What The Dog Saw And Other Adventures (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
Malcolm Gladwell is a particular favorite author of mine, and I was so happy to see this collection come out, because though my parents may have a subscription to The New Yorker, I am a poor college student and can’t afford it! I steal it from them when I can, but have missed many articles/essays by Gladwell that have been published. This book is a collection of his articles from the magazine and contains such gems as “John Rock’s Error: What the Inventor of the Birth Control Pill Didn’t Know About Women’s Health” and “Connecting the Dots: the Paradoxes of Intelligence Reform” and is a great read. Malcolm Gladwell could make me interested in anything. The way that Gladwell describes the situations that he experiences through the course of his research presents a very solid grasp of description, and in particular describing situations so well that the reader feels like they are experiencing it with Gladwell, as Gladwell. These descriptions are in turn aided by the carefully constructed sentences that Gladwell authors, evidence of attention to clarity as well as purpose. The title article of this book, “What the Dog Saw” is a great example of this. The article begins as Gladwell observes “the Dog Whisperer” Cesar Milan interacting with a terrorizing pup. Gladwell describes the movements and appearing emotions of everyone in the room with apt attention to detail and accurate description. An example of this is the way that Gladwell describes how Cesar interacts with the dog, using short sentences that reflect the movements of the dog and the human, short and succinct, using these short sentences such as “he took a step towards her” or “Sugar lunged at the remote” on it’s own to reflect the drama in the room as the face off between dog and man unfolded. Gladwell intersperses longer, more complex sentences throughout the clear and descriptive shorter sentences, using them when needed to detail a particularly complex relationship or description or thought. Gladwell’s use of carefully constructed sentences with little filler or extra makes his writing a joy to read, and ushers the reader inside the story quite effectively. I’m not sure that there’s anything I could say that would make Gladwell’s writing better or more effective, but these essays/articles present exemplary illustrations of the kind of depth that is usually presented in magazine or newspaper articles and would provide a great example for students as they organize their research into a full piece of writing. Gladwell’s writing is also a great example of how anecdotes can support the purpose of a piece and provides a great example of how to describe these stories, not to much nor too little, with attention to the purpose of the writing. There's maybe five articles in this book that should be required reading for anyone who's literate, but then there's another five that I can't believe were published in the New Yorker in the first place, let alone selected for a best-of collection. The rest are kinda in between. If you can't find the best articles for free on the Internets, you could put together a collection that's just as good, if not better, using one of those save-articles-for-later apps. But I imagine most people who are really into Malcolm Gladwell can afford a book no problem. They sell a lot of these at the airport, and you gotta have money to even be at the airport, unless you work there or you're being extradited.
What do You think about What The Dog Saw And Other Adventures (2009)?
Excellent, excellent read. Loved every bit of it.
—annie
