Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain

Staff Review by Chris Saliba


As an introvert herself, you’d expect Susan Cain’s style to be gentle and thoughtful. This, however, doesn't stop her arguments from being persuasive and compelling. The contemporary world values extroverts too much, says Cain, while ignoring the talents of introverts. Introverts bring deep thinking and a patient approach, allowing them to solve difficult problems that require a subtle approach. Susan Cain shows that introverts, from all walks of a life - business, government, law, technology, science – use their introversion to achieve greatness. Quiet seeks to demonstrate that the popular stereotype of introverts as airy dreamers or hopeless nerds is wrong.    

It’s not hard to disagree with Susan Cain’s argument that the extroverted personality type is handsomely rewarded (with fame, riches, status) at every corner in contemporary Western culture. One glance at our media drenched world tells the story in a nut-shell: talentless extroverts are ubiquitous on television, computer and iPhone screens. Susan Cain argues that we have let flashy extroverts dazzle us with their talk, charisma and presence, ignoring the quiet yet powerful achievements of introverts.

Worse still, by focusing on the sometimes dubious achievements of extroverts, we have sidelined introverts and blinded ourselves to their key skills: the ability for deep thought, a long term view of problem solving and sustained levels of concentration. Introverts are labelled as either shy social misfits or weird reclusive nerds. Yet, as Susan Cain shows, the list of people whose introversion has contributed to their high achievements is a long one. From stock market guru Warren Buffet to computer genius Stephen Wozniak, introverted high-achievers use their patience and sustained levels of concentration to solve problems that require subtlety of thought.

Using the latest science to back up her arguments, Cain challenges a lot of current orthodoxies. She argues that businesses that prize team work models would be better off sending their employees to private work booths to nut out problems (the research on the deleterious effects of open plan offices is alarming), rather than being subjected to collective brain storming sessions.

Some of the neuroscience on the subject of introversion is also fascinating. One scientist claims to be able to figure out whether babies as young as four months old will become introverts in later life. It all comes down to how sensitive the baby is to outside stimulus, like noise or colour. The more sensitive as a baby, the more introverted in adult life. Why? Introverts are highly sensitive people, whereas extroverts are less sensitive to their surrounds and don’t experience the same level of impact. Again, Cain backs all of this up with the latest in scientific research. In fact, extroverts have been found to need more and stronger stimulus than introverts. Extroverts don’t feel things as much as introverts, while introverts feel things too much, and hence need to sequester themselves away. The world is just too noisy for introverts.

Quiet does not argue against extroversion, but simply makes the case that more balance is needed. Introverts need to be taken more seriously in all facets of life – business, government, law – because to ignore them is to miss their deep well of talents. We still need extroverts, too, Susan Cain tells us, as the world would be a dull place without them.   

As you’d expect, Susan Cain’s prose is gentle and thoughtful. Her arguments and analysis, while quietly presented, are highly persuasive and compelling.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain ISBN:
9780670916764  RRP: $29.95

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

Flaubert shows technical perfection in his masterpiece Madame Bovary, yet this is achieved at the expense of any spontaneity or humour. The novel’s subject matter – the dangers of turning wild fantasies into reality – points towards complex moral questions, yet the text remains mute on Madame Bovary’s destructive self-indulgences.

It must be over twenty years since I first read Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857). I remember being totally bowled over by the novel’s technical perfection and its brilliant plotting. The book was a compulsive page-turner, taking the reader on a jaw-dropping journey of human depravity. Re-reading the novel again recently, all of the above still pretty much holds, yet Flaubert’s masterpiece reads as a little contrived and lacking in spontaneity.

Everyone knows the story of how Flaubert agonised over every single word he wrote. The result (admittedly, we are reading the work in translation, and not the original French) is a prose that simply takes no chances. The great writers, like Dickens and Shakespeare, give themselves over to moments of inspiration and playfulness. Flaubert’s Madame Bovary exists in a vacuum of its own perfection. The novel is ostensibly a tragedy, yet its determinedly prosaic approach rips any pathos out of the story. As far as I can see, Flaubert had moments where he could have given a few comic touches, yet he remains committed to being unfunny.

What’s the take-away from Madame Bovary? It seems to be about the self-destructive and self-deluding nature of desire. One sensation begets another, until Madame Bovary is drowning in a sea of fantasy. Adultery and profligacy go hand in hand, until Madame Bovary accumulates so many debts that the she chooses suicide as her final release from life’s dull reality. Unchecked desire, Flaubert seems to be saying, inevitably leads to utter self-destruction.

Yet the novel doesn’t really have a moralising tone, and leaves the reader with a bad taste. Perhaps it’s Flaubert’s condescending tone and contempt for the middle classes that leaves such a creepy feeling. There’s a lot of hate lurking beneath the surface of Flaubert’s writing.

It’s indisputable that Madame Bovary is a classic, but one that lacks a heart and soul. Madame Bovary herself lacks the psychological complexity and nuances that the reader needs in order to understand the disastrous choices she makes in her life. Ultimately, she’s no more than a bored housewife who gets in over her head.

After finishing Madame Bovary for the second time, I don’t think I could bear to read it again.

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert. Published by Penguin Classics.

Dance Night, by Dawn Powell

Dawn Powell (1896-1965) struggled for literary success and recognition during her lifetime. She tried her hand at a number of literary genres, writing novels, plays and short stories. To make ends meet, she wrote book reviews and worked as a Hollywood screenwriter. Powell’s diaries and letters have also been published posthumously. In recent years, through the efforts of Gore Vidal and Tim Page, her work has been revived for new audiences.

Dance Night is Powell’s fourth novel (although she disowned her first effort, Whither) and belongs to what is considered her ‘Ohio’ novels which describe small town life. Dance Night centres around the town of Lamptown, a working class district full of saloons, factories, small businesses and popular entertainments. The characters of Lamptown are orphan girls, unhappily married couples, hopelessly unrealistic dreamers and people just struggling to get through, surviving on fragile hopes of better times. In short, the world of Lamptown is the American dream in reverse. Powell is quite shockingly candid in her vivisection of the American capitalist system. She essentially argues that only a small handful of the ruthless and unprincipled really get ahead. The legacy of American capitalism is a general social detritus and impoverished cultural landscape: bad buildings, crappy jobs, junk food and glitzy entertainment.

Powell shows how people get completely trapped in a system that promises the world but delivers nothing. This is perhaps the cruellest and most suffocating part of American capitalism. The theory says that everyone can make it big and become rich, but in reality everyone remains wage slaves doing demeaning work with no social status.

Disturbingly, Powell concentrates heavily on the self-deluding psychology of the Lamptown residents who immerse themselves deeply in a life of fantasies, certain that their dreams will come true, yet the reader knows that this fantasy must end in tragedy when reality hits. The self-delusion of a lot of Powell’s characters borders on being something like a mental illness.

Human relationships in Dance Night are completely dysfunctional, made near impossible by this irrational fantasy life. The best example is one of the main characters, Elsinore Abbott. When she falls in love with the dance instructor, Harry Fischer, it turns into a sickly obsession that practically turns itself inside out. After an hysterical episode with her own husband, whom she violently attacks, Elsinore eventually becomes physically repulsed at even the idea of Harry Fischer. Freud would surely have a field day with these sexually extreme and constantly unhappy people.

Dance Night is a deeply glum and pessimistic novel, written in Powell’s wonderfully readable and smooth prose. No wonder her grim realism wasn’t a huge hit in its day. She exposes American capitalism as a mean con that dupes its citizens. Her perspective on the American psychology is unique: behind all the glitz and glitter there lies a depressed, downtrodden and mentally unstable people.

Dance Night, by Dawn Powell. Published by Steerforth Press. ISBN: 978-1883642716

The Wapshot Chronicle, by John Cheever

John Cheever’s debut 1957 novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, is urbane and polished in style, somewhat reminiscent of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Cheever mixes intense autobiography with a highly stylised prose to create an overripe hothouse effect. The Wapshot Chronicle is brilliant and mesmerising, but its author’s overwhelming, obsessive consciousness saps the novel of any possible natural feeling and emotion. Candid personal disclosure is hard to decipher from imaginative flight of fancy.

John Cheever (1912–1982) made a name for himself as a short story writer during the 1940s and early 1950s, before publishing his first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle in 1957. It won the National Book award the following year, and was followed by a sequel, The Wapshot Scandal, in 1964.

Cheever writes in a sleek, quicksilver like prose that is almost mannered, but is saved by its wit, poetic observation and lush psychological interiors. It has been noted by some critics that Cheever is an American Chekov, and this may be true (I’ve not read Chekov), but the writer he most reminded me of was Proust. The Wapshot Chronicle reads very much like a remembrance of youth past, rich in recalled detail, brought back to life via a highly cultured imagination. Cheever dazzles and amazes with his virtuosity, but one wonders how reliable he is as a memoirist of his own past and psyche.

There is not much of a plot in The Wapshot Chronicle, with most of the story concentrating on a New England family who live by the sea. There are the two sons, Moses and Coverly, the masculine yet somewhat flamboyant father Leander and the eccentric mother Mrs Wapshot. Like the fiction of that other chronicler of affluent middle suburban America, Richard Yates, the Wapshots have their fair share of middle class problems, and aren’t particularly grateful for all that the American economy has given them. Oscar Wilde said dissatisfaction was the first step on the road to greatness, and much American writing from this period has such unhappiness in spades.

The Wapshot Chronicle is urbane and sophisticated, full of beautiful, eccentric and unhappy people, but the reader can at times feel overwhelmed by this heady and potent mix. Sometimes you wish for a window to be opened and fresh air let in.

The Wapshot Chronicle, by John Cheever. Published by Vintage Classics. ISBN: 9780099275275

The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty’s 1969 novel The Optimist’s Daughter should be considered a timeless classic. It deals with the complex relationship between a middle-aged daughter and her parents, told with a remarkable artistry that is at once simple and powerful.

Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and is well known as a Southern contemporary writer. She wrote short stories, literary criticism and novels, also publishing a book of her photographs in 1971. Of the five novels she wrote during her long life, The Optimist’s Daughter was her last, published in 1969.

This reviewer is not intimately aquainted with the work of Ms Welty, having only read her rich and strange novella Moon Lake (1949). Although I found that particular work by turns bizarre, curious and generally beyond interpretation, it was compelling enough to get me to re-read immediately. Welty’s prose in Moon Lake is light, rarefied and exquisitely ornate, without being merely decorative or pretty. She writes in this way, one gets the impression, because it is a true reflection of her soul. What may appear artifice on first read, it turns out on re-reading, is a deep authenticity.

The Optimist’s Daughter comes some 30 years after Moon Lake was published, and it’s interesting to note stylistic differences and similarities. The light and delicate tone is there, as is the unerring ability to capture mood and troubled psychological interiors, but the air of strangeness is gone. This is very much Welty telling a‘straight’ story of loss and grief, in what seems a piece of autobiography. As you read this, in many ways devastating story, you get the impression that Welty is writing to heal personal wounds. This sense of honesty, tempered as it is by such controlled and dignified prose, makes The Optimist’s Daughter a literary classic. Written over40 years ago, the novel hasn’t dated. Every page positively breathes a life of its own.

The title is ironic. The optimist of the story is Judge McKelva, who must undergo surgery for his eye. Being of an advanced age, his daughter Laurel is naturally enough concerned about her father’s welfare. He tries to allay fears, insisting that’s he’s always been an optimist. But his resigned attitude to the surgery makes it seem that he’s not an optimist at all, but a fatalist who expects the worst. Judge McKelva has a second wife, the shrewish and selfish Wanda Fay. Her silly attitude and foolish opinions causes tensions with the optimist’s daughter, Laurel.

This is a short novel of 180 pages, divided into four parts. Part one deals with Judge McKelva in hospital, part two shows Laurel back at her father’s house deep in grief and battling her mother-in-law, part three describes Laurel reflecting on her past while going through the artifacts in her father’s house, including details of her relationship with her biological mother, Becky, and part four wraps things up.

In the end, it’s hard to say exactly what The Optimist’s Daughter is about. It feels like a child’s meditation on the lives of her parents, and how their influence created a thoughtful and troubled daughter. It’s about the hothouse atmosphere parents can create for their children, and how it's impossible to escape the past, as it forms our very being. Eudora Welty achieves all this in a novel that skillfullybalances intense family drama against personal introspection and reflection. The Optimist’s Daughter shows how life bruises and alienates us, and how we limp along nonetheless.

The Optimist’s Daughter, by Eudora Welty. Published by Virago. ISBN:978-0-86068-375-9

The End of Growth, by Richard Heinberg

Resource depletion expert Richard Heinberg turns his considerable intellectual energies to the subject of economic expansion and its necessary counterpart, expanding debt. The End of Growth gives a new slant on the modern economy, one that is persuasively argued and highly convincing. Heinberg’s careful research and detailed references make his new book essential reading.

Richard Heinberg is a well-known thinker and writer on all things to do with resource depletion. His book, The Party’s Over (2003), discussed the inevitable peak and decline in oil, and the impacts this would have on the global economy, society and the destiny of humanity. The economy, and all that we enjoy from it, is predicated on the notion of cheap oil. Peak oil doesn’t mean that the substance will run out, but its price will certainly rise inexorably, leading to dramatic changes in the way we live, think and work.

In his latest book, The End of Growth, Heinberg tackles the notion that economic growth will continue without limits. Economic growth is a modern day article of faith, but as Heinberg demonstrates, economic growth is (perhaps ironically) based on expanding debt. Heinberg argues that the huge growth in debt, and the expansion of the financial industrial complex, has reached a peak. Modern day economies simply can’t be burdened with further levels of debt.

The case of America is a highlighted example. Their national debt has now risen to 100 per cent of GDP, a total of 14 trillion dollars. That is, the country owes what its economy makes in a year. Added to this are expanding interest payments. An increasing percentage of the country’s tax receipts must be used to service interest that is charged on its 14 trillion dollars of debt. This is putting further pressure on the government’s budget, making it difficult to meet other funding commitments for its citizens such as welfare and healthcare. The US, according to Heinberg, is at serious risk of getting stuck in a debt trap, with interest payments overwhelming the government’s expenditures.

Much of Heinberg’s writings read like accessible philosophy. He distils his wide reading in such a manner that is always compelling and informative. He also has a gift for arranging information to highlight historical patterns and trends. His arguments are well backed up with the data and are highly persuasive.

The End of Growth is for the most part an economic history. It also examines in close detail a lot of the major economic ideas or beliefs of the last fifty years. Most notably, it looks at the impact that cheap and easily extracted oil has had on the economy. Another philosophical strain in the book is how over time the economy has become decoupled from nature. It’s a popular economic assumption that the economy can continue to expand without having to worry about environmental impacts or resource depletion. As you can expect, Heinberg thinks this is wishful thinking.

For serious students of economics, the environment and resource depletion, Richard Heinberg has provided another indispensable book.

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, by Richard Heinberg. Published by New Society Publishers. ISBN: 978-0865716957

Bad News: Murdoch's Australian and the Shaping of the Nation, by Robert Manne

Robert Manne’s third Quarterly Essay, Bad News, covers no new ground. It purports to be a vivisection of The Australian newspaper's right wing bias, but is more a list of grievances against the paper. The essay closes with a few ponderous words, but no shattering insights. Bad News has some interesting gossip and bits of fresh interview material, but overall lacks lustre.

The latest in the Quarterly Essay series tackles Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, more specifically, the way The Australian covers issues. Robert Manne has long been critical of the News Limited broadsheet, and has now taken it upon himself to write a thoroughgoing critique.

Robert Manne is one of the country’s best political writers, but his work can take on a bitchy tone from time to time. As someone who is very much an active participant in a lot of public controversies and questions, Manne’s work can lose quality where it becomes personal. Bad News doesn’t fall into that category, but comes close. The author quite palpably has an axe to grind.

Bad News argues that The Australian has given up any pretence to offering objective journalism, and has instead tried to turn itself into a player in political affairs. It’s actively worked against the Gillard and Rudd governments, has wrongly tried to paint global warming as hogwash, has promoted the spurious history of the likes of Keith Windshuttle and generally done its best to create all sorts of mischief.

Manne interviews key News Limited figures like editor Chris Mitchell and senior editor Paul Kelly, but doesn’t find anything particularly interesting to report back. There is some interesting gossipy stuff about Chris Mitchell and his wife journalist Christine Jackman’s chummy relationship with Kevin Rudd and Therese Rein, and how that relationship may have soured due to the break up of the Mitchell-Jackman marriage. Apparently, Rudd and Rein took Jackman’s side more than Mitchell’s. If true, it boggles the mind how national affairs are run on such incestuous, petty lines.

Bad News doesn’t really cover any new ground. It summarises a lot of The Australian’s coverage of key issues, and wraps things up with a few ponderous words supposed to lend the essay gravitas. But it doesn’t really work. In the end, it seems that Manne only wants to get a few things off his chest, rather than offer penetrating insights into the right wing media in Australia.

This isn’t a particularly bad Quarterly Essay, it’s just that it feels like it goes over a lot of old ground. Readers are recommended to try Manne’s excellent collection Making Trouble: Essays Against the New Australian Complacency, Black Inc., (2011) instead of this slightly stale
effort.

Bad News: Murdoch’s Australian and the Shaping of the Nation, by Robert Manne. Published by Black Inc. ISBN: 9781863955447