A quick follow-up to my critical post about Susan Cain’s New York Times article:
Am I the only person who finds it ironic that the big newspaper ad for her book has this text and the cover image?
“The Instant New York Times Bestseller Everyone Is Talking About”
And at the bottom of the ad, I’m not sure if this is irony or just internally contradictory: the text announces that Cain’s New York Times article is the #1 most emailed NY Times Op-ed. Apparently in addition to talking a lot, introverts have lots of friends, too.
If you define “introversion” so broadly that it includes people who talk a lot and have lots of friends, then how meaningful is that definition, really?
The Creativity Guru 
a bit ironic
Well, introverts are probably hugely overrepresented online and in print (they like the solitude of writing more than extroverts), so in the relevant senses (blogs, op-eds, etc), introverts are the ones talking about that book.
And by the way, I think it is brilliant marketing to write a book targeted at exactly the sort of people who are most likely to read books. Why didn’t I think of that? Here’s my next book title: “Readers: Why People Who Read Will Rule the Earth”.
I read the book as soon as it came out. A big point Cain makes is that introverts need to and do learn to put themselves forward for the sake of their ideas. Her examples of such introverts? Gandhi, Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. I appreciate her contribution to the creativity conversation. I agree with her that the new group-think is crazy… Shakespeare did not work in a group.
Anyway, I do agree Cain’s publicist is brilliant.
Thanks for your post– always enjoy reading your comments.