Malcolm Gladwell and the Shape of American Public Intellectual Life
Malcolm Gladwell and the Shape of American Public Intellectual Life
Section titled “Malcolm Gladwell and the Shape of American Public Intellectual Life”
Metadata
Section titled “Metadata”- Author: Bio
- Full Title: Malcolm Gladwell and the Shape of American Public Intellectual Life
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://uva.theopenscholar.com/charles-mathewes/blog/malcolm-gladwell-and-shape-american-public-intellectual-life-0
Highlights
Section titled “Highlights”- I do like Gladwell, but I am more impressed with Lewis’s ability to see the big picture as well as the micro-story. It’s true that he typically hosts his arguments on depictions of character and narrative; but those genre devices are used to tell a big story. It’s Lewis, not Gladwell, after all, who wrote Liar’s Poker, and The Big Short, and Moneyball, and The Fifth Risk, among others—books that tell individual stories but in the service of larger narratives. And those narratives look for all the world like the big stories, and the big theories, that Gladwell doesn’t indulge in. You can be amused by Lewis as much as by Gladwell. But you can be inspired, re-oriented, and enraged by him as well. That’s why I think Lewis is a better, deeper public intellectual.