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He's not talking about physical invasion. He's talking about, one gathers from his book and his discourse, the folly of trying to redesign gender relations in the workplace by defining harassment, in the subtle, gray areas, so specifically that litigation or incarceration will eventually do away with every offense, make the office a perfect world. This may be the anthropologist at work (or a too casual interpretation). Beyond that, if a certain perfume or cologne is intoxicating, everyone should know by now to remain silent or, in close quarters, stop breathing. Crichton's book examines, at a sensationalistic but not implausible level, just what a powerful weapon a claim, or even the threat of a claim, of sexual harassment is today.
Having written it, Crichton is out of that metaphorical room he has spoken of. He won't be making a life's work of this issue, as he says. But he won't have heard the last of it either. However, he will be onto something else by the time the criticism comes battering at the gate. He'll be rolling toward another minefield that has snagged his curiosity. For the moment, though, he is on a plane -- not to the Australian outback, but at least as far as Hawaii.