Julie&JuliatheMovie

In a packed theater, we saw Julie & Julia yesterday afternoon. As probably most people in the US with access to popular media have heard, this is Nora Ephron’s movie based on a combination of Julie Powell’s book Julie & Julia (following her blog, The Julie/Julia Project) and Julia Child’s memoir (written with Alex Prud’homme), My Life in France. Oh, and it’s about cooking.

As at least one reader will know (PJM, you can run, but you can’t hide), I have a soft spot for Ms. Child. Pat and I learned a lot about cooking from watching her public TV show. I remember our first souffle, undertaken not long after watching Ms. Child on The French Chef showing that what I thought was a daunting disk was actually pretty easy. Those memories made me anticipate this movie, perhaps creating a predisposition to like it.

Gladwell’s Outliers

In the introduction to Outliers, Malcom Gladwell wrote that he hoped to explain why atypically successful individuals are, in fact, successful. For examples he draws from a wide range of times, places, and individuals. Why are some youth hockey players so much more advanced than others? Why did some people become the US industrial barons of the late 1800s? What’s contributed to the success of Microsoft founder Bill Gates? Why did four Brits became the Fab Four?

Mr. Gladwell’s answer is not “innate talent.” He makes a strong case that two factors are implicated: (a) hard work—on the order of 10,000 hours of practice—in aquiring skills is a powerful feature and (b) happening to come of age at a time when those skills are in great demand or cultural structures favor the more experienced is another. His illustrations, including cases that I omitted in my catalog in the previous paragraph, show how the timing of one’s birth and extraordinary investment in learning some things are critical components. Sure, success requires some smarts, but in Outliers Mr. Gladwell shows how intelligence may be necessary but it simply isn’t sufficient. Successful people worked hard. They may not have known that they were preparing themselve for success, but they worked very hard on something and that something became very valuable.

But the ideas I’ve just outlined are only the first part of the book. Mr. Gladwell covers them in the first five chapters. In the second part, he takes on the role of cultural factors, arguing that they turn out to be impediments to and promoters of success. He reports on violent relations among ethnic groups, socio-cultural impediments that affect high-risk situations, differences in agricultural practices that contribute to variations in work ethic, and apparently transformative educational cultures.

Mr. Gladwell finishes this book with a personal connection. He describes his familial history and leaves the reader to wonder about whether his remarkable career is, indeed, a combination of his familial good fortune and his substantial preparation to write about these topics as the Internet emerges and the book—ironically the form of his coummunication—fades.

Leaving aside the question of whether Mr. Gladwell’s analysis turns in on itself, the second part of the book felt somewhat disconnected from the first half. I suppose the connection is that those who succeed come from backgrounds that prepare them to seize opportunities. A corollary is that those who come from disadvantageous situations (Mr. Gladwell examines ethnic clans in Appalachia as examples) learn or inherit certain ways of interacting and have little chance of success.

These are questions worthy of analysis. Outliers addresses something else. What it addresses seems clear during the first part of book. And, it might be clear in the second part. Maybe it should have been two books?

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. New York: Little, Brown.

Bryson’s boy’s life

I recently read Bill Bryson’s account of his childhood, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. In this one of his many books, Mr. Bryson recounts what it was like to grow up in Des Moines (IA, US) in the 1950s and early 60s. Although he is the age of my younger brother, Mr. Bryson’s childhood years span many of the same times of my own childhood.

As with many of his books, I guffawed repeatedly and enjoyed many of the memories of my own childhood that were evoked by Mr. Bryson’s recollections of kids gathering in neighborhood groups, television events, childhood mortifications (I had few), daytime World Series games, chaise longues, anti-communism, and etc. Fortunately, I never imagined myself to have superpowers. Sadly, though, I didn’t get to sit beside Ernie Banks and pass him baseballs for his autograph. Still, I had a lot of fun in my childhood.

Visit the Web page devoted to the LTTK. If you’re among the boomers, you’ll likely enjoy at least… lots of this book.

On the Shoulders of Giants

Although the title of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s book, On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance, allows one to think of the very high shoulders of the author, the focus of the book is on how contemporary people benefit from the extraordinary accomplishments in the arts—literature, social criticism, and, especially, music—and sports of people associated with the Harlem neighborhood of New York City during earlier times. In this semi-autobiographical book, Mr. Abdul-Jabbar and his co-author Raymond Obstfeld take readers through the slice of history that centered around Harlem in the first half of the 20th century, examining roots that go back into the 19th century and consequences that will echo long into the 21st century.

As he develops it, much of the book is predicated on Mr. Abdul-Jabbar’s passions. He writes that the book draws on his personals passions: his concern about improving the prospects of others in the black community, the camaraderie and purpose he found in basketball, his love for jazz, and his urge to communicate with others.

Airing BBB

This afternoon (3 PM local time), WMRA’s Virginia Insight will broadcast an interview about Kay Allison’s program to provide reading materials for inmates in nearby prisons, “Books Behind Bars.” The show will take telephone questions Monday at 888-967-2825, or 888-WMRA-TALK.

Books Behind Bars

Read any good books lately?

That question is getting asked more and more often these days in an unusual place… in prison.

Thanks to a Charlottesville based program, thousands of books are now making thier way into jails and penitentiaries across the commonwealth.