By the standards of the modern era, Crichton comes across as slightly sexist and arguably xenophobic. However, he also seems to be genuinely grappling with his sexism and biases in a way that was rare and forward-thinking for the time. He examined his thoughts and motives, and made a good-faith effort to change in a way that I found redeeming.
By the standards of any era, he comes across as insecure. Even though he has a chapter where his psychologist tells him he's insecure, I didn't really notice this at the time. Perhaps because I read it as an insecure year-old, I couldn't see the forest through the trees.
He lays his insecurities and phobias and limitations on the table, which is brave, but it also makes it difficult to like him at times. As I suspected, it was more rewarding to read the book with an improved sense of geography. Knowing what I do now, a better title would have been "Vacations" rather than "Travels. He paid money to go on guided, secure trips to exotic locales. It was adventure-tourism. And despite the fact that he was being coddled, he nevertheless approached each trip with hand-wringing anxiety.
But that's what I found admirable: here's a guy whose temperament was best suited to sitting at a typewriter and daydreaming. He had difficulty relating to other people in a genuine way, bore physic scars from his troubled childhood, and lived with a lot of fear and insecurity. Despite all that, he forced himself to travel outside of his comfort zone, to see the world, to challenge himself, to grow. Someone with less courage would have simply stayed home. I found myself disagreeing with him more than I did as a teenager.
We are directly responsible for any illness that happens to us. Sorry, no way. Yes, there are psychosomatic symptoms, and we know that a person's outlook can affect their immune system. Depressed people get more colds, for instance.
And yes, some illnesses like type 2 diabetes or lung cancer can be the result of bad decisions. But is it your fault if you're born with a cleft palate?
Or dyslexia? If you are allergic to cats, is that the result of your thoughts? Many illnesses are determined or influenced by genes. Are genetic defects your fault? What about if someone breaks your arm and sends you to the emergency room? It's all the more an astonishing claim for Crichton to make, considering that he died of cancer in I've had friends who've died of cancer.
It's terrible and sad. In no way whatsoever would I entertain the notion that they caused their own death. It's not a matter of responsibility. It's winning the world's shittiest lottery. I'd be curious to know how much responsibility Crichton felt for his illness in his last days. Now for my thoughts on the new-age stuff. When I first read the book as a teenager, I had never heard of spoon-bending, auras, chakras, or such. It seemed plausible.
I tried to bend a spoon. It didn't work. I tried to see auras. I talked to a tree. Never heard back. Still, I kept an open mind. I remember giving my high school psychology teacher my copy of the book and asking him to read a few chapters.
He returned the book to me the next day in class and said, "I don't buy it. He basically said "Believe what you want to believe, but be careful going down that path. Don't believe this stuff on one guy's word alone. Thanks Mr. So, I don't think Crichton is lying or making things up. There are some things he writes that seem genuinely inexplicable. Crichton anticipates this objection in his post-script. He writes that there are a number of phenomena that depend on altered states of consciousness, which are difficult to replicate in a laboratory setting, such as sexual intercourse or creativity.
Um, I'm not sure if the set of a porno counts as a laboratory setting, but humans are fully capable of having sex while surrounded by bright lights, cameras, and an audience.
Page Count: Publisher: Knopf. Review Posted Online: Sept. No Comments Yet. More by Daniel H. Pub Date: Sept. Page Count: Publisher: Viking. Show comments. More by Robert Greene. More About This Book. A slim, somber classic. Pub Date: Nov. More by Joan Didion. Please sign up to continue. But, maybe he did second guess his decision, or wonder what his life could have been like. While he never lived the actual life of an ER doctor, he was enamored with the thought of it enough to create and write an entire TV series based on life in an Emergency Room.
And I hear it was a success. Maybe you heard of ER? Well I hate to break it to you, but its actually even more than that! While a large majority of the book does take place in other locations while Crichton is off on an adventure, a good amount of the book takes place in Harvard, Los Angeles and the Southern Californian desert.
Is this a bad thing? Not at all. Crichton does a brilliant job of weaving through locations, and each location is tied to one central theme. Finding yourself. Michael Crichton, successful author of countless blockbuster books was always looking to find himself.
I always assumed a man as successful as Crichton would have it all. Money, happiness, and all of the answers. But I could not have been more wrong.
I can relate to this as I never left the United States until I was 27 years old. With travel becoming easier and easier to accomplish thanks to the advancement of online booking and the plethora of travel research available on the internet, people are starting to experience the world at a younger age.
As his career progressed and he wrote more blockbuster novels and began writing and directing movies such as Westworld and The Great Train Robbery , Crichton was not hurting for cash. He talks about the extravagant hotels he would stay in, such as the infamous Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore , but usually those quick luxurious stays were short, as he was in transit to get off the grid.
He would then stay in tents while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, small houses made of thatched grass with the local tribes in the remote highlands of New Guinea, and even a military base in Pakistan. In almost all of his experiences in his travels, things ultimately go wrong.
He rarely easily finds what he came to see, if he does at all. Crichton was on a constant journey of self-discovery. He freely admits every travel adventure he had taken was because he was unhappy with something in his day to day life. Fabulous tale of climbing Kilimanjaro. His vast exposure to psychics. The Shangri-La. The sharks. An Extinct Turtle. And so on and on. The chapter heading in Travels reads nothing short of fiction with a very busy protagonist.
I like that Crichton did not allow the petty affairs of life to get in the way of his travels, a desire that was building up in his medical school years, and one that he fulfilled with an admirable intensity for the course of 15 years During this time, he produced some of his greatest fiction and worked as film director and screen writing in between his travels and his writing. They lose the bet. Crichton makes it to the top and back, but comes very close to losing a few toes and fingers, and on a couple of occasions, nearly his life.
The undertaking of Kilimanjaro turns out to be far more than Crichton bargained for. It seems that this experience continues to feed him for many years to come — he remembers the extreme torture and pain, the intense desire to give-up, the harsh conditions that only became harsher as the trek continued, making him wish for the earlier conditions he had mistakenly considered impossible to bear.
How deep and complex is the human spirit in the face of extremity that it chooses to face? Crichton explores every layer.
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