There was a time — roughly 15 years ago, if you’re keeping track — when I would’ve called Michael Crichton one of my heroes. He was even somebody I aspired to be like, a popular storyteller who sold novels by the truckload, occasionally dabbled in Hollywood, ate dinner with Sean Connery, and routinely confounded the literary snobs who resented his success. I loved the movies Westworld, The Great Train Robbery, and Runaway, which he wrote and directed; I was fascinated by his personal journeys as recounted in the autobiography Travels; and I thought (and still do) that the original Jurassic Park novel was a terrific thriller. In my unsophisticated youth, I even prophesied that Crichton would someday earn the respect of those aforementioned snobs through dint of his popularity, that his books, loved by millions, would endure long after the “literary fiction” beloved of the ivory-tower-types had passed from memory.
Then I grew up.
And I started noticing things I didn’t like in Crichton’s fiction. For example, there’s a nasty smear of xenophobia at the heart of Rising Sun, and a reactionary, fearful attitude toward empowered women in Disclosure. Congo and Sphere were ideas that had been better explored by other writers. The Lost World read more like a screenplay treatment than an actual novel. And the last Crichton novel I bothered with, Timeline, was little more than a lightweight retread of Jurassic Park. Which was, in its own way, a retread of Westworld. (All three follow the same basic plot: a heartless corporation tries to harness a new technology and sell it to the public for entertainment purposes only to have unforseen malfunctions cause everything to go terribly wrong and tourists to start dying. Yawn.)
I stopped reading Crichton after Timeline, but I still maintained a certain level of respect for him and his work. I just figured I’d outgrown him, or that, like a lot of aging writers, he’d seen better days. Then I heard he was publicly ridiculing the idea of global warming, claiming the whole thing was some kind of scam. And I thought, well, I disagree with his views, but that’s okay. I didn’t have any ill feelings towards him because of that, I just didn’t want to read his latest books.
After what I learned today, however, I don’t think I want to own or read any of his books, old or recent, ever again. The man has revealed himself to be a world-class asshole, and I am absolutely disgusted to think that I ever defended the hack.
The details are here, but, in a nutshell, a guy named Michael Crowley wrote a story in The New Republic that was critical of Crichton’s take on global warming. Crichton then retaliated by representing Crowley in his latest novel as a child molester. Not just a character who resembles Crowley, but a character named Crowley who, surprise surprise, is described as “a Washington-based political columnist” and who has a thing for kids in diapers. He’s also described, in a ridiculously childish attack, as having a small penis. What are we, Michael, in the seventh grade? Jesus…
This is offensive on so many levels. Crichton is hardly the first writer to retaliate against his critics or enemies in his fiction — I used to routinely kill off characters who all happened to share the same name as a guy I once lost a girl to — but this is such a petty, ham-fisted, loathsome attack that it borders (in my mind, at least) on the libelous. Child molestation is just about the worst thing a person can be accused of in our society; it provokes an instant, violently emotional response in nearly everyone who hears the charges, and it’s usually a strong enough response that no one bothers listening to the evidence before they condemn the accused. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of an H-bomb. Crichton’s a bright guy; he was surely aware of the instinctive hatred and anger his readers would feel for this Crowley character as Crichton has used him. I would guess that this is exactly the response he wanted, too. He went way too far, given the provocation. And I hope the real Mr. Crowley will look into suing him forthwith.
As for me, I will no longer support him in any way. I’m going home tonight and I’m removing every Michael Crichton book from my library. Anybody want a pristine hardcover copy of Jurassic Park?
