dick jokes

Malcolm Gladwell Now a Term for Penis, Thanks to Nicholson Baker

Photo: Michael Loccisano/2011 Getty Images
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 24:  Writer Malcolm Gladwell attends the HBO Documentary screening Of "Bobby Fischer Against The World" at HBO Theater on May 24, 2011 in New York City.  (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for HBO)
Malcolm Gladwell (Author). Photo: Michael Loccisano/2011 Getty Images

Nicholson Baker, the author of over a dozen books, has a new novel out this week, House of Holes: A Book of Raunch. Like his books Vox and The Fermata — but unlike Baker’s other output — Holes is highbrow smut, as dirty and pornographic as it is imaginative and well written. The book contains a number of linked stories set at a sort of “sexual theme park,” where one can temporarily trade an arm in for a much larger penis, become a walking gonad, or have sex with a tree. For the novel, Baker has come up with dozens of new terms for the penis. According to a profile in this weekend’s New York Times, those synonyms include thundertube, seedstick, and, in what may or may not be a reference to grooming, Malcolm Gladwell. (Sentence: “He angled his Malcolm Gladwell.”) Congratulations go out to Malcolm Gladwell: no longer just the hugely successful and best-selling author of books like Blink and The Tipping Point, but now also a word for penis! May Urban Dictionary, if not his Wikipedia entry, forever and always register the distinction: “Were you searching for ‘Malcolm Gladwell (Author)’ or ‘Malcolm Gladwell (Genitalia)’?”

Malcolm Gladwell Now a Term for Penis, Thanks to Nicholson Baker