Notes from Malcolm Gladwell's Writing Masterclass

But... that means he has exactly the skill set you'd hope for in a writing instructor. He's not teaching you how to think or how to do research. He's teaching you how to sound good.

I haven't read Galdwell's books, but read most of his New Yorker articles. While I have observed that sometimes he cherry-picks data, his gift of communicating ideas effectively is un-ignorable. I have had trouble finding non-fiction writers that can match his ability. Gladwell might not be for you, but it's unfair to criticize him just because his writing lacks an academic treatment for the subject.

Clunky writing writing can be explained away with "readers are dull and lazy." Whether that's the case or the author has not found a user-friendly & medium appropriate way to work through difficult material... Concluding the latter is likely to produce the best book.

Brian Greene wrote a fantastic walk through of special relativity. He used the "atomic pong on a moving training" that will take an ordinary reader from speed of light invariance to time travel. It was (iircc) a few pages, one picture (the atom bouncing on a train). Incredible bit of pop-science writing.

From there, you can grok what "time flips in a black hole."

Assuming readers (or users) are stupid is just a lot less likely to result in better writing. Concluding that your writing can be easier to understand is.

Me think, why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

I would buy them, read them, learn from them, but be frustrated I spent that time and only really got one nugget from the book.

Then I became an adjunct professor. Teaching in my first course, I noticed that even the brightest students would ask me to go over content again with additional examples and it brought me back to these debates about Gladwell's books.

I decided to split my class in half, into group A and group B and run an experiment (that wouldn't impact the student's marks).

For Group A, I would give a detailed two hour breakdown of "Topic #1" explaining each element of it carefully and slowly. For "Topic #2", I would give only a thirty minute breakdown of the topic comprised of three anecdotes applying the topic.

For Group B, I would give the detailed two hour breakdown on "Topic #2" and the thirty minute anecdote series on "Topic #1".

Then I quizzed them.

Both groups performed better on the anecdote topics by a fairly significant margin, and not only had the class average performed better, but, I found that many individuals who often struggled on tests were performing FAR above their averages.

When I look back to the business concepts I remember, it's never long convoluted blog posts, or books covering an array of concepts. It's ideas that can be expressed in a few words (Jelly Effect, Tipping Point, Purple Cow) and then are beaten to death with examples.

There seem two be two reasons, first and foremost, not every anecdote, example, or explanation resonates the same with each person. So by increasing the number of examples you give, you are increasing the likelihood of an individual reader being able to understand.

Second, just like we learned in elementary with spelling and times tables, to truly 'learn' something repetition and reinforcement are really important and increase the likelihood of people being able to recall and apply the concepts that are taught.

Gladwell and others present just one or two nuggets of brilliance across their books, but, I think most educators would agree with me, that it is because of that repetition and variety of example's that most of us understand and remember the concepts they were trying to teach.

That’s pretty offensive. If we say that about Mexicans, Koreans or any other nationality, that wouldn’t be ok would it? Somehow it’s ok to insult an entire nationality and it’s “funny?”

I don’t consider reviews or statements that blanket-insult a nationality to be “funny and perhaps containing a shred of truth.” Replace “American” with any other ethnicity or nationality and such comments wouldn’t be allowed on HN or in an Amazon review. The average American has average intelligence, just like the average anything else. When I was living outside the US, there wasn’t any particular difference in terms of pop/superficial awareness. Koreans, Chinese, French, Mexicans — none of the nationalities I’ve lived amongst had above average intellectual fortitude as a culture. They have idiots and geniuses and normal people just like everywhere else. So the ideas behind “American Folksy” could be applied anywhere, but calling is American just makes the whole review offensive.

The real root of this genre is that magazines are dead. There is a market for tweets and books. Everything else is a path to poverty.

In 1960, Gladwell stuff and Freakonomics, etc would be feature articles in Life or US News & World Report, or Fortune. Now feature writers are extinct.

I also enjoyed Saigon 1965 (S01E02) and the one about McDonald's french fries but more importantly the beginning of the war on fat in America (S02E09).

He unearths some good perspectives in the podcast and it doesn't have the pop-sci feel that his books do that get my BS detector going.

But they're not perfect, because recently we had ketchup at a restaurant that made their own. It was very, very good, and we preferred it to Heinz. It's clearly possible to do better.

Also, mushroom ketchup is amazing. (Also locally made for that restaurant, apparently.)

To me, there's no more a 'ketchup conundrum' than one for mustard. Until I was an adult, regular yellow mustard was the only real choice. (Yes, there were Grey Poupon commercials. Nobody I knew actually ate it. They did make fun of it, though.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12861468 [2] Ok, me