General Thinker

Some people know a great deal about one thing. Others know a little about absolutely everything, including several things that nobody particularly wanted to know about in the first place. Remo Giuffre, it seems, has decided that the latter approach deserves rather more recognition.

General Thinker (2014) is a celebration of curiosity, creativity, connections and the rather unfashionable art of thinking about things simply because they’re interesting. Published by Eolo, it makes a compelling case for the restless mind that refuses to remain obediently confined to a single subject, profession or neatly labelled departmental pigeonhole.

In a world increasingly obsessed with specialists, consultants, experts and people who describe themselves as thought leaders without apparently noticing how ridiculous that sounds, Giuffre champions the generalist: that peculiar individual who wanders freely between ideas, spots connections where others see unrelated clutter, and occasionally comes up with something genuinely original while everyone else is attending a meeting about innovation.

The general thinker is not necessarily the person who knows the answer. More often, it’s the person who wonders why everyone is asking the wrong question. Such people can be irritating at dinner parties, particularly when a straightforward discussion about the weather somehow develops into an examination of Renaissance architecture, supermarket psychology and the philosophical implications of the paperclip.

But civilisation arguably owes quite a lot to people who couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Giuffre’s approach offers encouragement to anyone who has ever been accused of lacking focus, having too many interests or failing to settle down and become something respectable. Perhaps the problem isn’t an inability to concentrate. Perhaps it’s an unwillingness to accept that the universe should be divided into convenient little boxes, each administered by somebody with a certificate.

Or perhaps you’re simply easily distracted. There is, admittedly, a fine line.

Thought-provoking, unconventional and refreshingly enthusiastic about the possibilities of the human imagination, General Thinker is a book for curious minds, intellectual wanderers, creative troublemakers and anyone who suspects that knowing a little about everything might actually be rather useful.

This 2014 edition, ISBN 9780992584801, is offered in Good condition by Crappy Old Books, where we enthusiastically support independent thinking, provided it doesn’t involve thinking too carefully about why anyone would establish a business selling second-hand books.

An excellent acquisition for anyone who enjoys ideas, questions conventional wisdom, or has ever started researching one subject and emerged six hours later knowing rather a lot about something completely different.

After all, why specialise in one corner of the universe when there’s an entire universe available to misunderstand?

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