"Rising Sun" by Michael Crichton is a slog. It is superficially a murder mystery, but in reality, it's just a shrill economic scree about the Japanese usurping America economically in the '90s. Published during Japan's lost decade, I've never seen someone ending up so spectacularly wrong.
I talk about this more in my full review of this book, but it really is its defining feature. What Crichton was after, in my opinion, was to use fiction as a metaphor for a problem he thought he saw that wasn't being taken seriously enough. Then he'd seem like a wise prognosticator.
What happened, as its assumptions washed away like a sandcastle at high tide, is this book becomes less clarion call and more panicky pandering to the worst of human impulses, the reflexive hate of the other.
This preview is an Amazon Affiliate link;
as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases
No comments:
Post a Comment