Travels

Non fatevi ingannare dalle premesse.
Il libro si intitola “Viaggi” e la quarta di copertina lo descrive come avventure, esperienze ed esplorazioni vissute dal grande scrittore. In copertina campeggia la sagoma dell’Africa sfumata sotto una rosa dei venti e l’indicazione dei quattro punti cardinali. Tutto fa pensare a un libro che descriva viaggi e come tale infatti viene venduto nel reparto dedicato alle guide turistiche.
Peccato che non sia così.
Infatti fino a pagina 127, di viaggi non ce n’è nemmeno l’ombra. Ci si ritrova piuttosto a confrontarsi con le esperienze, alcune persino piuttosto cruente, di Michael con i suoi anni di studio in medicina.
La realtà è che il libro è il racconto di Crichton delle sue esperienze di vita, insegnamenti spirituali e incontri col paranormale in un crescendo di scoperte strabilianti fino ad un excursus finale che mette a confronto l’atteggiamento della scienza verso la parapsicologia. Il fatto che in alcuni capitoli, per ritrovare se stesso, egli compia viaggi nei più disparati angoli del mondo è solo un fatto marginale che lo aiuta a raccontare le lezioni filosofiche che ne trae.
Se si supera l’ostacolo di ritrovarsi per le mani qualcosa di diverso da quanto ci si era aspettati e ci si pone con mente aperta a una simile lettura di filosofie alternative, il libro è persino bello. Crichton ci porta a una rapida carrellata di esperienze che vanno dalla semplice meditazione, al viaggio astrale, alla trance medianica e persino alla possessione. Ma vengono trattate in modo talmente leggero che non disturbano nemmeno gli animi più sensibili. E se anche non si vuole credergli, queste digressioni lasciano comunque ampio spazio a spunti che fanno riflettere.
Due cose però mi lasciano perplessa.
La prima è che ho idea che solo lui e pochi altri possano permettersi i viaggi che ha fatto nella sua vita. Avere tempo, soldi e organizzazione per fare e vedere tutto quanto dice di aver visto non è cosa da tutti. E se anche lo si volesse prendere ad esempio, un simile percorso spirituale sarebbe decisamente al di fuori dalla portata di noi comuni mortali.
La seconda cosa è la naturalezza con cui afferma di riuscire senza sforzi in tutte le sperimentazioni che fa. Cioè, anche a me è capitato di meditare e cercare di raggiungere altri stati di coscienza, ma non ho sentito alcuna voce, avuto alcuna visione, né percepito quel che lui racconta di aver raggiunto in solo un paio di settimane di lavoro. Il che può significare solo due cose, o sono io che sono negata, o è lui ad essere particolarmente dotato.
Oppure ha abbellito un po’ la realtà dei fatti? Non lo sapremo mai.

I swayed wildly during this read as to whether or not I liked this book and whether or not I liked Michael Crichton. “Travels” doesn’t conform to a typical compilation of short travel stories but rather a personal journey starting with his med school days and the turning points in his life that shift him into having a greater desire for other experiences. It was challenging to read in places (Thailand especially, and the turtle chapter) but overall I learned some things as he stripped himself from his ordinary surroundings, friends, food, and all that is familiar, in order to learn about himself.

Crichton was well traveled, in a way that goes deeper and farther by the way he extrapolates meaningful insights along the way and allows us to see his weaknesses—it’s really a palate cleanser that is quite refreshing after a steady diet of self-aggrandizing travel photos that choke my Instagram feed. Although these travels happened long before the mega postings we see on the internet, he lays plain what is often really going on behind those glossy photos. Crichton’s breakout from the usual travel bucket list came when he said, “I saw myself as an accomplished traveler, I was in fact, terribly culture bound. I have visited only a small part of the world—North America and Western Europe.” And so he breaks out of his travel rut and seeks new experiences.

He goes far and sometimes uncomfortably wide, and the book often ventures into the mystical. But at almost every turn he has some interesting introspection to add. Even the cactus chapter. All of it was interesting if you are brave enough to read a little father and a little uncomfortably wider.

All in all, I enjoyed the book. I may not be his biggest personal fan after reading it, but a great writer he remains. This book, much like his travels, was reading outside the ordinary.

My favorite non-fiction book. Full of insight and so relatable.

I grabbed this book because it was written by Michael Crichton. I hadn't heard of it and after getting partway through, realized it wasn't fictional at all. It's essentially an autobiography and it was incredibly interesting. He discusses his time in med school, becoming a doctor at Harvard, teaching at Cambridge, and, as the title suggests, his travels all around the world. Starting fairly early I noticed a theme building in the background. He becomes gradually more interested in the paranormal as the book goes on. He visits several psychics, several of which tell him he himself is psychic, and eventually begins to have metaphysical experiences for himself.

As one of my favorite authors who created some of the most famous sci-fi books, movies, and TV shows out there, I never expected to hear such non-scientific beliefs coming from an atheistic doctor who almost exclusively wrote science-related works like Andromeda Strain, Sphere, ER, and Jurassic Park.

I've always considered myself 'open' to the idea of the paranormal, but never really even considered the idea that it might be something someone like me could experience. Hearing those topics discussed by a more scientific mind definitely makes me at least slightly less skeptical overall. I still don't know where I stand on the concept and this is just a book full of anecdotal evidence, but I find the things he says harder to disbelieve than I would from someone else. This book has changed the way I think more than most things I've read and I love books that can do that to me.

I'd definitely recommend the book. Early in the book I'd give a content warning for some language throughout and for the section where he's talking about doing inpatient work, but the rest is fairly family friendly.

I love travel adventure books, so I was excited when I saw one written by a prominent author while I was wandering about a local bookstore. I bought it and started reading it immediately over lunch. I quickly realized that it’s a lot more than just a travelogue. It has essentially three main focuses: his training at medical school, his travels, and his spirituality.

The book begins with his medical school horror stories and then moves on to his quirky travel adventures. Both topics were fantastic to read about, but what really surprised me were the tales of his meddling with the supernatural. Whether you believe in any of it or not, it’s interesting to read such sincere and unapologetic accounts of spiritual experimentation from a well educated and well known man. He doesn’t hold anything back when he tells stories of trying to speak with his spiritual guide, a disfigured old cactus, or having an exorcism performed on himself.

He had an interest in psychic phenomenon at a young age, decided to investigate it further as a skeptic, and eventually became a believer. I think it takes guts to write this honestly about a topic that could very easily label you as a complete kook.

He manages to get himself into some great situations while traveling, and his excellent writing makes it easy to imagine yourself there alongside him. I haven’t read anything else by him, but I really enjoyed this book, so I may try some of his novels soon. I definitely recommend picking this up.

Besides, any non-fiction book that begins with “It is not easy to cut through a human head with a hacksaw” is worth a read.

Having read so many of Crichton's books, I was interested to see what this one would be like, since it's an actual travel book by him, discussing various places he has been and how those places have impacted on what he has written. It is an intriguing look into the psychology of a writer that previously I had only know through what he had written, such as Jurassic Park and so on. A really worthwhile read and shows an intensely curious and intelligent man who died way too soon.

I was 12 years old the summer that Jurassic Park hit theaters. Considering the ubiquity of CGI these days, it's easy to forget how revolutionary that movie was at the time. Using computers to animate photorealistic animals and insert them into a scene with real actors was unprecedented. Spielberg & Co. had to invent new technology as they went along to make the movie possible.

So I saw the movie, read the book, and then got obsessed with Michael Crichton for the rest of my adolescence. I read his books over and over. I wrote him a fan letter and the dude replied! I got a signed Jurassic Park postcard saying "Best wishes, Michael Crichton." That was nice.

I read Travels for the first time when I was 14 or 15. The book truly expanded my world. It was my introduction to places like Bhutan and Jakarta that I had never heard of before, and to new-age physic phenomena like auras and spoon-bending which I would later come to regard with rigid skepticism.

I'm currently reading The Brothers Karamazov. It's not quite the dense slog I expected it to be, I'm enjoying it, and yet I wanted something easy to read, concurrently. So I picked up my old, creased, paperback copy of Travels and gave it a go.

Why Travels? I think it's because I wanted to see how much I've changed since I was a teenager. Now I know where Afghanistan is. I know where Mount Kilimanjaro is. I know who James Randi is. How would this affect my perception of the book that my former self loved?

"It is not easy to cut through a human head with a hacksaw." I remembered the opening line, verbatim, 20 years after reading it. I remembered a lot. I was surprised by how many incidents from this book have stayed with me. Being pushed up Kilimanjaro. Hushing the British tourists while waiting in an elephant blind. Getting on an airplane with a sense of anxiety because you don't have any books to read or music to listen to. Taping the desk drawers of your London hotel room. Talking to a cactus. These are things that I have thought about many times over the last 20 years, apparently.

So what additional perspective do I have on the book 20 years later?

I still liked it. But with asterisks.

By the standards of the modern era, Crichton comes across as slightly sexist and arguably xenophobic. However, he also seems to be genuinely grappling with his sexism and biases in a way that was rare and forward-thinking for the time. He examined his thoughts and motives, and made a good-faith effort to change in a way that I found redeeming.

By the standards of any era, he comes across as insecure. Even though he has a chapter where his psychologist tells him he's insecure, I didn't really notice this at the time. Perhaps because I read it as an insecure 15-year-old, I couldn't see the forest through the trees. He lays his insecurities and phobias and limitations on the table, which is brave, but it also makes it difficult to like him at times.

As I suspected, it was more rewarding to read the book with an improved sense of geography. Knowing what I know now, a better title would have been "Vacations" rather than "Travels." Crichton was not an explorer or a trail-blazer in any sense. He paid money to go on guided, secure trips to exotic locales. It was adventure-tourism. And despite the fact that he was being coddled, he nevertheless approached each trip with hand-wringing anxiety. But that's what I found admirable: here's a guy whose temperament was best suited to sitting at a typewriter and daydreaming. He had difficulty relating to other people in a genuine way, bore psychic scars from his troubled childhood, and lived with a lot of fear and insecurity. Despite all that, he forced himself to travel outside of his comfort zone, to see the world, to challenge himself, to grow. Someone with less courage would have simply stayed home.

I found myself disagreeing with him more than I did as a teenager. "We cause our diseases. We are directly responsible for any illness that happens to us." Nope. Sorry, no way. This is at best 10% true. Yes, there are psychosomatic symptoms, and we know that a person's outlook can affect their immune system. Depressed people get more colds, for instance. And yes, some illnesses like type 2 diabetes or lung cancer can be the result of bad decisions. But is it your fault if you're born with a cleft palate? Or dyslexia? If you are allergic to cats, is that the result of your thoughts? Many illnesses are determined or influenced by genes. Are genetic defects your fault? What about if someone breaks your arm and sends you to the emergency room?

It's all the more an astonishing claim for Crichton to make, considering that he died of cancer in 2008. I've had friends who've died of cancer. It's terrible and sad. In no way whatsoever would I entertain the notion that they caused their own death. It's not a matter of responsibility. It's winning the world's shittiest lottery. I'd be curious to know how much responsibility Crichton felt for his illness in his last days.

Now for my thoughts on the new-age stuff. When I first read the book as a teenager, I had never heard of spoon-bending, auras, chakras, or such. It seemed plausible. I tried to bend a spoon. It didn't work. I tried to see auras. It didn't work. I talked to a tree. Never heard back. Still, I kept an open mind. I remember giving my high school psychology teacher my copy of the book and asking him to read a few chapters. He returned the book to me the next day in class and said, "I don't buy it." We talked about it for a while. He basically said "Believe what you want to believe, but be careful going down that path. Don't believe this stuff on one guy's word alone." That was really good advice. Thanks Mr. Schmidt!

So, I don't think Crichton is lying or making things up. There are some things he writes that seem genuinely inexplicable. HOWEVER, I believe that if this stuff were true, then it would have been confirmed in a laboratory setting by now. Crichton anticipates this objection in his post-script. He writes that there are a number of phenomena that depend on altered states of consciousness, which are difficult to replicate in a laboratory setting, such as sexual intercourse or creativity. Um, I'm not sure if the set of a porno counts as a laboratory setting, but humans are fully capable of having sex while surrounded by bright lights, cameras, and an audience. And creativity is a pretty broad term. I agree it would be harder to write or compose with a bunch of lab-coated nerds breathing down your neck, but not impossible. Whatever.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle convinced himself that fairies were real. Crichton convinced himself that auras were real. I'll just agree with what he wrote in his post-script: if it's true, it will eventually be born out by science.

This book came highly recommended, but I was disappointed in Crichton's travel book. There were several stories relating to Crichton's experiences in exotic places, but much of it was preoccupied with his early years in medical school and later, dealings with meditation, mystics, and his inner journey, which was not at all what I was expecting or looking for. And the picture the author paints of himself through these adventures is not altogether a flattering one.
The one good thing that came out of my reading this book was my decision to write a travel book of my own. I've certainly been to as many interesting places as Crichton, and had just as many interesting experiences. So I've started gather my notes. Look for it 2012.