The Intriguing Anecdotes in What the Dog Saw
I have never enjoyed reading nonfiction much until I came across a couple of books that really interested me. Out of those books, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, really stood out to me. I had picked it off the shelf thinking it was a book about dogs, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. It is instead a collection of stories written by Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker that show readers the world through new lenses. The stories in this book are about seemingly dull topics, such as hairspray, plagiarism, and kitchen gadgets. However, upon closer inspection, readers realize the anecdotes are actually about the power of a good slogan, how copyright tramples creativity, and the strategies of a good advertiser. They are ones that make you think, that cause you see something in a completely new light.
What the Dog Saw is split into three sections. The first part, “Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius,” describes people who are very good at what they do and how they reached their success. The second, titled “Theories, Predictions, and Diagnoses”, describes the problems of prediction. One story, “Million-Dollar Murray”, describes how the cost of homelessness to cities is shaped not like a bell curve, but more like a hockey stick. In other words, it does not follow a normal distribution, but it is greatly skewed to one side. Homelessness is a problem in which a few people are causing most of the trouble; they get drunk, get liver problems, get very sick, and cost cities millions of dollars in medical bills. It would be much cheaper to provide the homeless with their own apartments, but because of the way this problem is viewed, people don’t realize this. The third section is “Personality, Character, and Intelligence,” which talks about psychological and sociological topics. This section includes an anecdote about how dogs are generalized for possessing certain traits, just as criminals are, and sometimes wrongly.
In most of Gladwell’s stories, he starts off by talking about one topic, jumps to another that seems completely unrelated, then amazingly ties the two back together to illustrate a point. For example, in “Troublemakers,” Gladwell begins by talking about how pit-bulls are thought of as violent, powerful, and aggressive. He goes on to talk about terrorists, in what seems like a tangent, but then connects them by concluding that generalizations can often be misleading. In any other book, going on long tangents would seem like horrible writing, but Gladwell uses this style of writing to interest readers and keep them guessing.
In most of Gladwell’s stories, he starts off by talking about one topic, jumps to another that seems completely unrelated, then amazingly ties the two back together to illustrate a point. For example, in “Troublemakers,” Gladwell begins by talking about how pit-bulls are thought of as violent, powerful, and aggressive. He goes on to talk about terrorists, in what seems like a tangent, but then connects them by concluding that generalizations can often be misleading. In any other book, going on long tangents would seem like horrible writing, but Gladwell uses this style of writing to interest readers and keep them guessing.
A title that I found particularly interesting was “The Art of Failure,” which explains that there are two very different ways to fail. One is panic, when people forget what to do and cannot think straight due to immense, sudden stress. The second is choking, when one thinks too much about their next actions and loses the automatic skill they had gained with training and practice. They start to think about every move they are going to make, turning them into a beginner again. As Gladwell writes, “She lost her fluidity, her touch. She seemed like a different person -- playing with the slow, cautious deliberation of a beginner -- because, in a sense, she was a beginner again: she was relying on a learning system she had not used since she first played tennis, as a child.” He then explains that the difference between the two types of failure are crucial, that “there are clearly cases when how failure happens is central to understanding why failure happens.”
-Emily Chen
Good job on this blog post. I personally don't find non-fiction very interesting either, but you made this one sound pretty interesting. I liked how you gave a lot of examples of things you found interesting in the book and gave the reader a good idea of what the book is about. I also liked how you talked about the structure of how the stories are told and the uniqueness of the author's writing. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this blog post a lot. It was informative, and covered the book's wide variety of topics just through a few examples. I definitely agree that I do not enjoy non-fiction as much as other genres, just because there are never any plot twists. However, I would read this book because it sounds like an interesting combination of storytelling and nonfiction.
ReplyDeleteI have never read this book before, but as someone who has read some of Gladwell's work before I understood and agreed with the observations made in this blog post. The observation about how Gladwell jumps between what seem like two unrelated topics before tying them together in the end is something I've noticed before and think was portrayed very well here. Overall very good work.
ReplyDeleteClean review. I like the notion of this book now that I have read this review. It seems like a semi-philosophical approach is what the book uses, and I like that. The idea of these anecdotes that describe real events is very interesting, and you illustrate the author's tone very well. The idea that homelessness costs a city more in medical bills than if they all had a permanent home is one I never considered, but based on just a summary of the idea, I now understand it. This definitely seems like a book I would check out. Good work.
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