There are some questions that have no fixed answers. “What defines genius,” is one of these questions. Malcolm Gladwell attempts to take on this question from an interesting position through his literary piece for the New Yorker, “Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with Precocity.” Gladwell raises several sound arguments throughout his work. I disagree with Gladwell’s stances on “what genius.”
In the article, “Late Bloomers,” Malcolm Gladwell presents his arguments against the widespread conceptions of the word “genius.” The “poster child” [so to say] of his argument is Ben Fountain, a writer who took almost two decades to find his footing in in the writing world. He compares this individual to Jonathan Foer, an example of the popular definition of genius and a renowned author who was best seller at the age of 19. He compares Cezanne and Picasso in the same way, respectively. The meat of his argument is that genius should not only be limited to precocity rather there are geniuses who need time to develop into geniuses. He continues to state that some of the most acclaimed works in many “intellectual” fields have generally come when the composer was older rather than younger. Gladwell firmly believes that there is no way to differentiate between this “second genius” and a “failure” until the genius grows into his own. He carries on saying that these “geniuses,” usually unlike their counterparts, require a “healthy” amount of research, time, financial support and moral backing from other [their family and generally people in association to them] to figure out what works [they eventually do], but they are geniuses all the same.
Esa
here.docx
0
