There’s a fascinating exchange in Slate—and how often do I get to type those words?—between Christopher Chabris, who can’t stand (I think it’s fair to say) Malcolm Gladwell, and Malcolm Gladwell, who wants to suggest that his feelings for Chabris are more high-minded.
A psychiatry psychology professor at New York’s Union College, Chabris finds many things about Gladwell’s writing objectionable. Too many to list here, actually. But here’s a central argument:
Gladwell thinks he is conveying scientific knowledge to the masses, and wants to be judged on whether he has succeeded. He has certainly reached the masses—he was on the cover of the Costco Connection!—and I don’t begrudge him this at all. The question then is whether he is accurately conveying the science. Not whether he is making little mistakes or leaving out details that would bore the nonspecialist, but whether he is getting the big ideas right.
Chabris, you will not be surprised to know, doesn’t think so. And goes on at some length in his argument, which I, who have long felt skepticism about Gladwell’s work, found generally on target.
He suggests that Gladwell is casual to the point of sloppiness in his use of science; that he is more interested in a good story than a true fact; that he oversimplifies to the point of distortion; and that he defines his work in a way to make it impervious to serious critique.
(I would add that Gladwell consistently fails to address any evidence that runs contrary to the predictably counterintuitive thesis he is peddling.)
For example, Chabris points to this quote Gladwell gave to the Telegraph:
“And as I’ve written more books I’ve realized there are certain things that writers and critics prize, and readers don’t. So we’re obsessed with things like coherence, consistency, neatness of argument. Readers are indifferent to those things.”
(I’ve read two of Gladwell’s books, Tipping Point and Blink—was unimpressed by the former, thought the latter was a bunch of bunk—so I guess that makes me a “reader,” and I am certainly not indifferent to “those things.” I suspect you aren’t either.)
Gladwell responded in Slate, which seems only fair; Chabris has also taken aim at Gladwell in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Wall Street Journal, and the criticisms are deep. But Gladwell’s response is sniffy. It reads like someone who is thoroughly pissed off and trying not to show it; also sounds like someone who knows that the criticisms are serious, but doesn’t want to acknowledge Chabris as a peer.
In defending the quote above, for example, Gladwell writes,
Chabris should calm down. I was simply saying that all writing about social science need not be presented with the formality and precision of the academic world. There is a place for storytelling, in all of its messiness.
“Chabris should calm down”? Oh, that’s irritating. Chabris is pretty calm, but he’s also passionate—the kind of passion you feel when you’re quite confident that someone else is slinging it, and you suspect that he knows he’s slinging it, and yet millions of people are, quite literally, buying the nonsense he’s slinging. I appreciate the honesty in that—it’s certainly preferable to writing a passionate rebuttal but pretending that it is dispassionate.
Plus, what Gladwell says he said isn’t what he said. No one would object to the idea that social science need not be presented with the formality of the academic world. (Gladwell slips “precision” in there; that’s a little more problematic.) But the idea that readers don’t care about coherence and consistency? Lots of people would object to that, and those are Gladwell’s words, clear and precise. Gladwell says something; then, in his own defense, he says he said something else. A neat little trick.
Gladwell wants to have it both ways. He wants to praise the world of academia, from which he gets the ideas he then popularizes. But he is willing to stigmatize academia as elitist and out of touch. Anyone who has a problem with him, he suggests, just doesn’t get it.
What is going on here? The kinds of people who read books in America seem to have no problem with my writing. But I am clearly a bee in the bonnet of some of the kinds of people who review books in America. I think this has to do with the way in which my books are written. I write in the genre of what might be called “intellectual adventure stories…”
This bit of faux-anti-intellectual populism is disingenuous and ugly. Gladwell’s basically saying that Chabris is an eggheaded academic objecting to “intellectual adventure stories” that the people just love! Love! Why, they’re sold at airports!
But there is of course, not a real distinction between “the kinds of people who read books in America” and “the kinds of people who review books in America.” In fact, when you look at the numbers some hardcover non-fiction books sell, you might think there’s pretty much a 1:1 correlation. (Granted that Gladwell might not know this.)
Gladwell concludes by writing,
…before [Chabris] repurposes his complaints about David and Goliath a fourth time, he should remember two things. First, that the world is not improved when those who create knowledge condescend to those who try to popularize it. And second, criticism that takes the form of “there is only one way to write a book, and it is my way” is not actually criticism. It is narcissism.
So let’s see: High-minded Malcolm Gladwell has, in his defense, called Chabris condescending, narcissistic, irresponsible (Gladwell suggests that Chabris reviewed Blink without having read the entire book), unreasonable, unbalanced (“I clearly drive Chabris crazy”), maritally unbalanced (“These are not tranquil times in the Chabris household”), out of the mainstream, and more.
And then he concludes with the staggeringly insincere “I should say that I have tremendous respect for the work that Chablis does.”
I understand getting hot under the collar about bad reviews; I’ve had my share, and my initial reaction is to want to strangle the writer. And I’m sure that enormous success doesn’t make one immune to such reactions. (Especially enormous success that, so far, has come with near-universal praise.)
But if you’re going to fight back in anger, man up and be honest about it. Don’t pretend to be dispensing wisdom from Mount Olympus even as you hit below the belt.
As you can tell, I’m pretty squarely on Chablis’ side here. I don’t know Gladwell, though we have about a million friends in common. (We’re about the same age, we were both journalists in Washington, he lives in Brooklyn, I lived in Brooklyn, etc.) But after reading this response, I don’t think I’d like him.
