[jfoutz]

A) is forthright. Standing up and saying, "hi, i'm bob, and joe sucks" is clear and unambiguous.

B) is an underhanded rhetorical trick. "Hi, i'm bob, let me tell you a story about Moe. For convienence, Moe looks talks and acts just like Joe. Moe is a child molester."

See, there's this internal conflict, either the mythical Moe is just like Joe, and Joe is a child molester, or Moe isn't just like Joe.

Just stand up and say Joe sucks. Leave Joe out of the story you're trying to tell.

[volaski]

It's ludicrous to even think of this as an "attack". Just sounds like some conspiracy theory based on this guy's insecurity. Let's say Crichton did mean to use this as an attack. How did it hurt this critic guy? After all, no one would have recognized that it was him if this guy didn't go through all the trouble to come up with his "theory". Even after this guy wrote this blog post, how did this theory hurt him? Based on what you say you did, it just sounds like it was Crichton who's the casualty from this event. Lastly, I think it's stupid to stop reading an author just because of something like this. Let's say everything on that post is true. (Although it only sounds like this guy's theory) Even then this is just some childish personal behavior you can laugh over (It's not like Crichton attempted to bury this critic guy with "underhanded" tactics), it has nothing to do with his ability to write good books.

[kohanz]

I'm as big of a Crichton fan as they come, but I don't understand how someone can discover that he put this passage in his book (likely to take an underhanded shot at the critic, but if not, to what end?) and not have a lower opinion of him as a person. Either it was a really, really low insult or a pointless and gratuitous story of raping a toddler. I'm not even sure which is worse.

Amazing science fiction author, but possibly not a great person. Those can both be true.

[maxlybbert]

I've never doubted it was meant as an attack on Michael Crowley, but Crichton wasn't the first storyteller to insult a real person. From over-the-top portrayals of whoever happened to be the US president when a book or movie was written (e.g., the "difficult president" referred to in Harry Potter), to more personal attacks, there's a long history of writers trying to prove the pen is mightier than the sword. Some of the attempts end up in Literature classe, like portions of Dante's Inferno.

[kbenson]

Regardless of how rational it is, sometimes the reality surrounding a person can affect the interpretation of their work. For a while, it was hard for me to really enjoy watching Tom Cruise, even though I knew his personal life didn't really matter for my enjoyment of his performance. Eventually I got over it.