Comments on: Let’s all learn something by being quiet

By: Stacey

Stacey — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:48:11 +0000

Thanks, Edward and Mridu, for your thoughtful comments to my post. Very much appreciated and please keep reading!

By: Mridu Khullar Relph

Mridu Khullar Relph — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:27:43 +0000

I think Susan Cain also came up with a brilliant marketing tactic, which is that she had a quiz on her website titled (I think), Are you an Introvert or an Extrovert.

Most of the reading public considers themselves Introverts and a lot of us went to her web page to take that quiz and learned about that book. Not just that, reporters talked about it, too, because they wanted to know which category they fell under, and more importantly, they shared this fun quiz with their readers.

The book got a lot of word of mouth because people were posting links to the book, to the quiz, and to articles about it, saying, “Well, I’m an introvert but that doesn’t mean I’m shy. It doesn’t mean I’m a loner. It doesn’t mean I don’t like people.” The whole concept of how we term the word “introvert” was questioned, and I think that started very interesting water cooler discussions among people.

By: EDWARD

EDWARD — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:34:41 +0000

Although it is a common assertion to say “most people who know me would say I’m an extrovert (with a capital E)”, it is almost unheard of for a person to say “most people who know me would say I’m an introvert (with a capital I).” Being an introvert is something you would prefer to keep in the closet along with being unemployed, overweight, gay, bipolar, dyslexic or any other number of misfortunes the oh-so-tolerant American public deems and dismisses as patently inferior.
The most obvious group of readers of books such as QUIET would be people who self-identify with introverts. The other class of readers would be a sliver of compassionate social sensitives and a large gaggle of gawkers. I went through childhood with a physical deformity. As an adult I learned that JOHN GARDNER believed a childhood deformity improves one’s chances of becoming a superior novelist. Do you think that did anything to lessen the trauma of my childhood? Do you think anything will compensate for the brutality small children inflict on one another?
Although there is a difference between a serious investigation of other lifestyles vs. “what other freaks you got behind that tent?”, perhaps that distinction is lost, perhaps willfully, if the question is posed as ‘are there any other bestsellers out there like QUIET?’