Casual
BROOKS, DAVID
Casual THE FRYERS CLUB When I was a teenager, I stumbled across a small paperback autobiography by Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's. As I remember it, Kroc described the epiphany that was the...
...would be that the key to success in this world is having the ability to focus an entire lifetime's worth of fevered zealotry on one trivial thing, product line, or concept...
...If I had done this, books like Who Moved My Cheese?, currently in its third or fourth century on the bestseller lists, would be a mere footnote in publishing history...
...followers...
...If you met them on a cruise (assuming they ever took vacations), you would find that they are not scintillating conversationalists, having absolutely no interest in any topic other than their Fry...
...But Ray Kroc's zealotry lasered down on that one thing, the fry...
...Ray Kroc, the man who worshipped at the altar of the french fry, really did learn how to make quite good ones...
...Political zealots spread theirs across a huge vision of society...
...If you can make the perfect Fry!, then peoples will unite, enmities will fade, history will come to a glorious completion, and you, not coincidentally, will become enormously rich and successful...
...Naturally, I was impressed by this statement of faith...
...And there is something noteworthy about their Herculean arrogance...
...I would have had myself grow up to be about 6'5" with a monumental head of hair and enormous teeth, and I would have become a motivational speaker (because in every gold rush, it's mostly the people selling pans who get rich...
...So you must Find Your Fry...
...When Helen Greiner was 11, she went to see Star Wars and she saw R2-D2 and she thought, "Robots...
...And my message would have been Find Your Fry...
...They were all Fry...
...Balanced perspective is not exactly a feature of the people the Journal profiled...
...I'd be the one with the line of motivational videos, starring in Caribbean cruise seminars, holding $2-million-a-throw pep rallies for mid-level corporate dreamers in exurban sports arenas...
...I am in the lab day, night, Sundays and holidays," says the woman who has been labeled the Queen of Agrobacterium...
...People want really good french fries...
...On May 13, the Wall Street Journal published an advertising supplement called "The New Pioneers" which contained a series of articles on business people who are working on technology's cutting edge...
...The Journal profiled other Fry!-ists...
...For him, the fry was the alpha and the omega, the burning center under his magnifying glass-concentrated beam of energy and ambition...
...If, at 13 or 14, I had been blessed with the same sort of practical fervor that Kroc possessed, I would have had a life-transforming moment reading that book...
...As I remember it, Kroc described the epiphany that was the seed of his whole empire: The key to creating a successful hamburger restaurant is not the hamburger, it's the fries...
...Every thought, when you are 20 and when you are 60, is devoted to the ultimate realization of your Fry...
...This was a man who devoted his life to making good fries...
...Once you have that life-altering moment when you and your Fry...
...become one, every waking hour is devoted to your Fry...
...Follow Your Fry...
...The message of Find Your Fry...
...They really do think they are going to change the world...
...Follow Your Fry...
...She went off to M.I.T., interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and now she runs iRobot Corp., which is going to build little robots...
...It's really an amazing time . . . My students are working day and night, and . . . I've never worked so hard in my life," he exclaims...
...But I do believe, breaking all the rules of all the philosophers, that they are happy in their narrowness...
...You must find the insight or product wrinkle that will become your own personal key to paradise...
...Much of the book was taken up with Kroc's quest, and there really is no other word to describe it, to create the perfect french fry—what potatoes to use, how to slice them, how to dry them, etc...
...home with a computer is going to have a robot too...
...And some of them will make measurable contributions to human life...
...She's devoted her whole life to small robots...
...And you come to believe that your Fry!, if you can only perfect it, will change the world...
...If we don't take robotics to the next level," she declares, "we'll have a lot of explaining to do to our grandchildren...
...At one point, if I recall, Kroc says that french fries are his religion...
...Charles Lieber has devoted himself to growing nanowires, only a few atoms thick, that will conduct electricity...
...Religious people spread their zealotry around on a vast escha-tology...
...DAVID BROOKS...
...Mary-Dell Chilton is working on a technique to place new genes onto specific spots on plant chromosomes...
...I would have exclaimed, Find Your Fry...
...Follow Your Fry...
...in motivational speaking, it's important to keep the uppercase letters and the exclamation points...
...Within 10 years, she insists, every U.S...
Vol. 7 • May 2002 • No. 36
