Audiobook thoughts: Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers

I’m currently listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers. I’ve never read or listened to any of Gladwell’s books before, and he’s been on my list for a long time. But this book, I deeply hope, is not like his others. The arguments he makes are thin and specious, and the examples he picked to illustrate his points seem intended to sensationalize, rather than cement, his argument. The studies he cites, however, are fascinating: the default to truth, where humans want to believe what other people say is true. The problem with transparency, where peoples’ presentation of emotion can fail to match their actual emotions. The connections between alcohol and sexual assault. The coupling of behaviors to time and/or place, such as the coupling of suicide to the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s a lot of great stuff here. But then he uses it to argue that Brock Turner’s rape of Emily Doe was a failure of communication due to alcohol (WHAT?!). And that the arrest of Sandra Bland was caused by miscommunication and poorly implemented policing tactics (again, WHAT?!). He discusses so many interesting concepts, then uses them poorly to argue that we don’t communicate well with strangers. He insists on using the term “strangers” even when he discusses people who have known each other for years, which I find reductive at best. His whole argument, in fact, seems reductive at best. And sloppy. He fails to consider thousands of variables, and instead cherry picks data and examples. It’s troubling at best, and infuriating when he does things like blame alcohol for campus rape.

I can’t decide whether I consider this book dangerous or just sloppy. I’m not even sure I want to read anything else by him. (I probably will, because I suspect/hope his other books are more rigorously constructed.) This one, however, is poorly thought out. He never considers power dynamics in the relationships between people, or cultural differences, or systemic biases like racism or sexism. He never considers monetary motivations or economics, most notably when he talks about Jerry Sandusky. He focuses only on miscommunication, nearly claiming (and definitely implying) that all other factors are irrelevant. If he acknowledged these variables, and argued that he was adding another layer to them, I could get on board. But he’s not. He’s arguing that these are all events due to miscommunication because we have trouble understanding and reading people. And in order to make this argument, he says that Brock Turner was just really drunk and not reading Emily Doe correctly because she was really drunk. But Gladwell has very little to say about how he dragged her behind a dumpster while she was unconscious.

I’ll finish the book because I don’t have much left, but I’m unimpressed. The only reason I can see for using the studies he presents in the way he does is to create a sensationalist, controversial book for the sake of being sensationalist and controversial. It’s a real shame, because the studies are interesting and could be used to create some interesting insights. But he doesn’t do that here. This book isn’t good journalism or good argumentative writing. To me, it seems like Malcolm Gladwell is suffering from his own inability to communicate with strangers with this one.