And Now, Michael Crichton Is a Posthumous Author

Picks of the Week

Adam Thirlwell: Politics: A Novel (P.S.)
One would think this book is about sex, And while it is, since the characters have so much about it, some of it is kinky, and threesomes play a big role in the narrative. mostly POLITICS is about everything else: the mechanics, the logistics, the emotional minefields, the awkward questions, the moral dilemmas, and, well, the politics of what it is to be with someone you love or someone you don't, and how an act that should be simple is anything but. Thirlwell was disgustingly young when he wrote this but he absolutely understands that to make this book work, there must be an underlying sweetness and sincerity to the entire story. Now I want to see what he's up to more recently. Amazon | Indiebound | B & N | Borders | Powell’s
Jennifer Mascia: Never Tell Our Business to Strangers: A Memoir
Years ago I was blown away by Mascia's Modern Love piece describing her parents' secret past: her father was a mobbed-up convicted murderer, and her mother not only knew all about it, but aided and abetted her husband when life required being a fugitive, selling drugs, and living at great highs and crushing lows. Mascia's book tells a more whole story about her peripatetic life, and even with every new shocking revelation what remained consistent was how much she loved her parents, no matter how deep those lows went, and how much she misses them now that they are gone. Unconditional love never goes away, no matter if those who receive it deserve it. Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | B & N | Powell’s
Juli Zeh: In Free Fall
Give me a novel of ideas and if the story is good and the characters are believable and entertain me, I am there. Give me a crime novel of ideas, where two physics professors, friends and rivals, opposites but startlingly similar, do emotional battle on an intellectual canvas, raise the stakes through betrayal, the possible kidnapping of a child, and embroil a romantic-leaning police detective in the complicated machinations of quantum theory, and holy hell, I think I have myself one of my favorite books of the year. Powell’s | Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | B & N
Simon Lelic: A Thousand Cuts
It appears to be a crime with an easy solution: a disgruntled schoolteacher shoots up his place of employment and kills several students in the process. But really, Lelic's novel is about the catastrophic consequences of bullying, and how this act is hardly limited to kids turning on other kids, but burrows deeply into adult relationships as well. He evokes empathy for the killer and sympathy for Lucia, the investigating officer who has to fight for every scrap of dignity as she pieces together the far more complex truth of what really happened at the school. Powell’s | Amazon | Borders | Indiebound | B & N
William Lindsay Gresham: Nightmare Alley
I cannot stop raving about this book to people. The circular narrative structure, the demented feel of a traveling carny troupe, and the extraordinary rise and precipitous fall of Stan Carlisle give off the persistent, raging feeling that hell is always with us, and success is basically a sucker's game. No matter what the biographical evidence on Gresham's state of mind leading up to and after the book's bestseller (and movie basis) status in 1946, I don't think we can really know what demons plagued him to produce this marvelous noir gem. B & N | Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | Powell’s

April 06, 2009

No doubt there will be some fun parlor games in the book world to see which "high-level thriller writer," to use Harper publisher Jonathan Burnham's lingo, ends up with the daunting job of finishing off Michael Crichton's unpublished manuscript in time for a fall 2010 publication. But I'm more curious about the novel now bumped up to fall 2009: THE PIRATE LATITUDES, which the NYT's Motoko Rich reports is "an adventure story set in Jamaica in the 17th century." A couple of reasons: one, because Crichton's agent, Lynn Nesbit, told Rich he was “the most private of all authors that I have ever met in my life,” and that he never showed his agent or his editor any material before he had a complete draft (which means neither Burnham nor Nesbit had no real idea what the incomplete novel was about, aside from being a techno-thriller of some sort.) And two, because of Burnham's comments about the completed novel:

“It’s eminently and deeply and thoroughly researched,” Mr. Burnham said. “It’s packed through with great detail about navigation and how pirates operated, and links between the New World and the Caribbean and Spain.”

Ah, but Mr. Burnham, is the novel any good? One would think that if it needs "very little line editing" that would be an answer, but isn't this the time to puff up a posthumous author's importance and to trumpet a novel's fine qualities? And a thornier question is whether Crichton was ready to let THE PIRATE LATITUDES go at the time of his death, because if he guarded his work zealously from even those who advocated it the most until it was time to publish, maybe there's a damn good reason the book hadn't seen the light of day yet.

Of course, any and all literary merits should be judged on November 24. But reading between the lines has me jumping to the conclusion of wishing that more authors would spell out their posthumous intentions in a clear, succinct and written manner - even if such instructions end up being ignored after the fact.

Posted at 05:45 PM in Literary minded | Permalink

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Comments

It was nice to see Crichton honored in the "ER" retrospective just before the final episode of "ER" last Thursday. No less than Steven Spielberg paid tribute to the show's co-creator.

A posthumous publication I don't mind and expect. Let's just hope his name isn't turned into a "brand" that overshadows and cheapens the quality of his work.

Posted by: Steve | April 07, 2009 at 07:41 AM