Sunday, February 27, 2005

Powell's interviews Malcolm Gladwell

Powells.com recently interviewed New Yorker columnist Malcolm Gladwell, also the author of such books as The Tipping Point and Blink. Being in the arts as I am, my peers and I often have discussions along the lines of, "Where have all our philosophers gone?" I often point to people like Mr. Gladwell, whose work often appears on the surface to be commercial and business-related, but are in fact deeply complex new theories about how humans and societies work. Anyone who's wondered what's happened to honest-to-God philosophers in our modern world would do good to check out this interview, and then some of his writing.

Powell's, for those who don't know, is already a legendary bookstore in the American Pacific Northwest; they're rapidly turning into a legendary website as well, though, in that they conduct extensive interviews with all authors who appear at the store, have these authors pen a guest essay of the day, have the staff pen a daily book review for the site, collect up various literary news items around the world, and even offer it all via RSS feeds. They should be in the news reader of anyone interested in lively discussions on the literary arts.