Michael Weinreb

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“He Wrote Page-Turners That Aspired For Dystopic Realism”

June 12, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

Michael Crichton was a major part of the first wave of very educated Americans weaned on genre entertainments who moved B movies to the A-List and put pulp novels atop the New York Times Bestsellers. All the while, he drew the ire of the science community by putting a spotlight on the Victor Frankenstein side of the laboratory, worrying about the Singularity long before the phrase came into vogue (Westworld), thinking about the value corporations might put on the things inside of us prior to Larry Page’s brain-implant dreams (Coma), and considering the perils of de-extinction (Jurassic Park).

The opening of Michael Weinreb’s terrific Grantland consideration of a bad writer who was also a great writer:

At the heart of nearly every Michael Crichton novel is the simplest of premises: a protagonist in trouble, losing control of his world, facing forces he can no longer contain. It’s not exactly a sophisticated plot device, but while Crichton could be a complex thinker in terms of subject matter and scientific inquiry, especially later in his career, he was also an utterly facile writer as far as sentence structure and characterization go. He wrote page-turners that aspired for dystopic realism, and because of this, he is still a polarizing figure whose literary legacy remains unsettled. He once said that scientists criticized him for co-opting their theories into fiction, and that book critics ripped him for writing bad prose.

But one might also argue that few writers in modern history have married high-concept ideas and base-level entertainment as well as Crichton did. His books are the ultimate union of the geeky and the pulpy. Which is why one of this summer’s surefire blockbusters, Jurassic World, and one of this fall’s signature HBO series, Westworld, are both based on ideas that originated in the mind of a man who died almost seven years ago.

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Start with, say, a handsome doctor lured by a beautiful woman to an island that is actually an experiment in the parameters of human need, run by a shadowy corporation that feeds people a drug that (for reasons unknown) turns their urine a bright and shiny blue. Or start with a vacationing playboy who finds himself trapped at a French villa by a surgeon who wields a scalpel as a weapon, like a James Bond villain. Or start with a heist gone wrong, or a madman wielding nerve gas and threatening to attack the Republican National Convention, or a doctor arrested and thrown in jail on charges of performing an illegal abortion.

Those are a few of the premises of the nine books Crichton wrote in the late 1960s and early 1970s under varied pseudonyms, when he wasn’t yet a full-time writer and was still playing around with what kind he’d want to be if and/or when he became one. In a way, these novels are the most fascinating experiments of his career, because they’re windows into his thought process, into his own angst about technology and humanity. They’re the demos and B-sides that eventually led to his first best-selling book, 1969’s The Andromeda Strain, about a microorganism run amok. And The Andromeda Strain eventually led to 1990’sJurassic Park, the story of the dinosaurs run amok, the story that turned Crichton into one of the most famous writers on the planet.•

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12 Great 2011 Nonfiction Pieces Online For Free

December 14, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

A bunch of great articles from this year that made me rethink assertions, informed me or entertained me. All available for free.

  • “Getting Bin Laden” (Nicholas Schmidle, New Yorker): The best long-form journalism of the new century. Perfect writing and editing. Will be read with equal fascination 50 years from now.
  • “The Movie Set That Ate Itself,” (Michael Idov, GQ): Intrepid reporter with a deadpan sensibility ventures onto the most insane movie set ever.
  • “Better, Faster. Stronger“ (Rebecca Mead, New Yorker): Wicked portrait of a Silicon Valley self-help guru. Reading this piece is a good way to learn how to write profiles.
  • ‘”The Elusive Big Idea” (Neal Gabler, New York Times): I don’t agree with most of the assertions of this essay, but it’s deeply intelligent and provocative.
  • “Douglas Rushkoff” (Peggy Nelson, HiLowbrow.com): Deep and probing interview with the media ecologist.
  • “Who Invented The Seven-Game Series?“ (Michael Weinreb, Grantland): Reporter asks simple question others gloss over, finds interesting historical and analytical info.
  • “Zell to L.A. Times: Drop Dead” (Laurie Winer, L.A. Review of Books): Great writing about Sam Zell and the painful decline of the Los Angeles Times.
  • “Show the Monster” (Daniel Zalewski, The New Yorker): Brilliant Guillermo del Toro portrait for fans of film or great writing.
  • “The Man Who Inspired Jobs” (Christopher Bonanos, The New York Times): Polaroid founder Edwin H. Land was oddly omitted from Steve Jobs’ obits, but this lucid, insightful essay remedied that oversight. Better yet: Bonanos is apparently working on a book about Polaroid.
  • “All the Angry People“ (George Packer, The New Yorker): The most revealing reporting yet about the genesis and meaning of Occupy Wall Street.

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My 5 Favorite Non-Fiction Articles So Far In 2011

November 7, 2011 in Urban Studies | Permalink

Limited to pieces that are online for free:

  1. “Getting Bin Laden” (Nicholas Schmidle, New Yorker): The best long-form journalism of the new century. Perfect writing and editing. Will be read with equal fascination 50 years from now.
  2. “The Movie Set That Ate Itself,” (Michael Idov, GQ): Intrepid reporter with a deadpan sensibility ventures onto the most insane movie set ever.
  3. “Better, Faster. Stronger“ (Rebecca Mead, New Yorker): Wicked portrait of a Silicon Valley self-help guru. Reading this piece is a good way to learn how to write profiles.
  4. ‘”The Elusive Big Idea” (Neal Gabler, New York Times): I don’t agree with most of the assertions of this essay, but it’s deeply intelligent and provocative.
  5. “Who Invented The Seven-Game Series?” (Michael Weinreb, Grantland): Reporter asks simple question others gloss over, finds interesting historical and analytical info.

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“The Structure Of Determining A Champion In Professional Sports Is Still Based As Much On Superstition As It Is On Rational Thought”

October 24, 2011 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

John T. Brush was an orphan, a Civil War veteran, and a robber baron.

Michael Weinreb outdoes himself at Grantland, with a historical piece explaining why three American sports leagues (MLB, NBA, NHL) settle championships with seven-game series. Why seven games? The opening:

“John T. Brush was an orphan, a Civil War veteran, and a robber baron. He was born in 1845, and by the 1880s, he was a prominent baseball owner, a crotchety tycoon who used his department-store fortune to purchase franchises in Indianapolis and Cincinnati before taking control of the National League’s New York Giants. It was Brush who first proposed an unpopular salary cap he referred to as the ‘Brush Classification Plan.’ It was Brush who harbored such a grudge against the American League that he refused to allow his Giants to play the Boston Pilgrims in 1904, thereby resulting in the first of the two World Series-less falls of the 20th century. The players disliked him; the media tore into him with a purplish rage. ‘Chicanery is the ozone which keeps his old frame from snapping,’ wrote the Sporting News, ‘and dark-lantern methods the food which vitalizes his body tissues.’

Brush died 99 years ago, en route to a sanatorium in Southern California to recuperate from a car crash. Unless you harbor a fetish for the dead-ball era or the history of Midwestern textile operations, you have almost certainly never heard of him. And neither had I, until one night, in the midst of yet another protracted postseason series, I thought of a simple question that seems to have no definitive answer. What I wanted to know was how the idea for a seven-game series had begun, and why it became the conventional wisdom among three of the four major professional sports in America, and why this format has come to feel so inherently equitable. And what I realized is that, as much as we would like to think that we have evolved over the course of the century since John T. Brush expired on that cross-country train, and as much as we believe that we’ve found new and better ways to quantify information, the structure of determining a champion in professional sports is still based as much on superstition as it is on rational thought.”

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“The First Time He Stood Up To Meet His White Roommate, The Roommate’s Parents Nearly Fainted”

August 9, 2011 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From Michael Weinreb’s Grantland postmortem of the larger-than-life existence of towering football player-Police Academy thespian Bubba Smith, who just passed away:

“Smith — who was found dead in his Los Angeles home yesterday, apparently of natural causes, at age 66 — wanted to follow his brother to Kansas, but they didn’t want another Smith brother there; he wanted to go to the University of Texas, but, like most southern schools in the early 1960s, they couldn’t take him. And so he went to East Lansing, having never really interacted with white society before. The first time he stood up to meet his white roommate, the roommate’s parents nearly fainted. It was not a utopian community — Smith and his teammates often had trouble finding an apartment to rent in town — but Bubba had an unmistakable charm. He reportedly joined a Jewish fraternity; he was voted the most popular student on campus, even as he tested the limits of authority. His senior year, according to Mike Celizic’s The Biggest Game of Them All, he drove an Oldsmobile with his name written in gold letters on the door, most likely paid for through the largesse of alumni and boosters. Occasionally, Bubba parked it in the university president’s space.”

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Harvey Shine + Bubba Smith:

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“I’d Gone Through Such An Upheaval In My Life, And They’re Telling Me I Can’t Play Tennis?”

June 29, 2011 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The tennis player Renée Richards caused a sensation in 1976 when she revealed that she had been born a man and undergone a sex-change operation. She was quickly lambasted by critics who thought she had an unfair advantage over her female opponents, but it seemed like an excuse to unload on someone who made much of America uncomfortable. Michael Weinreb of Grantland has a smart new interview with Richards, who is today a septuagenarian Manhattan opthamologist conflicted about being a public figure. An excerpt:

“‘No, no, no, no,’ she says now, at age 76, sitting in her cozy examining room. Her voice is a rasp; her sweater is pink. She is surrounded by autographed photos of Martina Navratilova and Virginia Wade. ‘That was not my intention. It’s not so much the idea that I wanted to be a pioneer and a standard-bearer. It was a much more selfish reason. I’d gone through such an upheaval in my life, and they’re telling me I can’t play tennis? Suddenly I said to myself, ‘I can do anything any other woman is entitled to do. How dare they?’

‘I was a quiet person. I mean, I’m not a shrinking violet, but I was a very private person. I was very well-liked, and I was very well-respected. And a lot of that was thrown away because I became a caricature, a public notorious figure. I was undressed in front of the world.'”

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A new documentary about Richards:

The opening of the September 6, 1976 Sports Illustrated article about the Richards revelation: “At first, it seemed like a put-on. A transsexual tennis player? A 6’2” former football end in frilly panties and gold hoop earrings pounding serves past defenseless girls? A 42-year-old Yale graduate, Navy veteran, devoted father and respected eye surgeon reaching the semifinals of the $60,000 Tennis Week Open in South Orange, N.J. and demanding to play in the U.S. Open at Forest Hills? In women’s singles? Who ever heard of such a thing?

In the past month, practically everyone. And certainly last week there was no escaping the extraordinary spectacle of Renee Richards, nee Richard Raskind, and her assertion that ‘anatomically, functionally, socially, emotionally and legally I am a female.’ While conceding that her action might be ‘mind-boggling,’ Richards proclaims that she is embarked on a crusade for human rights, a quest ‘to prove that transsexuals as well as other persons who are fighting social stigmas can hold their heads up high.’

If tennis seems a rather fragile or inappropriate vehicle for carrying such a weighty message, it nonetheless provides, as Richards is well aware, the kind of exposure that attracts disciples. After one match last week, Dr. Roberto Granato, the urologist who performed the ‘sex-reassignment operation’ on Richards a year ago, rushed onto the court, embraced his former patient and exclaimed, ‘Oh, Renee, this is going to help so many people!’

Not everyone is so enthralled.”

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