Remember the Ashley Vance biography of Elon Musk? No? You weren't a loser like me in high school clearly. Anyways, Walter Isaacson actually has access to him. Like in person, physically, tangibly, for almost 2 years. He gets to sit in on meetings. Meet his family. Talk to him about intimate subjects that an ordinary journalist will not get access to. I'm sure spending 2 years with the most iconic entrepreneur in the 21st century will yield you some good material to write an interesting book.
Yet somehow, he manages to write this incredibly boring, uninteresting, brown-nosing, and dreadful book that seems too short to try to be what Isaacson thinks it is, but it's also too long to justify its own existence. Also he somehow choose to coin the term "demon mode" unironically because Isaacson apparently needs to coin a term for every entrepreneur (Steve Jobs was "reality distortion field"), like please get a grip. I was actually genuinely afraid of turning each page knowing that I may encounter the word "demon mode" used in a sincere way.
He focuses on the most boring topics of his life and persona. It's just simply too... factual. I already read a biography of him in high school. I know his vague origin story. I know Zip2, Paypal, X.com before twitter, Tesla's origin and Martin Eberhard, SpaceX, the near fatality of Tesla and SpaceX during 2008, how his kid died through SIDS, his first wife, dropping out of Stanford PhD, getting bullied in South Africa, the insane father, etc.
These things have already been talked about. In the Ashley Vance book sure, but also in the general American cultural mythology. And yes, you're not supposed to know these things before you read this book. I get it, it's supposed to be a comprehensive biography. But here's the thing. You can do both. You can provide a comprehensive biography, but also provide interesting new takes on his persona and psyche that can only be revealed by the passing of time.
The interesting thing about Elon Musk is that he's been rich and famous since he was in his 20s. He's had it all (in some sense) since he was my age. He was notorious throughout his entire adult life. But he's been notorious for DIFFERENT REASONS throughout time. This is the interesting aspect of life.
When I was in high school, people still admired him. He was Reddit's favorite poster child. Immigrant turned tycoon, the man who made electric cars a reality, guy who sends rockets to space, the guy who did the hero's journey like 4 separate times. No one told me I'm cringe for reading his biography. In 2024, when I read this book, I read it on my Kindle so no one knows what I'm reading. Because someone's going to tell me that I'm still worshipping the cringe-tokenized-into-human, I still care about emerald mine nepo baby, etc.
Ponder for a minute, his desire to be accepted, liked, praised, and validated. These emotions manifested as his will, and his will was undoubtedly projected into this world we live in. You don't need to know a lot to intuit this aspect about his persona. Now think of how the public and private sentiment on him shifted over the last decade. It doesn't really matter why or if it was deserved or not.
This is actually interesting! When the public turns on a man who was desperate to be adored by the world and gained that adoration, what happens to his psyche? When the American cultural and political zeitgeist turns against the man hailed as the modern Howard Hughes, what is going on in his mind? When people reshape his narrative, use every word, action, and thought against him, what tension and turmoil shapes the later half of this man's life? I want to kill myself when a couple people in my life hate me, how many of us know what it feels like to have half the country hate us? Your inner narrative and the world's narrative of you are engaging in Mexican standoffs every second of your day. How could you possibly navigate out of this scenario even with the most expensive CBT?
You cannot tell me these invisible yet tangible forces didn't drive his ambitions and will in the last decade. You cannot tell me he would have bought Twitter without these tide-turning events. Instead of exploring these actually interesting, human questions with depth, Isaacson turns the book into a book full of factoids, platitudes, and weak narratives explaining his inner drive.
This book could have been incredible. Rather than exploring business problems, the book could have explored human problems. Problems that we face day to day, stretched into magnitudes few of us can ever, ever comprehend. Our universal desires for acceptance, love, validation. Then our desire to gain the approvals of those we deem special. The fantasies that come with power and the trappings within. Not some boring, cautionary tale. Not a book trying hard to turn the public tide against him. But a book that sincerely introspects on the one guy who stands (or stood) on the apex of what so many people in this world desire: infamy, output, wealth, power, etc...
