[email protected] reviewed Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Talking to Strangers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
While most of Gladwell's books have simply taken a concept and explored it through a variety of examples that more-or-less support his hypothesis, in Talking to Strangers he tries to do something far more ambitious: examine a single horrific incident by exploring a slew of concepts that he feels explain how things played out as they did.
This doesn't entirely work. Individual chapters can be fascinating, as you learn of how bad spy agencies are at recognizing spies in their midsts, how suicides can be lessened by making suicide less convenient, and how crime varies not by neighborhood but by block.
Some subjects feel underbaked. He starts with the idea that people naturally believe other people, but that seems simplistic, since clearly people believe their in-tribe more than their out-tribe, and that is ignored. And I was fascinated by the block-by-block crime phenomenon and frustrated that he offered no explanation …
While most of Gladwell's books have simply taken a concept and explored it through a variety of examples that more-or-less support his hypothesis, in Talking to Strangers he tries to do something far more ambitious: examine a single horrific incident by exploring a slew of concepts that he feels explain how things played out as they did.
This doesn't entirely work. Individual chapters can be fascinating, as you learn of how bad spy agencies are at recognizing spies in their midsts, how suicides can be lessened by making suicide less convenient, and how crime varies not by neighborhood but by block.
Some subjects feel underbaked. He starts with the idea that people naturally believe other people, but that seems simplistic, since clearly people believe their in-tribe more than their out-tribe, and that is ignored. And I was fascinated by the block-by-block crime phenomenon and frustrated that he offered no explanation for why it is so.
In the final chapter he takes all these concepts and relates them to the death of Sandra Bland. But his determination to tell her story through so many disparate ideas makes it feel unfocussed, and I was never persuaded by his framing it as people being bad at talking to strangers. It really seemed more about structural flaws, callousness, and stupidity.
I do appreciate his highlighting those structural flaws, and broadening the conversation from "racist cop" to "system built on numerous flawed choices and bad assumptions," but it just doesn't cohere well.
In fact, his appreciation of the complexity of events is the best part of the book, and also the part that has engendered the most negative reviews on this site, where it is described as victim-blaming. Admittedly his approach is sometimes problematic, especially when he seems to go out of his way to excuse behavior that deserves at least some blame, but people so often choose a simple villain story and I appreciate that Gladwell isn't afraid to say, "it's complicated and there are reasons beyond some people just being evil."
I feel Gladwell might have done better with Jon Ronson's approach of starting with a central subject and then following all the loose threads of it. He could have started detailing Sandra Bland's encounter and then, as he hit each disastrous error, move into a chapter detailing where that mistake came from. He clearly wanted something like the movie Signs, where you have a bunch of stuff that comes together in a seemingly inevitable way right at the end, but it just doesn't work.
Gladwell is a hugely talented writer, but Talking to Strangers highlights his limits more than any of his other books. It's still worthwhile, but it's easily the weakest book he's written.
