorker couldn’t be more secure. The obvious assumption, therefore, is that each piece published along the way is seeding a book-in-progress. Back in October 2005, the article “Getting In” started off with Gladwell comparing the heft traditionally associated with an acceptance at Harvard to the nonchalance of his decision to attend the University of Toronto.

From there, as the storybook Gladwell saga goes, his inability to secure a job in the local media led to job at hysteriazine The American Spectator and, by 1987, was hired as a science writer by The Washington Post.

The hair-raising image he cultivated around age 40, just in time to provide the inspiration for Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking — a meditation on the merits of stereotype that started with re-growing his teenage Afro — remains the greatest of Gladwell’s assets when it comes to projecting himself on a celebrity circuit.

After all, he looks self-consciously uncomfortable whenever snagged in a party snapshot, and his success in publishing has probably intimidated anyone else from asking him any probing questions — a scrum arranged for a dozen or so reporters at the second Convocation Hall gabfest planted Gladwell at a desk with Kingwell, yet when it looked like no one had a question, they couldn’t leap back to their feet fast enough. Recognizing the ridiculousness of the moment, someone asked something, and the pair sat down to answer for a few more fidgety minutes.

So, is it only a talent for delivering words that have attracted people to Malcolm Gladwell? Now that he’s written an entire book about the process involved with achieving success, will someone else be successful in dissecting his own?

Rex Sorgatz, based at Fimoculous.com, never seems to miss an opportunity to link to a Gladwell-related item — even if usually first spotted via Jason Kottke — would seem to be the ideal kind of person to help with that task, or maybe not.

“I think he should be filed under self-help,” writes back Sorgatz. “Read his work closely and there’s something about it that is supposed to make you, the reader, feel better about yourself. You may seem insignificant — but you’re actually an influencer! You might make rash decisions — but this is good!

“This will be especially true with his new book: ‘You know, your genius will come to light, even if no one realized how precocious you were at the time.’”

Yes, but what is it about Gladwell that motivates anyone to pay consistent attention to him?

“He is such an appealing character because he’s secretly an aspirational writer,” says Sorgatz. “If you read closely, his books are attempts to make people feel better about himself.  

“And now that his third book is about to come out I get the impression that everyone is priming their guns.”

Two high-profile shots and counting, so far: “What the hell, Malcolm Gladwell?” recently asked HarperCollins editor Julia Cheiffetz on The Huffington Post, noting that no women are noted in Gladwell’s profiles of extraordinary achievers in Outliers. And the first published review, snuck into the Business section of the latest Sunday New York Times, called it “catchy and beautifully written. But it also feels like a sumptuous Chinese meal that an hour later leaves a diner feeling hungry.”

What the author has in retaliation, of course, is the eagerness of The New Yorker to encourage book promotion in the form of additional beat reporting: “Late Bloomers” and “The Uses of Adversity.”

A recent submission to an “Ask the Author” chat on The New Yorker’s website actually asked Gladwell, “Where do you feel you fit personally in the ‘genius continuum’?” Answer: “Well, I’m hardly a genius. But if I was, I’d much rather be the late bloomer than the prodigy — particularly since I’m no longer young myself.”

Being Malcolm Gladwell does sound like a thankless job if that kind of exchange comes with the territory.

But maybe, like Barack Obama, he’s perfectly content with being regarded as a blank screen — all the better to continue inconspicuously investigating the lives of others, if indeed praising the achievement of the likes of Bill Gates doesn’t mean Gladwell always wanted to write hagiographies about the famously rich.

When cartoonist John Allison incorporated a cameo appearance from Gladwell in a two-part installment of his webcomic Scary Go Round, depicting him as a statistic-spouting, cubicle-climbing, editor-wagging cad, it leaves one wondering just how modest a successful writer can really be.

“There is something soothing about his writing and his ability to work through an issue in that dry, erudite, New Yorker-ly way,” says Allison. “The world seems vicious and unpredictable and Gladwell restores a little pocket of order.”

And, in a mediascape that became all about the shouting, a writer keeping his own persona at a safe distance in print may have been the biggest genius all along.

“He’s mixed-race, apolitical and asexual in his writing,” says Allison “For all I know, he could live with a transsexual Nazi clown — but it doesn't really matter.”

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