A guest post by author and Indie Books Unleashed founder Crystal Klimavicz

As a writer and thinker, I am a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan. His books line a shelf in my study and I reread chapters often. How can you not appreciate the voice of reason when it encounters everyday life and sheds new light upon it? Gladwell encourages me to question the ways of the world, just as his ideas bring clarity and resonance to concepts in a delightful way.

In his latest novel, David and Goliath, Gladwell offers explanations of why being bigger doesn’t necessarily equate to being better. As always, he provides a number of examples, from the very battle the shepherd boy won against the imposing giant in Biblical times, to paintings from the late nineteenth century artists Monet, Manet, Pisarro, Cezanne, and Degas.

But what I found most interesting was a term that referenced these artists at a venue called The Salon. It was the largest and most prestigious art competition that was held in Paris in that day. No painter could submit more than three pieces and artists suffered numerous rejections. The aforementioned painters, although now world-renowned for their style known as Impressionism, were often shunned.