books

David Lodge: Business and English

British writer David Lodge passed away in January, at the grand age of 89. I was sad to hear of his death, because his work meant a lot to me. He balanced two very different careers – academic and novelist – which had its challenges but also gave him a broad perspective on the world. And one of his novels particularly resonated with me as an undergraduate student, because I was trying to navigate the two different worlds depicted in that novel.

My undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Business Administration, with majors in business and English. There was exactly one other person among the several hundred students in my BBA program who was also enrolled in business and English (he was doing a minor in English). The business students doing majors or minors in other subjects – and there weren’t many of them  – were enrolled in psychology, economics, or statistics.

I don’t exaggerate when I say that business students despised English students and English students despised business students. The business students thought the English students were (more…)

New Book Announcement

Happy New Year! I’m delighted to announce that my new book, a biography of the band Fountains of Wayne, will be released by J-Card Press on March 13. It can be pre-ordered directly from the publisher, and from online retailers around the world.

A Closer Look at Malcolm Gladwell’s “Magic Third”

Twelve years ago, I wrote a post on this blog about the “10,000 hour rule” that Malcolm Gladwell promoted in his book Outliers. Gladwell claimed that 10,000 hours was the “magic number of greatness” – that 10,000 hours of practice was required to excel at an activity.  The author of the study that Gladwell cited as supporting this claim said that Gladwell misinterpreted the study’s results. Others have pointed out that the “10,000 hour rule” is misleading in suggesting that the total time spent on an activity is the only predictor of success. It doesn’t take into account other variables that might affect skill development, such as deliberate practice, innate or acquired talent, the age at which someone begins the activity, and access to appropriate equipment, coaching, and training sites.

While there are debates about exactly how much effect some of these variables have, it’s clear that Gladwell took the 10,000-hour figure out of context, and also skimmed over some important details that are necessary to fully understand how skill development works.

The post I wrote on the “10,000-hour rule” is by far the most popular post ever on this blog. That shows how interested people are in what Gladwell says. It also shows the importance of looking closely at his claims – to see what evidence he cites to support them, and to see whether experts on the subject agree with his interpretations.

This is not to say that only experts can discuss these kinds of topics. Sometimes an outsider can see details or trends that experts don’t notice. And there’s always a place for a writer who’s not a scientist or researcher to explain research and its outcomes to a general audience. But the writer needs to get the details right, and not simplify things to the point where important pieces of information are omitted.

Gladwell has just released a new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point. One of its chapters is about a new “magic number”: the “Magic Third”. This, Gladwell claims, is the number of minority members in a group that’s necessary for the minority to be accepted as part of the group. I’m going to look at this claim in detail because this general subject (organization and group dynamics) falls into my own area of professional expertise, so I have some familiarity with the relevant research.

The chapter subtitle of “The Magic Third” is a quote from one of Gladwell’s interviewees: “I would say, absolutely, there is some tipping point in my experience”. Notice that the quote doesn’t mention the “magic third”, or any number for that matter; it only says that there is a demographic tipping point which causes group dynamics to change. This type of change is well-documented in research on the effects of group composition. The fact that group dynamics change if group membership changes also won’t be a surprise to anyone.

Gladwell starts out by discussing (more…)

Sorry

Happy New Year!

It seems a little odd to start a new year of blogging (my 11th year) with an apology. I had planned to start posting again in mid-January and life got in the way, and I’m sorry for the unexplained delay. However, I’m beginning on a positive note by recommending an excellent book that I’ve just finished reading – and it just happens to be about apologies.

Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy have been running the site SorryWatch for more than a decade – I first discovered their work through the very entertaining SorryWatch Twitter account. Over the years, they have used SorryWatch to (more…)

MIXTAPE, My New Book

I’m delighted to announce that my new book MIXTAPE: 21 SONGS FROM 10 YEARS (1975-1985) is now on sale, at the retailers listed here. It was a lot of work to write but also a great deal of fun. I hope you’ll check it out!

Just Say No

In every workplace there are tasks that aren’t enjoyable to do, or that aren’t part of formal job descriptions but are important for building positive relationships and community. However, research has shown that these kinds of tasks – which some researchers have labeled “office housework” –  tend to be done more often by women and by members of demographic minorities. It’s also been suggested that doing these tasks can have a negative impact on the careers of those who regularly take them on.

The new book The No Club: Putting A Stop To Women’s Dead-End Work, by Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart,  is a very thoughtful analysis of this phenomenon. Coincidentally, I came across the book when I was thinking about how “office housework” functions in academic workplaces. I recently left an academic job, but I still regularly get requests to (more…)

“It’s Beyond Frustrating”: Why Athletes are Still Being Abused

The Olympics are supposed to be an exciting and enjoyable experience, for athletes and for spectators. But for figure skating fans, the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing could best be characterized as stressful and depressing.

After the team event – the first skating event on the schedule – it was revealed that 15-year-old Kamila Valieva, the favourite to win the women’s event, had previously tested positive for a banned drug intended to treat chest pain. After an emergency hearing by the Court for Arbitration in Sport, Valieva was allowed to continue competing, but the medals in the team event were not awarded. Valieva ended up placing fourth in the women’s event, and her teammate Alexandra Trusova, who came second, had an emotional meltdown at rinkside, shouting that she hated skating and would never go on the ice again.

While watching all of this drama and turmoil unfold, I couldn’t help but think that for almost 30 years we’ve known there were problems in the sport of skating. In 1995, sportswriter Joan Ryan’s book Little Girls In Pretty Boxes painted a terrible picture of abusive coaching, unhealthy training practices, and incredible stress placed on young figure skaters and gymnasts. Thankfully, as an adult skater, I got into the sport when I was old enough to be in control of what I did. But it’s no secret to anyone who follows skating that, even after well-documented investigations like those in Ryan’s book, there are still very significant problems within the sport.

So I decided to get in touch with Ryan and see if she would be willing to be interviewed about whether anything has changed, 30 years after her whistleblowing. She kindly agreed, and we talked this week. Here’s a transcript of our conversation.

 

Fiona McQuarrie [FM]: What’s your take on the doping scandal at the Olympics?

Joan Ryan [JR]: The Washington Post asked me to write an op-ed on that a couple of weeks ago, and, you know, I wrote this book 27 years ago now. There has been change on the gymnastics side, unfortunately because of Larry Nassar, and because of the gymnasts themselves. They have risen up like an army, and they are the ones that are going to make sure it finally changes. That’s the only reason I have any hope that it’s going to change now after all these years.

I haven’t followed figure skating as closely over those 27 years, but the US skaters certainly seem healthier to me. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, but clearly the total destruction of two of the three Russian figure skaters is a clear sign that it’s dysfunctional. There’s clearly (more…)

Jonah Lehrer’s “Mystery”

An unexpected benefit of mask-wearing is being able to say things without being heard. That came in handy a few weeks ago at my local public library, when I uttered “what in the actual f***?” at the completely unexpected sight of a new Jonah Lehrer book.

As you might remember, Lehrer’s writing career derailed nearly 10 years ago when numerous instances of plagiarism and inaccuracy were uncovered in his books and magazine articles. Two of his books were withdrawn from sale by their publishers, and most of the publications he wrote for dropped him as a contributor and removed his discredited articles from their websites. Lehrer gave a controversial speech of apology and co-operated with author Jon Ronson for a chapter in Ronson’s book on public shaming, but since then his writing has mostly been seen on his own blog and in two books that slipped by without much notice.

Mystery, the new book, is indeed mysterious in that it seems to have sprung out of nowhere. I couldn’t find any online news about a new Lehrer book on the way, and there doesn’t seem to have been much advance promotion for the book. So, being intrigued by that additional layer of mystery, of course I read it.

I posted about Lehrer’s previous problems several times on this blog, including an analysis of his now-withdrawn book Imagine which became a featured post on WordPress and attracted thousands of readers. I don’t say this to be boastful, but to be forthright about the reality that I’m familiar with the controversial history of Lehrer’s writing – and that inevitably colours how I look at his current work. I didn’t deliberately go through Mystery looking for things to pick on, but I have to be truthful and say that there were several places where information in the book just didn’t read or feel right. When I encountered those places, I did additional research on the information that Lehrer presented.

The book (more…)

Lawren Harris’ “Miners’ Houses, Glace Bay”

Canada Post has just released a set of stamps celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first exhibition by the Canadian painters who became known as the Group of Seven. The set has one stamp for each of the seven painters, and the stamp for Lawren Harris shows his painting Miners’ Houses, Glace Bay. I was delighted to see that Canada Post chose this painting, not only because it was the cover image of the first edition of the textbook that I write, but because Miners’ Houses represents an important part of Canadian labour relations history.

Harris created the painting in 1925, after a trip to Nova Scotia. The houses at Glace Bay, near Sydney, were the homes of  mineworkers and their families; at the time of Harris’ visit, the miners’ union was engaged in a lengthy strike against the mine owners, rebelling against (more…)

‘Bow Down’

Happy 2020!

I started the new year by interviewing author Lindsay Goldwert about her fascinating new book, Bow Down: Lessons from Dominatrixes on How to Get What You Want. You can read the interview here.