I recently read a book entitled Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. Quiet is a book written for introverts, by an introvert. It is a soft-spoken and sententious diatribe about the putative moral supremacy of introverts in a world that (justifiably!) favors extroverts.

The first problem with this book (aside from the fact that it was written by an introvert) is that the font is so small I could scarcely read it. The entire book is written in the kind of small print that is normally reserved for the voluminous stipulations that accompany anti-anxiety medications (i.e., introvert pills), ones written on those little folded up, tissue-paper-thin pamphlets, that nobody but an introvert bothers to read. A fellow professional book reviewer (an introvert, sadly) recommended that I use a magnifying glass to read Quiet, but I scoffed at the suggestion because magnifying glasses are the instruments of geeks and nerds (i.e., introverts), and I have a reputation as an extrovert to maintain. I said so as I consumed my rare and bloody T-bone steak, one with a side of potatoes and a prodigious serving of ice-cold beer in an enormous and ornate pewter beer stein (leaded, of course) whose lid opens with the push of a little button at the top of the handle.

“It’s as if the author were whispering”, I said to my sheepish colleague, a bolus of steak in my mouth. I pointed at the book with my two-pronged, Bill-the-Butcher-style fork. “Speak up, introvert!” I said to the book, and my introverted colleague blushed and apologized and genuflected, and then crouched and retreated toward the door, genuflecting and apologizing all the way, until he was out in the hallway, out of sight and out of mind, where, no doubt, he fumbled, hands shaking, with a prescription pill bottle to retrieve a blue Ativan tablet or two, as he rebuked and excoriated himself for his magnifying glass suggestion. And rightfully so — it was an embarrassing remark. I don’t trust introverts, nor do I particularly like them. Nevertheless, I will proceed with an unabashedly non-tendentious review of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking.

Now, on to the book review. As I couldn’t read the book given its minuscule fluxion font, I decided to procure the audiobook version. But again, the narrator — a professional voice actor, the back of the box proclaims — spoke so softly that I could scarcely hear him! I even played the audiobook through my 15,000 watt floor-to-ceiling speakers that I usually reserve to play Ride the Lightning to lull myself to sleep after a long (but never long enough) day of socializing, networking, brainstorming, and debating, with my fellow Harvard Business School alumni (all extroverts). Nonetheless, I could scarcely hear the narrator — even after boosting the signal through my enormous THX 5.1 amplifier; you know, the model that runs on diesel power and has dual-exhaust pipes and generates enough bass to crack the foundation of mindfulness meditation studio.

At this point, I was at a loss, so I decided to have an introvert read the book to me; I thought this to be a good idea, seeing as introverts are capable of discerning small fonts, their eyes being particularly attuned to discriminating tiny letters and numbers after years of solitary stamp and coin collecting. Thus, I recalled my introverted colleague. Before he started reading, I told him, “When you read, do so with conviction and purpose! And no stuttering!”

He was so nervous at the prospect of reading the entire book to me that he vomited (luckily, I had a bucket ready for the occasion). His hands shook so violently, in fact, that had I placed a carton of fresh heavy cream in them, the liquid would have swiftly solidified into a slab of solid butter. “Stop shaking!” I told him, but this just seemed to exacerbate his condition.

At this point the open book was flapping and fluttering with so much force that the very pages began to tear away from their binding and the volume itself began to disintegrate! Evidently, a runaway train of harmonic motion was transpiring before my very eyes — like in that old Technicolor video of the Tacoma Narrows bridge (a.k.a., “Gallopin’ Gertie”) as it rolls back and forth, accumulating momentum, until its very superstructure shatters and the bridge collapses. I realized that the amount of energy that my introverted colleague was transferring into the volume of Quiet was about to reach a potentially-lethal tipping point, so I cut my losses and bolted for the exit. I scarcely escaped the room when there was an ear-shattering and earth-shaking explosion; a blast of dust and detritus blew out from the doorway in a horizontal mushroom cloud formation.

---

At my colleague’s funeral, I spoke of his final moments. “He was a quiet man, an introvert. But died a very, very, very, very…loud…death. An extrovert’s death.”

His parents were very proud.

Copyright CWG Kemp, 2019