Malcolm Gladwell kicks off SAL's Literary Arts Series with a reading from his new book Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, which is good news for people who are into that kind of thing. To me, Gladwell represents the revival of the worst impulses in American storytelling and journalism. He is king of the metaphorically resonant but ultimately meaningless comparison, and he's obsessed with overblowing the claims of cherry-picked studies. Richard Posner called Blink "a series of loosely connected anecdotes, rich in 'human interest' particulars but poor in analysis," and the claim basically holds for all of Gladwell's other books. There should be a new John Waters-type law: "If you go home with someone, and they've got a bunch of Malcolm Gladwell books on the shelf, don't fuck 'em!" Unless you want to doom yourself to a life with someone who is content to describe the world using surface-level comparisons. That said, Kirkus gave his new book a starred review, so it'll probably read well. by Stranger Editor Rich Smith