After reading more of blink,
I have really started to grasp the way in which Malcolm Gladwell tends to
structure his books. There is a very heavy emphasis on anecdotes and examples,
which range in when they occurred and who they involved. During this portion of
blink, Gladwell continued to develop
his idea of thin-slicing, and used stories about diagnosing heart attacks at
Cook County Hospital to commanding a US Marine Corps Company in Vietnam to
recognizing an artist’s talent in New York City. Because most of the actual
text is either describing or analyzing an example, anecdotes are the major, and
perhaps only, notable rhetorical device utilized by Gladwell. They perform
their task well, however, as the diversity of the stories caters to the many
different personalities that make up Gladwell’s audience. Although many readers
of blink may have come from his work
in The New York Times, the national
praise achieved by this book has expanded his audience to all people who might
not necessarily have an interest in statistical analysis, but have an interest
in curious theories that alter our perceptions of society. After all, it seems that Gladwell’s main
purpose throughout this book is stating a thesis that supports the validity of
thin-slicing, and uses example after example to persuade his readers to accept
this doctrine. There doesn't appear to be any real hidden agenda or other
implicit purpose; this book reads kind of like a newspaper article, a very long
and drawn out newspaper article. Gladwell’s career as a newspaper writer also
influences the context of blink. In
addition, it is his second book, so it was published on the basis that everyone
already had certain expectations for it. Personally, I think that blink lived up to these, because it
maintains the format and style with which Outliers,
his first book, was written, and it similarly made a persuasive argument on an
interesting and little-known theory.
No comments:
Post a Comment