GTA Trendwatch #1: Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell attended the University of Toronto about 20 years ago, moving from Elmira to pursue a history B.A. at Trinity College, and his pursuit of a journalism career stateside was entirely the result of his being unable to get a job around these parts. Considering how the $40K+ he commands per keynote could be more than a relatively successful magazine writer of his stripe yields in a year locally, that rejection has long since tilted in his favour. Gladwell remains conveniently claimed as one of our own, due to his transforming the strident neocon-style debunking of conventional wisdom into something cuddlier, thus more Canadian. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking didn’t garner the most enthusiastic critical reception when published last January – rounding up varied examples of "thin-sliced" judgments led reviewers to wonder if the author was the one spreading his penchant for marketable catch phrases too thin. But when other slender quasi-academic volumes with no ambition beyond stating that reality is the opposite of whatever it’s presumed to be – books like Freakonomics and Everything Bad Is Good For You – had their turn in the online media limelight, those stroking their anti-theories to the point of repetitive strain injury remain overshadowed by Gladwell’s storytelling talent. (Besides, why would he bother seeking out the approval of bloggers when he’s being paid to write for The New Yorker?) The never-ending misuse and abuse of the title of Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point, is but one symptom of his incomparable celebrity status: Next year will see Blink made into a major motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio, grist for a parody book called Blank, and children starting to dress up like him next Halloween.