There are some that inspire in a very obvious manner. Through powerful language or forceful
actions, those people can set the tunes and make you dance to them. There are others that make you listen to
music that they listen to and find your inspiration to dance! Malcolm Gladwell, journalist and author of
four brilliant non-fiction books, falls squarely in the latter category. He is an inspiration of mine because he has
made me mull over things that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise and has made
me open my eyes to things that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
When I started to develop an interest in reading
non-fiction, someone told me about Gladwell’s “Tipping Point.” I read it out of curiosity. When I finished the book, I didn’t feel like
I had read anything special. Sure, it
had some interesting insights and lateral thoughts, my favorite being the one
on graffiti in the New York public transportation system (It was about how the
clean-up of the graffiti had a positive effect on reducing crimes since
graffiti was a symbol of disorder that had found its way to our subconscious). But I just said to myself, “That book was
cool. I’ll move on…” I then happened upon a review of the book
wherein the reviewer compared “Tipping Point” and another book of Gladwell’s –
“Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking” – and how the latter was more
focused on the self as opposed to “Tipping Point” which set its sights on the
society around us. I instantly knew that
“Blink,” if well-written, would appeal to my sensibilities a lot more than
“Tipping Point” did. Well-written, it
certainly was!
“Blink” epitomized the intellectual curiosity of Gladwell in
an amazing fashion. While people driven
solely by logical, linear thought will have a tough time appreciating the
brilliance of “Blink,” those who are simply curious about why they do what they
do will find “Blink” to be a treasure.
The thing about the book is that it actually makes us ask more questions
than give us answers. One of my favorite
parts of the book is the story of an experienced firefighter who was in a
burning house but was amidst fellow firefighters who couldn’t identify the
source of the fire. In a split second,
he led the team immediately out of the room he was in, realizing that the
source of the fire was actually in the basement. In the blink
of an eye, he connected the heat in the room with the absence of a visible
source and concluded that the fire must be emanating from the basement. The firefighter’s experience meant that his
system was so intricately wired and so finely tuned. As I was reading this section, I kept saying
to myself that I must develop expertise in at least one area – be it in my
vocation or my hobbies – where I enjoy the magic that a well-wired system can
weave. As I mentioned earlier, Gladwell
didn’t pontificate about any of this; instead, he just made me ponder.
If “Blink” made me look inward, “Outliers” made me look
up…to not only those outliers that transcend the ordinary but also the
“ordinary” – be it the people or the environmental factors - that play a huge
role in the lives of the outliers. While
we have all read fairytales about successful people whose guts, positive values
and strength of character are all highlighted, it was “Outliers” that made me
look beyond the obvious when it comes to successful people. Be it the focus on spouses of late bloomers
who have stood by them as they bloomed into something special to the benefits
that kids who belong to the affluent strata of the society have (through things
such as summer camps), the book places more importance on what extraneous
factors successful people were blessed with than the innate abilities that they
were endowed with. In this aspect,
“Outliers” made me realize that as I set goals for myself that I respect all
the means that enable me to get to my ends.
But “Outliers” was not just a collection of success
stories. It was also about why certain
values in some settings are just off the charts. For instance, there’s a very intriguing
chapter on plane crashes in Korean airlines.
This chapter contains some unforgettable transcripts of conversations
between pilots and ground personnel that caution us to the pitfalls of
hierarchical systems and blind subordination, things that the second-in-line
officers of Korean airlines exhibited with tragic consequences. Gladwell writes about the concept of “power
distance index,” a metric that reflects the virtual “distance” that exists
between superiors and subordinates.
While we chuck up this to cultural differences (for instance, the US is
a low power-distance index country while some Asian countries such as Korea or
India are high power distance index nations), there is a time and a place for
highly obedient subordination and the cockpit of a plane is not one! Again, I would have never associated plane
crashes with anything other than bad luck, bad weather or technical failure
until Gladwell pointed it out!
After having read “Outliers” and “Blink,” I looked forward
to Gladwell’s “What the Dog Saw” with a bit of trepidation since I knew that it
was going to be tough for a book to match the brilliance of those two. While “What the Dog Saw” – a collection of
his articles that have appeared over the years in “The New Yorker” – is not in
the same league, it was still a very engaging read because it further
highlighted to me the sheer joys of delving into minutiae. Nothing is too insignificant to evoke
Gladwell’s curiosity and the book bears sparkling testimony to that. In the book, several questions were asked,
some answered, but everything was relished with the wide eyed wonder of a kid. What is the difference between a puzzle and a
mystery? Should plagiarism of all sorts
be taboo? What separates choking from
panicking? All these and many more are
explored in this book.
My favorite chapter in the book was the last mentioned one: what
separates choking from panicking? Gladwell’s
example of choking was Jana Novotna’s snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory
act against Steffi Graf in the final of Wimbledon ’93, a match that I vividly
remembered watching on TV, sitting at the edge of my seat. As I was reading this part, I was so glad
that Gladwell helped me dissect the disintegration of Novotna as I witnessed
her 20 years ago slide from a 4-1 lead in the final set to lose the game 4-6 to
Graf. Gladwell lucidly explains that
while choking is failure of the most basic of instincts and involves thinking
too much, panicking is the polar opposite – reverting to the most basic of
instincts and thinking very little. A
scuba diver snatching his friend’s oxygen mask under water was the moment of
“panic” that Gladwell wrote about.
Reading this chapter made me realize that I have mixed up the two terms
quite often. It also made me realize
that I should be acutely aware – in times of stress or distress – whether I am
choking or panicking, react accordingly and hopefully, avoid both! Again, Gladwell didn’t say out loud, “Don’t
choke or panic. It’s bad for you!” He just gave me the tools to help me
introspect.
Looking back at my reading experiences, his books have essentially
given me a plethora of small pleasures that I hope you got while reading one or
more of his works. And who knows,
Gladwell might actually have made your mind go to places entirely different
than mine. That’s perfectly fine! As I alluded to earlier, Gladwell just takes
horses to uncharted waters; it’s up to them to drink in the pleasures!
