Michael Crichton’s and John Grisham’s ambition types
calnewport.com
calnewport.com
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-...
(I never read Grisham so I can't speak to them)
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.
Not morally judging someone for getting divorced, but I suspect such an ambitious life (Crichton) left little room for personal relationships.
I think the parent’s reply is more likely.
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.
Rising Sun though I think you have to see through the lens of the time.
They waste everyones energy and time and ideally should be shot of into space to leave the rest of the chimp troupe in peace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...
His comment on Type 3 - "One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."
I once had a manager and his manager who were both like this. I've never seen a dynamic duo with more skill in turning a group of good ICs in a bunch of dancing monkeys churning out pointless work. But hey, while problems solved was zero, number of PowerPoints in the shared drive was over 9000.
Vegeta would be impressed.
lol. I'm glad somebody got this reference. It's pretty dated at this point. Nowadays it's all about people going bald after working out.
Interesting read of his wikipedia.
He is regarded as "an undisguised opponent" of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.
As far as epitaphs go, you could certainly do worse.
When I think about the workplace, I've usually interpret this version of stupid as a way of saying that there is a type of personality where the compulsion to do something completely overrides asking themselves if that thing should be done in the first place. The end result is exactly what you said - shotgun frantic activity because everything needs to be done and everything is a top priority. They are not stupid per se, but they create an astonishing amount of stupid and wasteful activity.
Unfortunately there are people who really are just stupid as well. I'm sure in the Armed forces that can have deathly consequences.
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.
TBH I do think his books are classics, but your high school English teacher would disagree.
Take Jurassic Park: it's a very well constructed book with a theme of man's hubris in trying to control nature. The book is an exploration of human weakness, not human growth, so any more focus on character development would have just been a distraction from the themes. The characters are raw archetypes on purpose, because that's the best way to emphasize the theme.
Hmm, that sounds more like the movie than the book. The book isn't really about "nature... finds a way". The book is more about the dangerous synthesis of startup capitalism and cutting edge scientific research. Almost everything that goes wrong on the island happens because Hammond cuts every corner he can, explicitly to save money. And this is allowed to happen because when a startup is developing cutting edge technology, government regulators are clueless about what's even going on. Scientists in the field can't self-regulate their own field because all of them have a stake in various commercial enterprises, making them behave more secretively and protective than scientists should be. The introduction at the beginning of the book lays this theme out clearly; it's basically an essay/rant against bioscience startups with the corrupting influence of capital as the central thesis.
Incidentally the book has some character development from the lawyer Gennaro, coming to recognize and take responsibility for his own role in the disaster. It's minor though, almost like Crichton was conscious of how little character development was in the story and felt he needed to add a little. The movie strips this out entirely, and has Gennaro get eaten by the T-Rex instead of Ed Regis (who was removed from the story.)
There's definitely a critique of science-for-profit, but I think that that is in the context of the wider critique of man's hubris in general.
I read Malcolm's comments throughout the book as embodying the primary theme. It's not just "life finds a way" (although that quote is in there), it's that we think we can control things but in the end our attempts fall apart because there will always be some variables that remain outside of our control. The chaotic and unpredictable nature of the world is why it all falls apart, starting with the misidentification of the dinosaur as a lizard because the guy who could have known better was on vacation.
This is best evidenced to me in Nedry's death: in the moments leading up to his death he's monologuing in his head about how he had everything planned out and everything was going perfectly except for this stupid storm! The storm itself is a reference to earlier in the book when Malcolm talks about how it's impossible to predict the weather over more than a few days. The point is that no matter how hard we work, we will never be able to understand nature well enough to control it completely. Not just life, but the whole universe.
Nedry was killed by a dinosaur, but only because he couldn't control the weather.
> "I want that equipment," Hammond said. "That's equipment for the labs. We need it."
> "Yes," Arnold said. "But you didn't want to put money into a storm barrier to protect the pier. So we don't have a good harbor. If the storm gets worse, the ship will be pounded against the dock. I've seen ships lost that way. Then you've got all the other expenses, replacement of the vessel plus salvage to clear your dock ... and you can't use your dock until you do..."
A reoccurring theme is the whole island being designed as a fragile system which cannot tolerate more than one or two failures at once. Malcolm's chaos theory argument says they can't predict when and how multiple failures will stack up to create a disaster, but could have designed their systems to be more robust to failure. For instance, they could have built a sheltered harbor for the island so that the very predictable eventuality of a tropical storm wouldn't isolate the island. They didn't, specifically to save money.
Another example since you bring up Nedry: why was Nedry hired to automate everything on the island, and why was he essentially working alone on it? Because Hammond was obsessed with not just making money, but making lots of money:
> Gennaro had to smile. It was almost the same speech, word for word, that he had used on the investors, so many years ago. "And we can never forget the ultimate object of the project in Costa Rica-to make money," Hammond said, staring out the windows of the jet. "Lots and lots of money."
> "I remember," Gennaro said.
> "And the secret to making money in a park," Hammond said, "is to limit your Personnel costs. The food handlers, ticket takers, cleanup crews, repair teams. To make a park that runs with minimal staff. That was why we invested in all the computer technology-we automated wherever we could."
The problem is that much of the book doesn't revolve around Hammond's cost-saving measures.
The first big chunk of the book is a description of a series of random actions by many different people that combine to cause the dinosaur threat to go unidentified. Midwives across Costa Rica mark reptile deaths as SIDS to avoid getting in trouble. A key reptile researcher is on vacation. The infectious disease specialists use the tentative identification of the reptile as a lizard, which the Costa Rican officials mistakenly interpret as a positive identification. All of these random events combine to cause the threat to go overlooked, and none of them are directly related to money at all. If he were trying to make a point about money, this part of the book would make no sense. The point is to illustrate how unpredictable the real world is in comparison to the idealized version that exists on paper.
And again, the primary antagonist's downfall and death is not driven by cost-saving measures, it's driven by an unexpected weather event. You don't kill off your antagonist in such an arbitrary way unless that arbitrariness is the main point of the story.
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.
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?
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.
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?
If you can do all that with a Type 2 mindset, nobody is stopping you.
A couple that immediately come to mind are the creator of the Epsilon editor and the creator of Pinboard.
I’m sure there are many others.
Focus on running towards what actually moves the world forward and you'll discover the other people who are keeping up with you quickly. Don't worry about all of the noise around busier people working on other things. None of that will last.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.