Instant (Un)(Dis)(Non)Gratification?

Last Tuesday night, while waiting for some copies at the Kinko's on Grand and Snelling, I wandered into their new book section and picked up Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. A week later, I'm about 15 pages from finishing it. My snap judgment on a book about snap judgments: I don't know if it's genius or horse hockey.

All I had previously read from Gladwell was a New Yorker piece on dependency ratios that caught my eye because it ran counter to the conventional wisdom on Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economic miracle. Liberals credited it to government subsidizing of higher education. Conservatives pointed to the slashing of corporate taxes. All could agree that a massive influx of European Union capital had a, uh... profound effect. But Gladwell argued that the true reason lay behind the legalization of birth control, which created a larger ratio of working-age people to the old and the young (dependents)... and this is always the real formula for economic growth. He made a convincing case.

Blink is similarly convincing... addictive even. I found it hard to put down from the moment I saw it in Kinko's. But that's precisely the problem. I've become more and more skeptical about anything that is instantly riveting.

It started with music: how many songs or albums that were great on the very first listen actually pass the test of time... and how many that seem average at first turn out to be genius? I couldn't stand Bob Dylan until I was about 25, but I stayed up nights reading Dan Brown's Angels & Demons. Sugar is instantly gratifying. I hated my first coffee.

As for Blink, as of right now it's one of the more fascinating books I've ever come across. Gladwell is an incredible storyteller, writer and organizer of information. And this is exactly why I'm suspicious. Anyone with those three gifts has the ability to make compelling arguments regardless of whether or not they actually hold any truth. Just look at Karl Rove.