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Michael Crichton’s and John Grisham’s ambition types
- causi 4y agoI like to think that if Crichton hadn't died so young he would've eventually given up being a climate denier.
- ggm 4y agoThe take down on his footnote riddled state of fear is good. Shame about the politics because is was a great airport thriller. Full of mcguffins left right and centre.
- evv555 4y agoWas he a climate denier or a critic of the emerging scientism in the climate change debate? There are unintended consequences to arriving at the right conclusion(climate change is real) for the wrong reasons. It undermines societies ability to move forward viable solutions.
- notahacker 4y agoNo, he was a full blown denier, fond of making outlandish claims like the Antarctic ice area actually increasing, misrepresenting what the scientists had actually predicted in order to claim their predictions had failed, as well as writing an entertaining-but-silly novel about eco-terrorists faking natural disasters full of nonsense gotchas like "look, the temperature record in this place is lower than it was x years ago" He just was smart enough to caveat it with "maybe the world is getting a little bit warmer but we can't be sure why" and to focus on attacking the notion of scientific consensus and modelling rather than defending alternative hypotheses in any detail.
- xenonite 4y agoI rather see his story as a reminder that scientific studies are often used to "prove" a claim, rather than openly looking for the outcome.
- evv555 4y agoI don't agree that this is an accurate characterization of Crichton's perspective.
- notahacker 4y agoSuuuure, he was actually trying to ensure society moved forward viable solutions to anthropogenic climate change by repeatedly asserting there was actually no evidence of its existence, misrepresenting accurate past predictions of warming in order to discredit them, even writing a book in which the natural disasters attributed to climate change were actually part of a murderous conspiracy to fake it, with a great big long appendix about the dangers of scientists advising government on public policy when contrarians like him could be doing that instead...
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- pessimizer 4y agoSeems unlikely, he was typical of a cluster of opinion that has become more widespread since. Climate denial wasn't his only thing, for example, he also was a "the real sexism is against men" guy.
- xenonite 4y agoI don’t think that he spread such a plain opinion. I think he rather tried to add balance to a one sided discussion.
- 0xcde4c3db 4y agoSee also: Scott Adams, who seems to be on a similar arc. 1990s Dilbert: Office workers express skepticism and frustration surrounding their boss's incompetence and how meaningful their work really is. 2020s Dilbert: A robot indignantly asks "did you just assume my gender?" after having a "wokeness chip" installed [1]. I expect that within another decade he'll go full Mallard Fillmore and just have Dilbert's head in the corner with the rest of the comic being a giant speech bubble filled with a barely-coherent rant against people who only exist in his imagination. [1] https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-09-05 https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-09-05
- mongol 4y agoTo be fair, wokeness wasn't a thing in the 1990s.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoWe called it "political correctness" then. It was a big deal back then, and subsided a bit in the 00s, to come roaring back in the 2010s.
- mongol 4y agoIt was not the same thing. The Dilbert strip linked would have made no sense in the 1990s. It makes complete sense today.
- gerbler 4y agoComparing their personal lives is also interesting - Crichton, married 5 times, Grisham married once. Not morally judging someone for getting divorced, but I suspect such an ambitious life (Crichton) left little room for personal relationships.
- dan00 4y agoI would interpret it differently. A man getting that easily bored by just one project, might as easily get bored by just one wife.
- proamdev123 4y agoThat’s a poor analogy. He wasn’t married to multiple women at the same time. And one can have multiple relationships simultaneously without getting married five times. I think the parent’s reply is more likely.
- gsatic 4y agoAnd there is Type 3 - over flowing with energy and drive to succeed but zero imagination or creativity. They waste everyones energy and time and ideally should be shot of into space to leave the rest of the chimp troupe in peace.
- bjornsing 4y agoThat’s unfortunately a common archetype in the “tech” startup world, yes…
- mongol 4y agoThen, by induction, there must be Type 4, that lacks both ambition and talent.
- theGnuMe 4y agoOf course.
- slowmovintarget 4y agoIf they're employed at all, it's in middle ranks in government or unionized jobs.
- smugma 4y agoFrom the Wikipedia page: The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions.
- bjornsing 4y agoThis is wonderful advice. I wish I would have received it (and been receptive to it) 15 years ago. Back then I was a Crichton, but have realized I’m just causing myself unhappiness and anxiety on that path. Now I want to try to be more of a Grisham. One challenge though: How can you be a Grisham in the “deep tech” startup space? The whole culture is so geared towards Crichtons. Is there a beaten path, or will I have to create it?
- WJW 4y agoI doubt it will be possible, as the concept of SV-type startups is to be as Crichtony as possible. In fact, when they start to become boring you can often see VCs pressure the management to take more risk as a mere 2-5x return on investment is not enough to make the VC model work. I expect that being a Grisham in deep tech either involves finding work in the research department of a more stable big tech company, or else in a research institute/university. If that is not possible and you can find/want only startup work, you can always try to uncouple your financials from work via FIRE methods and try to find autonomy that way. Be aware that you will find a growing friction with management and even your coworkers if you try that though.
- bjornsing 4y agoCrichton is the cultural norm, I realize that. But does it have to be? For example: I don’t mind the high risk / high reward thing, as long as it’s not me working 80 hour weeks under incredible stress to try to avoid bankruptcy. There are plenty of Crichton wannabes with all the necessary drive, energy and business acumen, but which lack the imagination and creativity to really succeed. Why can’t one of them do that job? I can be the creative guy behind the scenes. Sure you can be an “expert” and live out your days in a corporate research lab or something. But that means you’ll have a 9-5 job with zero financial incentives until you retire. I think we’re heading into an economy where creativity, imagination and foresight really is the bottleneck. Is it sound that that work is then not incentivized at all?
- WJW 4y agoIf you can find someone willing to do all the hard work while you sit and ideate, sure that would be a lovely deal. There's somewhat of a stigma in the startup world against idea people though, precisely because they think that being creative "should be" enough to succeed. It usually isn't and to be "very" successful you need both the 80 hour weeks AND ample creativity. To be merely averagely successful you can get away with either hard work OR creativity, but TBH given your deprecatory remarks about 9-5 jobs it doesn't sound you are as Grishammy (yet) as your initial post suggests. :)
- tomcam 4y agoCrichton was not a great author but his books are perfectly crafted, entertaining all the way through, and low-key super creative. He loved the research and it shows. The result was potboilers that never condescended and read smooth as butter. Like Lee Child or Robert B. Parker he made it look easy.
- rjsw 4y agoThe one Grisham book that I have read felt like the author had not done enough research. It was set mostly in Europe and contained a lot of minor details that were wrong.
- vlunkr 4y agoSo what makes him not a great author then?
- Barrin92 4y agobecause ultimately everything he's written is forgettable. He wrote the same techno-thriller over and over and because it's easy to digest it became a good template for movies but other than that there's nothing really about any of his books that'd make you read them more than once.
- vlunkr 4y agoI don’t know, if the books are so forgettable why are we talking about them decades after they were published?
- Barrin92 4y agowe mostly talk about Crichton as an author rather than about the actual contents of the books. He's "famous for being famous", sort of like Madonna. look at the article we're commenting on which like almost all Crichton pieces talks about his success and sales rather than talking about his work at all.
- tomcam 4y ago
- paulcole 4y agoWith his Type 1 and Type 2 ambitions, the author has stumbled upon the established SCARF model, which involves five domains of human social experience: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. You can apply this to a lot of things: ambition, leadership, engagement at work, etc. In this case, through their ambition, Grisham seeks autonomy (and to an extent certainty) and Crichton status.
- Xenoamorphous 4y agoTwo of my favourite authors. I know that their books the equivalent to blockbuster movies in cinema but man, I loved their books during my teenage years. I already loved dinosaurs as a kid (whick kid doesn’t love them, though) and Jurassic Park the novel and then the movie (I was 10 and 13 when they came out) blew me away. I just started reading Jurassic Park again, this time in English (I couldn’t as a kid) and damn, so many memories… Never cared for The Lost World though, neither the book nor the film.
- ProjectArcturis 4y agoFor me, Crichton went off the rails with Rising Sun and Disclosure, which are mainly driven by animus against Japanese business practices and women filing sexual harassment claims. Like, if you were a rich white guy in the early 90s, those were two things that right-leaning media outlets would have you worry about. Crichton by that point had lost the imaginative independent thinking that drove his early work, and basically ate up and regurgitated the media panic of the day into two novels that have aged incredibly poorly.
- ghaff 4y agoLatterly, Crichton’s books started to read more like screenplay treatments than novels—which they sort of were. Rising Sun though I think you have to see through the lens of the time.
- V_Terranova_Jr 4y agoCounterpoint: Crichton's Airframe is a great book that illustrates how journalists reporting on complex subjects they don't understand can cause great harm regardless of their intent or convictions.
- ProjectArcturis 4y agoI didn't read Airframe. I did read Timeline (1999), in which a shady corporation invents time travel. It plans to use this awesome power to, um, create an ultra-realistic Medieval theme park.
- thenerdhead 4y agoThis article speaks to me that the author himself is struggling to unblock his creativity by looking to other processes. Both these authors were ambitious and ruled the 2000s best sellers list. Sure they had different processes, but we’re comparing books on the range of science topics to that of legal thrillers. There’s other very consistent authors out there. The Danielle Steel, Nicolas Sparks, etc types are overlooked because of their book topics but they have similar stories of ambition in their late 20s where they decided to pursue writing full time. I don’t really get what the take away is here. Each of these people are ambitious and live different lives to realize it. So what? What’s the takeaway?
- proamdev123 4y agoThe takeaway is clearly stated at the end: two extremely successful authors took very different paths to success and currently live two very different lifestyles — all based on their personality types. Cal Newport is sharing these examples to the reader to impart the idea that you should try to match your career _style_ to your personality. You can pursue the exact same career as someone else, but if the __way_ you pursue it doesn’t match your personality style, you probably won’t be happy.
- thenerdhead 4y agoThanks for reiterating it. I’m saying “so what?” to the takeaway. It is putting one ambition type above others because it is most relatable to the author. It doesn’t mean it is the right one as proof by other successful authors who are constantly juggling many projects at a time. There are these types of ambition in all professions. You can’t just assume a type you disagree with is not happy. That’s what I’m saying “so what?” to. I’m fine with being downvoted, but wanted to provide more context to what can be perceived as cynicism.
- nirvdrum 4y agoThe author isn't saying one way is better than the other and he's not saying one type is happier than the other. He postulates people are wired one way and trying to work in a style incongruous with that type are causing themselves unnecessary grief, even if they end up ultimately successful. The point is to be honest with yourself which type you are and develop your work style to play to your strengths. It might not be the most insightful article, but most self-help topics are built on repetition and reinforcement. If anything, the author is trying to refute the cultural notion that the Crichton types are better than the Grisham types or vice versa.
- lovelearning 4y agoMy problem is that I'm definitely type 2, but my mind wishes to become type 1. It took me two days just to write a Python script for managing spam, but when I go on GitHub, I find people regularly contributing to 3-4 critical projects every week from months.
- mirker 4y agoIf you spend the time to contribute one patch, I don’t see why you couldn’t repeat this process to the point where you are highly productive. It’s just hard work getting to that point.
- UIUC_06 4y agoCrichton's and Grisham's books are both forgettable but quite enjoyable reads. In both cases, their formula is easily learned, and the 2nd and nth books you read just seem to scream out "formula." That's why I've read one or two of their books and don't feel the need to read any more. It's a good formula. It can make very good movies. Sir Walter Scott [1] was hugely popular in his day. Some people do still read him. In 200 years, some analogous paragraph to this will appear for Crichton & Grisham. Following the Modernist movement in literature in the aftermath of the first World War, Scott’s rambling and verbose text (indeed he was alleged to omit punctuation in his writing, preferring to leave this to the printers to insert as required) was no longer in vogue. [1] https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/Sir-Walter-Scott/ https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/Sir-...
- michaelwww 4y agoI haven't read Grisham but that's how I felt about Crichton's books. His books were treatments designed to made into a movie and read like that.
- notahacker 4y agoIronically Jurassic Park was an exception (made a great movie, but Spielberg must have been very happy to lose the book's preoccupation with details of chaos theory and computer systems in the screenplay)
- pfortuny 4y agoSame about Ishiguro, very surprisingly.
- 2143 4y agoI had read a couple of Grisham's works some years ago and found them enjoyable. I thought I had never read Crichton (just not into dinosaurs) until I realised that I have infact read his State of Fear many years ago. However, I have no recollection whatsoever of its story. Another author who uses formula seems to be Dan Brown: everything happens within 24 hours, there's a hero with lots of travel (atleast an Atlantic crossing and back — which if you think about it screws up the 24 hour timeline IRL) a pursuing villain who's low-key psychopath, a parallel storyline... It's quite enjoyable if you're reading him for the first time, but by the time you're into 3rd book you'll start to see the formula and then whatever you're reading instantly loses its appeal. I have decided that, life's too short to be reading low-quality work, and now I try to read classics and other renowned works. Of course, with this strategy you might end up missing good works by independent authors. So, keep an open mind.