A Quiet review

Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking is an accessible great book. It thoroughly informs those who read it about introverts and introversion. It balances the clinical and the anecdotal, a rare feat. Such balance can't be found throughout, however.

Cain's engagement with ideas unfortunately doesn't extend as far into criticism of them as it does into exploration of them. Nonetheless, in spite of its sometimes slightly one-sided presentation of ideas, Cain's book delivers on its title. Now we've just to see what comes of that quiet revolution mentioned on the book's back. 

Early reflections on Quiet

As I come to the end of Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, one issue continually emerges. She never really assesses the theories that she writes about unless they've already been dismissed by psychology or psychiatry at large.

This apparent disinclination for passing judgment fits in with Cain's own introversion. The last thing she'd likely want to appear as is accusatory or confrontational. Yet, I can't help but wonder if her lack of deep analysis sells her own book short. I mean, a lot of research went into this book, and in her introduction Cain notes that much of that research wound up going into the extensive list of books for further reading that follows the main text. Merely presenting various theorists' ideas and not really engaging them beyond noting where the current establishment stands on them makes the whole experience of Quiet a bit shallow.

It also, as noted before, sets it very firmly in the "general audience" category of books. Accessibility is good, and listing books that go into further depths is great, but a little more analysis would have made Quiet more challenging. Instead, true to its subject matter, it just goes along with what the world of psychology, psychiatry, and neurology have to offer.

Cain and soft power

"Why I like Asian culture" and "Why I found high school just OK" would have worked as titles for this entry. As Cain moved into the third part of her book, I knew from its title that reasons would be given to cover both topics. After having read it, I feel like I know those reasons all the better, though.

Soft Power is a curious thing. The idea is used to explain the hold that Japanese culture has on North America, but Cain looks at it on a smaller scale. Throughout this part of her book she investigates the high school experience in the predominantly Asian town of Cupertino, California and how graduates adjusted to college and university campuses that are primarily Caucasian.

This investigation is Cain's launching point into a broader look at the West's apparent extroversion and the East's introversion. Careful as ever to note the nuance beyond these generalizations, Cain's final pages on the topic once again implicitly point to an advantage for introverts. Their use of soft power (winning over rather than beating up) can help them to forge more genuine and lasting groups and impressions.

The fact that this conclusion is left more implicit than explicit is something I thoroughly enjoy. It's another element of Cain's book that really makes it clear that introverts are as much in her audience as they are her subject.

Into the thick of Cain's research

Where the first half of Quiet's second part is laden with psychological studies, the latter half adds a few neurological ones to the mix. The veritable tapestry of research that Cain weaves is incredible. But, she keeps the book grounded by continuing to use the odd anecdote, either to butress her research or to frame it. Such is the case in chapter 6, where Cain intersperses the story of Eleanor Roosevelt's career and personality with a disussion of studies about introverts, extroverts, and dopamine and recollections from a weekend spent at a small convention for introverts.

Perhaps all of her moving about between perspectives (mostly scientific studies, and personal anecdotes) is part of why Cain's book has garnered so much praise. Shifting perspectives so frequently is a great way to keep the most people's attention. Had Cain written Quiet as a straight collection and analysis of studies or as a sort of memoir of an introvert, it would never have been as big a hit.

However, writing her book to have a broad appeal doesn't mean that Cain stays away from declaring that introverts are better or vice versa. She implies here and there that it's her opinion that introverts are indeed better. All the while, she also makes it clear that the split between the two within humanity isn't perfectly even and that individuals are never purely one or the other.

Nonetheless, after reading about the differences between introverts and extroverts' neurological pleasure centers any debate about the merits of one or the other remind me of Zeus and Hera's argument about which sex enjoys intercourse more. The only way to get a clear sense of it would be to find a Tiresias of temperament who has somehow been both an introvert and extrovert.

The queries increase in Quiet

Part two of Quiet is a welcome change. Where Cain spent much of part one on anecdotes she adds much more psychological and psychiatric research into part two. Of course, anecdotal evidence wouldn't hold as much water in a discussion of biology as it does in a discussion about the general concepts "extrovert" and "introvert."

On a more basic level, the inclusion of more research and more studies is also welcome because it's shaken Cain out of the familiar rhythm of part one. Now her sections carry more thought than narrative, more inquiry (Cain really puts the question mark to use) than story. Given that the chapters of part two are about big questions like, "is nature or nurture the source of a person's extroversion or introversion?" and "does a person's temperament determine the course of their life?" the shift to a tone of inquiry is a perfect fit.

Interestingly enough, Cain's moving into inquiry also saves her book from being too brash to be truly about introversion (at least as far as I'm concerned).

In moving away from anecdotes, Cain also uses the regionalism "hold forth" far less. I'm never against learning new words or idioms, but combining those words to mean "to speak about something or someone at great length" makes it seem like a truly idiomatic idiom if ever I read one.

Can any revolution be quiet?

At first, Quiet's thesis seems to be: it's okay to be an introvert. As I made my way through chapter two and into chapter three, though, its thesis shifted to something more forceful: it's better to be an introvert.

This statement simplifies a lot of what Cain writes about, and glosses over her caveats about the importance of context in comparisons of extroverts and introverts, but it keeps coming up. Though, in a chapter about creativity, it's no surprise that solitude (an introvert's number one top sought thing) gets such high praise. Looked at logically, it just makes sense that some of the best ideas are sparked by the maddening crowd (Steve Wozniak's participating in the Homebrew Computer Club), but carried out alone (Wozniak's building the first home computer in early mornings and late nights spent at his desk at Hewlett-Packard).

With all of that said, Cain's Quiet is slowly turning into a paradox for me. What she writes is sound, but at odds with how it's written. The "anecdote-explanation-research" rhythm of her sections keeps things moving at a nice clip and adds some narrative elements to a text that could be much more dense, but it also seems weirdly chatty for a book about introversion. 

The blurbs of praise in the front of the book also seem strange, considering what Quiet is all about. Ultimately, the text over the top of the back of the book, "The Book that Started the Quiet Revolution" nicely summarizes the clash of the blurbs' outspoken nature with the reserved content of the book.