Does being an outsider improve the quality of someone’s writing?

A rather rambling post a couple of weeks ago tried to explore the insights which can come from straddling worlds which are normally kept separate. This drew on material from 3 years earlier about Ways of Seeing and about Role Conflict.   

Indeed I now see there is a book whicih argues this - Rebel Ideas - the power of diverse thinking by Mathew Syad (2019)

I’m now shifting the focus to try to identify the qualities of a non-fiction book that make it “terrific” rather than merely “good”. I last tried that with Yanis Varoufakis whose books zing with zest….and only, I think, once before with detailed comments on a great book called Defending Politics

Perhaps this will allow me to add a further test to those I suggested in the famous post Why we need to ration non-fiction books.  

Like the good social scientist I am, I already have a hypothesis – namely that the feeling of being an outsider is a catalyst to identify and challenge “groupthink” and that writing is an effective way of exploring the multiple perspectives which subsequently open up…..

Clearly one can be a great writer without being (or feeling) an outsider - although I suspect that people who lack empathy won’t be great writers. But the weak point in my argument is the connection between creativity and writing. There’s no obvious reason why those with creative insights should be able to express them clearly in writing,,,,……

Or is there?    

I have already identified some of the people whose (non-fiction) writing I admire and the first column of the table below simply lists them – in the order in which they came to  mind. 

The second column is my own feeble attempt to label them….

The third will try to explain their “outsider” status which can relate to country, discipline, ethnicity or even gender…Significant that all but one are men? Adding Susan George, Polly Toynbee, Oriana Fallaci or Simone de Beauvoir at this stage is artificial….the point is that their names didn’t come to mind….

What do these great writers have in common?

Name	Status	Outsider in what sense?
Yanis Varoufakis	Globetrotting political economist	Spent first 20 or so years in Greece; European perspective
Theodor Zeldin	Writer, maverick Oxford academic	Came to UK as a child (Russian parents); strong French connection
Arthur Koestler	Central European journalist who made UK his home	Was a communist in Germany. Jailed in Franco Spain. Strong interest in science
JK Galbraith	Prolific Canadian/American economist and writer	23 when he left Canada – American civil servant handling rationing; Ambassador to India for JFK; attracted envy from academic colleagues
Robert Heilbronner	US economic historian	author of the famous “The Worldly Philosophers”; very much a generalist;
Charles Handy	Irish management writer and guru	changed his career every decade
Ralf Dahrendorf	German academic and politician; EC Commissioner, Director of LSE; and Lord	Straddled German and British academic and political worlds - for 25 years apiece
Richard Rose	Policy analyst, writer	had been a young journalist, Came to UK when 27
Roger Scruton	Maverick academic,	Often complained that his traditional brand of conservatism marginalised him
David Graeber	Anthropologist, activist, anarchist	Author of “Bullshit Jobs” Failed to have his academic position renewed by Harvard. Anthropology, almost by definition, means being an outsider
Jan Morris	Journalist	Change of sex certainly gives one a new perspective! And (s)he’s half English and half-Welsh – with this article explicitly referring to her felt “outsider”status
Jonathan Meade	Journalist and film maker – culture and buildings	His autobiography “An Encyclopaedia of Myself” makes it fairly clear he felt he was an outsider
Michael Pollan	Academic (Prof of Journalism), writer	He graduated in English; Generalist; jewish Author of “Cooked”, “In Defence of Food” etc
Alain de Botton	Pop philosopher	Early years in Switzerland
David Runciman	British political scientist; writer	Author of “How Democracy Ends” Son of a famous father, his case simply doesn’t fit!
Ha-Joon Chang	Development Economist	Graduated from South Korea; came to Cambridge for further studies and remained, Author of “23 things they don’t tell uoi about capitalism”
Yuval Harari	Israeli historian	Graduated Israel and now writes bestsellers like “Homo Sapiens”
Rutger Bregman	Dutch historian/journalist	Author of “Utopia for Realists”