Pondering on the periphery (From The Argus)

Pondering on the periphery

6:00am Saturday 20th June 2009

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Snake-hipped comedian and serial womaniser Russell Brand wrote in one of his Guardian columns that he’d read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink and decided to take the author’s advice – that your gut reaction is often the right reaction.

Brand admitted he was probably over-simplifying Gladwell’s work (which he was), but the general gist suited him. “Since then I’ve been judging everything with the caffeinated velocity of a mouse’s heartbeat,” he wrote. “Yes, I’ll buy those trousers”; “I think I love you”; “I hate you, and I demand a refund for these unflattering lady’s trousers”.

Gladwell, a quieter and shyer (but equally crazy-haired) prospect than his British misinterpreter, thinks Brand may have misunderstood his cult bestseller “I’m not sure that’s the correct interpretation of the book,” laughs Gladwell, who is very hard to hear against the background noise of Manhattan traffic.

Has he heard of anyone acting irrationally and impulsively under the influence of Blink?

“No, I haven’t. But people tell me in general terms they have been affected one way or another.”

The writer and New Yorker columnist says strangers email and approach him in the street to provide a “steady stream of feedback”, which you wonder if a private man like Gladwell enjoys?

“I always like it when I hear from kids. To me one of the great goals in writing is reaching a wide audience. When some parent tells me my book was their 14-year-old’s first non-fiction read that makes me feel I’ve accomplished something.”

Most people would agree Gladwell has accomplished something. He is a feted New Yorker magazine columnist who writes about everything from the ingredients of a perfect cookie to why men are in love with chinos and, at 45 years old, he has three New York Times bestsellers under his belt.

The first, The Tipping Point, analyses the enormous implications of small-scale social events. Blink looks at how our instinctive reactions are often very good, and his latest, Outliers, argues success is more about circumstance, practice and luck than genes or genius.

Proof of this theory includes that professional Canadian ice hockey players are often born in the first few months of the calendar year – the cut-off date for junior hockey is January 1, so children born earlier in the year have an advantage in physical development over their younger peers. Then there is Bill Gates. Gladwell shows that the Microsoft billionaire not only had an aptitude for creating software, he also had unique access as a schoolboy to a mainframe computer, which he got to in eighth grade, before just about anyone else in the world.

Similarly, and controversially, he argues the Beatles’ genius for melody did not come ready-made. They developed it while playing in Hamburg in the early 1960s while playing at all-night strip clubs, eight days a week. They had the ability, the luck and, importantly, they put in the hours – 10,000 to be precise, which Gladwell believes is also essential for success.

But if you’re looking for the secret of success, it isn’t to be found between the pages of Outliers. Gladwell is quick to point out this is no self-help book and the subtitle of the book is The Story Of Success, not The Secret, as I wrongly quote to the author.

“That would be very different,” he says. “Secret promises, Story tells.”

Gladwell says he was inspired to write Outliers after reading countless stories about chief executives earning multimillion-dollar salaries. “It was conceived at a time when all the people on Wall Street were being paid enormous sums of money and patting themselves very vigorously on the back.

“I just got annoyed at the self-righteousness of their justification for deserving that much money.

I don’t feel I deserve the money I make, and I don’t make $300 million a year. It made me ask the question, to what extent are we responsible for our own success?”

Does he see himself as an Outlier? “No! I’m a journalist and I’ve been successful in the past couple of years.” Which may be an understatement for a man who reportedly earns $1 million a year. Gladwell, who was born in England to a maths professor father and family psychologist mother, started out as a reporter on the Washington Post, where he worked for ten years. It meant he got in the requisite 10,000 hours, but he says he was also lucky to be trained at a time when newspapers were still vibrant. “Had I become a journalist ten years later, it would have been a different proposition.”

While Gladwell doesn’t consider himself an Outlier, others obviously do. He was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and the word Gladwellian has even sneaked into common parlance. How does he feel about becoming an adjective?

“I think that term was made up by my editor,” he laughs. “I think it’s just a PR stunt. No one is more surprised and occasionally annoyed by my success than I am. I’m a private person and I have no interest in being a public figure.”

I ask if Gladwell has heard back from any of his famous examples in Outliers. While Paul McCartney hasn’t picked up the phone, there has been positive noise from Bill Gates and the odd growl from those who don’t like his view that genius is not innate.

“Some people do bridle at that message,” he says, “but I’m glad. They’re supposed to.”

• Malcolm Gladwell will appear at The Dome, Brighton on Tuesday, June 23, 8pm. For tickets call 01273 709709.

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