Sometime after dinosaurs, God created woman

Julie Burchill

DISCLOSURE by Michael Crichton Century, X14.99, pp. 397 Novelisation — of a film, or of a popu- lar television serial — has always been a moderately quick way to earn a moderately good sum of money. (Often, people edu- cated far beyond their intelligence are drawn to this way of life; I once owned an EastEnders novelisation prefaced by three quotes from Nietzsche.) But Michael Crichton — author of Jurassic Park and Rising Sun, as well as a bunch of earlier books no one's ever heard of (Eaters of the Dead, anyone?) — has happened upon a brilliantly clever way of making huge amounts of money out of a novel twist on novelisation. That is, he doesn't bring the novel out after the film, but before; they are basically screenplays, very flash and cinematic, but with all the 'he saids' and 'she saids' (though more often 'he saids').

The books sell moderately well on publi- cation — and then, of course, Hollywood buys the rights for a handsome sum. The film comes out, like Jurassic Park, millions see it, a still from the film is pasted over the old cover of the novel and hey presto!

sales of Michael Crichton books have reached 30 million in the US alone. Since 1992. What Crichton is doing, in essence, is getting film studios to pay millions of dollars for the privilege of advertising his novels on the big screen. The difference is that unlike other cinema commercials, for Nintendo or Opal Fruits, these adverts last up to two and a half hours.

Disclosure (bad title — sounds like sub- standard Dick Francis) is the latest lob in the tide of woman-hating which is currently engulfing the United States. Fatal Attrac- tion, Camille Paglia, Oleanna, Iron John; they are the theory, the serial rapist and murderer, is the practice. And like most of the theory, it comes with a mealy-mouthed denial of its loathing for more than half the human race. In a press release so graceless that Crichton himself might have managed it on a good day, we are told that Disclosure supports feminism and equality, acknowl- edging the right of women to take power, but at the same time revealing their capaci- ty to abuse it. Phew! That's all right, then; we feminists can now sleep safely in our beds (having checked first that we have our ice picks to hand under them), knowing that Dr Crichton is on our side.

The book also comes with a page of statistics about sexual harassment which tells us that 'it is proven that the number of allegations by man of harassment is roughly proportionate to the number of corporate women'. Oh yeah? And all harassing the same man, too — he must be one hot item. If publishers are going to pay through the nose for these books, can't they send out a press release that wasn't written for peanuts by a monkey?

But on with the show — sorry, book. Within three pages, three major irritants kick in. It starts with the communiqué — in the old days this would have been a letter and now it's a fax, but the purpose and effect are the same — to set up the story without having to slog away at those boring old speech marks. This communiqué tells us that the hero, Thomas Sanders, believes he is about to be promoted at his high-tech workplace, Digicom. Ho ho ho.

Secondly, it's set in Seattle. Seattle is the new fave American location in which to set books and films — and it's done for such a pitifully transparent reason, which is to show that these are books/films about Real Folks — not L A airheads or New York neurotics. And thirdly, Crichton has the sheer gall to make the first scene — sorry, chapter — the Mirror Bit, where we get the hero described to us through the extremely naturalistic device of having him eyeball himself while shaving (when male writers do the Mirror Bit on female characters, they hold the shaving and have them nude, after a bath, shyly dropping the towel). Looking into the mirror with Thomas, we discover that he's dead dishy, getting on and all man. He's even got a bruise, from playing football. (Touch football, the fag- got.)

Enter his wife, Susan. In woman-hating narratives, wives always have sweet girlish names like Susan or Beth; single women sterile, asexual names like Alex, or here Meredith. Susan has the kind of fresh beauty that requires no make-up but I bet old Meredith slaps it on with a trowel.

'Mabel! He told me to eat, drink and be

merry. '

But however fresh, Susan is far from being the perfect wife. A woman with a good job, she expects Thomas to help her with the kids. She has to flash her naked body at him to persuade him to pour them a few bowls of cereal, and even then the lazy so-and-so won't do it until she yells at them. Then he does it, o.k. It's a creepy first chapter; what women want, women bloody well make sure they get. (Not like men, eh?) Remember that fax? Well, a fax comes before a fall and the Digicom lawyer soon informs Thomas that he hasn't been pro- moted after all. I've noticed in recent years that writers who don't like women also loathe lawyers; perhaps they see lawyers as token women, because they work with their brains and believe in keeping the law and stuff. Anyway, this one's a really bad guy and, on the side, it's rubbed in how 'decent' Thomas is — because he wants to insist on the sexes being integrated at work at Digi- corn's Malaysian plant.

Sanders kept telling him, 'It's a Muslim coun- try, Phil.'

'I don't give a damn,' Phil said. `Digicom stands for equality.'

`Phil, it's their country. They're Muslim.' 'So what? It's our factory.'

I liked Phil the more after this exchange and Torn the less, even though it was meant not to be so. But I feel I have noticed, over the past two decades, that men who are anti-women are often anti- racist, too. Why is this? Because they admire the way the Third World keeps its women down? Because they wish things were like that here? So who got the promo- tion? Yes, Tom's old girlfriend! Does she try to screw him? You bet, in both senses. Does Michael Crichton like women? Not a lot — even Tom's beautiful, loving wife, when she's good enough to make a pass at him, provokes a burst of sudden anger. What was the matter with her? She never had any sense about these things. She was always coming on to him at inappropriate times and places.

As a conversation piece, this book isn't even juicy and vile; so much of it is about Tom's job at Digicom that I often felt as though I had picked up my computer man- ual by mistake. When not being high-tech, Crichton is being too low-brow for words; he actually makes Jeffrey Archer read like Oscar Wilde trying particularly hard to impress Daniel Day-Lewis over a late, light supper at English's.

This is a bad book; bad as in not well written, but bad as in malign, too. Crich- ton's last two books were about evil dinosaurs and evil Japanese; in evil women he seems to have found a hothouse hybrid of the two — brutal, sly, with enormous appetites and smelling of sushi.

But what is really offensive about this book is that while pretending to deal with the issue of sexual harassment, Crichton completely ignores the source of it — male aggression. Yes, men are bringing more

harassment suits than they used to — but 96 per cent of them are against other men. Now that would have been a great story; a rabidly heterosexual but incandescently ambitious young man, hit on by a powerful homosexual. Real sexy — and realistic, too.

But who cares? When all's said and done, Michael Crichton merely wanted to give us the same old Hell Hath No Fury shtick one more time. But actually, Hell does have a fury greater than a woman scorned; and that's the fury of a dominant group who've just discovered that you can't kiss the girls and make them cry, anymore.

Unless it's all the way to the Equal Opportunities Commission, that is.