The Hope of Audacity: Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell's got a new book out, Outliers. It's about nature/nurture, among other things, and you can read a review of it in Salon here. Okay, so this really doesn't have much to do with the stimulus package, but it's interesting. Some critics are being a little more aggressive about this book than they have been in the past. We know that when he's presented to SCUP audiences, he's been well received, so we thought we'd share this positive essay about Gladwell, by Rachel Toor, in Inside Higher Ed:

Gladwell is also accused of being too entertaining. He takes creaky academic work and breathes Frankensteinian life into it. He weaves anecdotes together, creating a tapestry that builds to an argument that seems convincing. This, some reviewers have claimed, is like perpetuating fraud on the (non-academic) reading public: because Gladwell makes it so much fun to follow him on his intellectual journey, he’s going to convince people of things that aren’t provably, academically true. He will lull the hoi polloi into thinking they’re reading something serious.

Which is, of course, the most common complaint about Gladwell: He’s not serious enough. He’s having too much fun playing with his ideas. And, really, you can’t be Serious when you’re raking in so much coin. Anyone who gets paid four million bucks for a book that mines academic work — and not necessarily the stuff that is agreed to be Important — is going to become a target. His speaking fees are beyond the budgets of most colleges. In this way, his career is now similar to that of David Sedaris, who can command an impressive audience and still be dissed by the literary folks. Everyone who’s anyone knows that you can’t sell a lot of books and be a serious writer. Just ask Jonathan Franzen. Or Toni Morrison.