Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon by Malcolm GladwellMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow, I was not expecting the work that Gladwell accomplished here. He takes a series of discussions with Paul Simon, as well as other musicians, music producers, and friends, and provides a pretty complete book focusing on Paul Simon’s music and writing process. You get the details that fans may not have heard before. But this is really about the creative process. You go deep into the process Simon uses to create music. He talks about it, he plays the parts of songs that influenced his songs. When there’s a question about how some songs sounded the way they did, Gladwell brings in the sound engineer to describe the echo chamber used 50 years ago. There is so much more here on audio than you could get on paper. It is much more of an experience than just a read.
I was reading another book the same week when I was listening to this. I was reading “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell. This book was also created by stringing together snippets from interviews. But I felt the Campbell book was very disjointed, jumping topics from paragraph to paragraph, only loosely following the organization set out by chapter headings. I noticed Gladwell’s hand at moving some stories out of chronological sequence to further discussion on a topic, and even repeating some snippets. But all toward a more cohesive whole. Gladwell shows his mastery of production here. My next step may well be to compare the video of Campbell’s interviews, or better, more modern documentaries.
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