MEET MISTER WIZARD

(3 of 7)

But he doesn't please everyone. Critics complain he never lets plausible characters stand in the way of information; not much of a novelist but a hell of an educator. On the other hand, scientists have been known to say he saws the limb off behind him; no hotshot in the lab but a hell of a tap dancer with a word processor. Crichton is used to the charges. "Feeling conflicted, different, has been a fact of my life," Crichton told the Los Angeles Times. "Someone once compared me to a bat. 'Put a bat among birds,' he said, 'and they call it a mammal. Put it among mammals and they call it a bird.' In more intellectual circles, I'm seen as a 'popular entertainer' unworthy of consideration. In popular entertainment circles, I'm considered too intellectual. I don't seem to fit in anywhere."

Except perhaps the bank. Crichton's 1995 entertainment earnings, according to Forbes magazine, amounted to $22 million--not from principal, not from interest, but just from words he thought up himself. His remuneration casts a consequential shadow, but the author isn't comfortable talking about it. He would sooner cogitate on those literary niggles--the charges that his characters have no depth. Back as far as The Andromeda Strain, Crichton concedes, he wasn't much for delving into character ("It didn't matter who the people were"). Still, he's human: criticism stings. "You know, I'm not very well read," he says, with characteristic self-effacement. "I was reading a book Cocteau wrote called The Difficulty of Being. And in that, he had an essay on writing, and he said what I've always believed about myself. He didn't care about being noticed for his style. He only wanted to be noticed for his ideas. And even better for the influence of the ideas. Which I thought was nicely said."

The people who work with him can say it just as nicely. "Michael is interested in issues," observes Sonny Mehta, editor in chief at Knopf, "whether they grow out of science, out of society, out of what is happening to us. When Michael delivers a manuscript, we are all struck by how much we are made to think, and how much information there is, and how well researched it is. I'm always learning something every time I work with Michael." Notes Lynn Nesbit, his longtime literary agent: "You can never predict with Michael, because his range of interests is so broad. You can't characterize him. He writes out of real passion about a subject that he's currently thinking about."

But what about those cardboard characters? "I guess I have three answers," Crichton responds. "First of all, I'm doing the best I can. I really try hard. Second, I think there is a way where often you don't know motivation. I don't believe you can know it. So I hesitate to write it. And it makes a cold quality, an exterior quality. And I guess the third reason is that very often I'm not, in some way or another, interested in the characters. For many years, I really wasn't interested."

The editor of most of his early novels, Robert Gottlieb, confirms that. "What interested Michael was the scientific process and the excitement of the suspense," he says. "He had very dutifully filled in characters [in The Andromeda Strain]. I felt that the characters were getting in the way and that it should be stripped down even further toward being documentary in tone. When I told him this, it was already what he was thinking. We saw eye to eye from the start."