Christie’s Catalogue about Michael Crichton Online

The E-catalogue for the Christie’s sale “Works from the Collection of Michael Crichton” is available for viewing online. (You may have to register at the Christie’s website to see it, but it’s free.)

The 290-page catalogue contains a transcript of Crichton’s last lecture on Jasper Johns at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in April 2008.

Links and more info on Michael Crichton at:
Kahlessa's Corner

In Honor of Earth Day

In honor of Earth Day, (sorry I’m a day late) here is Michael Crichton's tribute to George Carlin--with video of Carlin's routine "The Planet is Fine".

Links and more info on Michael Crichton at:
Kahlessa's Corner

W Article on Michael Crichton and Art

The May 2010 issue of W magazine features an article Michael Crichton: Private View on Crichton and his art collection. It contains quotes from his widow Sherri and from others who knew him.

The magazine is currently on newsstands.

Links and more info on Michael Crichton at:
Kahlessa's Corner

Christie’s Video - Michael Crichton’s Art Collection

The auction house Christie’s has created a 17-minute video about Michael Crichton’s art collection. The video, which features interviews with Crichton’s widow Sherri Crichton, agent and friend Michael Ovitz, Printmaker Ken Tyler, and Brett Gorvy, Christie’s Deputy Chairman of Post-War & Contemporary Art, explores his love of art and his passion for collecting. The video contains a clip of Michael Crichton talking about art in a 1976 interview.

Christie's will be auctioning off many works from Crichton’s collection on May 11 & 12, 2010 in New York.

Links and more info on Michael Crichton at:
Kahlessa's Corner

Newsflash - Gene Patents Ruled Invalid

On Monday March 29 United States District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet ruled that seven patents held by the biotech company Myriad Genetics were invalid. The patents involved two genes considered to be factors in breast cancer.

News stories:
New York Times

Nature

Wall Street Journal

The judge’s 152-page decision

Michael Crichton called for an end to patenting genes in the “Author’s Note” from his novel Next. He mentioned this biotech company:

Gene patents are bad public policy. We have ample evidence that they hurt patient care and suppress research. When Myriad patented two breast cancer genes, they charged nearly three thousand dollars for the test, even though the cost to create a gene test is nothing like the cost to develop a drug. Not surprisingly, the European patent office revoked that patent on a technicality. The Canadian government announced that it would conduct gene tests without paying for the patent.

Crichton published two op-eds in the New York Times on the topic of gene patents:

This Essay Breaks the Law
March 19, 2006

Patenting Life
February 13, 2007

Somewhere, Michael Crichton is smiling. (Again)

Links and more info on Michael Crichton at:
Kahlessa's Corner

Interview – “Travels of Michael Crichton”

I just discovered these amazing articles on Michael Crichton. Janet Berliner interviewed Michael Crichton for a week in December 1993. She has recently posted these articles about the interviews. There are many great quotes from Michael Crichton that I’ve never read before. This is such a treat! A huge “Thank You” to Janet Berliner!

Crichton Author’s Note
By Janet Berliner, February 26th, 2009

On Writing and Influences: A Snippet from Crichton on Crichton
By Janet Berliner, February 26th, 2010

The Travels of Michael Crichton
By Janet Berliner, March 26th, 2010

Links and more info on Michael Crichton at:
Kahlessa's Corner

Michael Crichton’s Recommended Reading

Many people visit this blog because, like me, they love Michael Crichton’s books. But what books did Michael Crichton himself love? What books did he recommend? What books influenced the way he wrote?

From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:
(Click on the “Meet the Writer” tab)

BN: What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?

MC: Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles was the first novel I read as a young person, that I genuinely enjoyed. (I was plowing my way through the classics at the time, and Lorna Doone wasn't doing much for me.) I subsequently read all the Holmes stories, and later in life went back to study them, to see how Conan Doyle had moved his narratives forward so quickly. In fact, his techniques are quite cinematic.

In a June 8, 1969 interview with the New York Times, Crichton cited Len Deighton’s novel The Ipcress File as a major influence on his 1969 novel The Andromeda Strain (Crichton’s first novel published under his own name):

I picked up The Ipcress File,” he recalled, “and was terrifically impressed with it. A lot of ‘Andromeda’ is traceable to ‘Ipcress,’ in terms of trying to create an imaginary world using recognizable techniques and real people.

In the 2005 Barnes & Noble interview, Crichton, when asked about his ten favorite books, named:

• George Orwell, Collected Essays -- He is my favorite writer, and I read him as a teenager because my father admired him a lot. From Orwell, I got an insight into an independent mind and I emulated him.

• Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi -- Making art out of life, blurring the lines of fiction and nonfiction. And of course funny.

• Witter Bynner, Tao Te Ching -- This is my preferred translation of this classic, which influenced me very much in my approach to life.

• Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow -- Actually, I recommend anything by Stevenson. This particular novel must be the source for about 50 movie clichés for any period story. It's great fun.

• Ken Wilbur, No Boundary -- The first of his books I ever read, and I have read almost all of them. He's brilliant.

• Alejo Carpentier, The Lost Steps -- I regard this as a man's novel, about manhood. And rare for that.

• Mary Midgeley, anything by her -- I find her the one of the most interesting contemporary philosophers because she works with real-life issues. And she is especially interesting about science: Evolution as Religion, Beast and Man, Wickedness, and so on.

• Graham Greene, The End of the Affair -- Again, art into life. A classic in some ways disagreeable and even repellent, but for me mysterious in its impact, and unforgettable.

• Ram Dass, Be Here Now -- A very important book for me at a troubled time in my life. I wrote about why in a book of my own called Travels.

• James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks -- a children's book.


In the June 3, 2007 New York Times Sunday Book Review, a survey “Read Any Good Books Lately?” featured celebrities giving their recommendations.

Michael Crichton’s response:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The second volume by the author of Fooled by Randomness continues his theme — our blindness to the randomness of life — in an even more provocative, wide-ranging and amusing mode. A book that is both entertaining and difficult.

P. K. Feyerabend, Problems of Empiricism: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2. From 1981, a brisk reminder that the conflicts of contemporary science are not in any way new or unique. The author is reviled in many quarters, mostly by those who have not read him. He is invariably provocative.

Anthony Bourdain, Bone in the Throat. Wonderful fun, a perfect book to read at the beach.

Look for these books and many others at your local library! Ask your librarian about interlibrary loan for books you can’t find at your local library.

Crichton was himself a big supporter of libraries. When he died in November 2008, a librarian from Bedford, New York, where Crichton used to live, remembered his generosity:

…Librarian Ann Cloonan, director of the Bedford Village Free Library, said she recalls hearing he was a big library supporter in communities where he has lived. He was known for generously donating funds and his time. When Bedford Village, for example, planned a building expansion more than a decade ago, Cloonan, says that staff recalls that he spoke at the library during a capital campaign fund-raiser.

And here are some photos from a February 2003 event where Michael Crichton read from his book Prey to benefit the Los Angeles Public Library Foundation.