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James A. Michener
Born	February 3, 1907(1907-02-03)   Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	October 16, 1997 (aged 90)   Austin, Texas, United States
Occupation	Novelist Short story writer
Genres	Historical Fiction
Notable work(s)	Tales of the South Pacific (1946)
Notable award(s)	1948: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1977: Presidential Medal of Freedom 2008: Honorary portrait image on a United States postage stamp

James Albert Michener (pronounced /ˈmɪtʃnər/^[1]) (February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997)^[2] was an American author of more than 40 titles, the majority of which are novels of sweeping sagas, covering the lives of many generations in a particular geographic locale and incorporating historical facts into the story as well. Michener was known for the meticulous research behind his work.

Michener's major books include Tales of the South Pacific (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948), Hawaii, The Drifters, Centennial, The Source, The Fires of Spring, Chesapeake, Caribbean, Caravans, Alaska, Texas, and Poland. His nonfiction works include his 1968 Iberia about his travels in Spain and Portugal, his 1992 memoir The World Is My Home, and Sports in America.

Biography

Michener wrote that he did not know who his parents were or exactly when or where he was born.^[2] He was raised a Quaker by an adoptive mother, Mabel Michener, in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa^[3] and summa cum laude in 1929 from Swarthmore College in English and psychology, he traveled and studied in Europe for two years. Michener then took a job as a high school English teacher at Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He later taught English at George School, in Newtown, Pennsylvania, 1933–36, then attended Colorado State Teachers College (now named the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado), earned his master's degree, and taught there for several years. The library at the University of Northern Colorado is named for him. In 1935 Michener married Patti Koon. He went to Harvard for a one-year teaching stint from 1939–40 and left teaching to join Macmillan Publishers as their social studies education editor.

Michener was called to active duty during World War II in the United States Navy. He traveled throughout the South Pacific on various missions that were assigned to him because his base commanders thought he was the son of Admiral Marc Mitscher.^[4] His travels became the setting for his breakout work Tales of the South Pacific.

In 1960, Michener was chairman of the Bucks County committee to elect John F. Kennedy, and subsequently, in 1962, ran for the United States Congress, a decision he later considered a misstep. "My mistake was to run in 1962 as a Democrat candidate for Congress. [My wife] kept saying, "Don't do it, don't do it." I lost and went back to writing books." Michener was later Secretary for the 1967–68 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention.

Education

Michener graduated from Doylestown High School in 1925. He attended Swarthmore College, where he played basketball, and joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He graduated with highest honors. He attended Colorado State Teachers College (now named the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado), and earned his master's degree.

Writing career

Michener's typewriter at the Michener Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania

Michener's writing career began during World War II, when, as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, he was assigned to the South Pacific Ocean as a naval historian; he later turned his notes and impressions into Tales of the South Pacific, his first book, published when he was 40 and the basis for the Broadway and film musical South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein.^[5] It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1948.

In the late 1950s, Michener began working as a roving editor for Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. He gave up that work in 1970.

Michener was a popular writer during his lifetime; his novels sold an estimated 75 million copies worldwide.^[6] His novel Hawaii (published in 1959) was based on extensive research. Nearly all of his subsequent novels were based on detailed historical, cultural, and even geological research. Centennial, which documented several generations of families in the West, was made into a popular twelve-part television miniseries of the same name and aired on NBC from October 1978 through February 1979.

In 1996, State House Press published James A. Michener: A Bibliography, compiled by David A. Groseclose. Its more than 2,500 entries from 1923 to 1995 include magazine articles, forewords, and other works.

Michener's prodigious output made for lengthy novels, several of which run more than 1,000 pages. The author states in My Lost Mexico that at times he would spend 12 to 15 hours per day at his typewriter for weeks on end, and that he used so much paper his filing system had trouble keeping up.

Spouses

He was married three times. In 1935 Michener married Patti Koon. His second wife was Vange Nord (married in 1948). Michener met his third wife Mari Yoriko Sabusawa at a luncheon in Chicago and they were married in 1955 (the same year as his divorce from Nord). His novel Sayonara is quasi-autobiographical.

Charity

Michener gave away a great deal of the money he earned, contributing more than $100 million to universities, libraries, museums, and other charitable causes.

In 1989, Michener donated the royalty earnings from the Canadian edition of his novel Journey, published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart, to create the Journey Prize, an annual Canadian literary prize worth $10,000 (Cdn) that is awarded for the year's best short story published by an emerging Canadian writer.^[7]

Final years and death

In his final years, he lived in Austin, Texas, and, aside from being a prominent celebrity fan of the Texas Longhorns women's basketball team, he founded an MFA program now named the Michener Center for Writers.

In October 1997, Michener ended the daily dialysis treatment that had kept him alive for four years. He soon died of kidney failure at the age of 90.^[2][5]

He was buried in Austin, Texas, and is honored by a monument at the Texas State Cemetery.

Tribute

On the evening of September 14, 1998, the Raffles Hotel in Singapore named one of their suites after the illustrious author, in memory of his patronage and passion for the hotel. Michener first stayed at the Singapore hotel just after World War II in 1949, and in an interview a decade before his death he said it was a luxury for him, a young man, to stay at the Raffles Hotel back then, and had the time of his life. It was officially christened by Steven Green, then Ambassador of United States to Singapore, who noted the writer's penchant of describing 'faraway places with strange-sounding names' to his American book readers. His last stay was in 1985 when he came to Singapore for the launch of the book Salute to Singapore, for which he wrote the foreword. He was so fond of his last stay in Raffles that he took the hotel room key home with him as a souvenir. The suite contains a selection of Michener's works, like Caribbean, The Drifters and Hawaii, as well as two photographic portraits of the author taken at the hotel and in Chinatown in 1985. After his death, the Michener estate corresponded with the hotel management to return the room key, and from there the idea to name the hotel room after him, came into fruition. The souvenir key was duly returned to the hotel, and now on display in the Raffles Hotel Museum.^[5]

James A. Michener Art Museum

Opened in 1988 in Michener's hometown of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the James A. Michener Art Museum houses collections of local and well-known artists. The museum, constructed from the remains of an old prison, is a non-profit organization, with both permanent and rotating collections. Two prominent permanent fixtures are the James A. Michener display room and the Nakashima Reading Room, constructed in honor of his third wife's Japanese heritage. The museum is known for its permanent collection of Pennsylvania Impressionist paintings.

Works

In addition to novels, Michener was very involved with non-fiction, movies, TV show series and radio. This is only a major part of what is listed in the Library of Congress files. The category list would be very complex to add.

Books — fiction

Books — non-fiction

Adaptations

See also

• List of bestselling novels in the United States
• Edward Rutherfurd

References

Further reading

• James A. Michener: A Biography, 1985.
• James A. Michener: A Bibliography, 1996.
• Michener and Me: A Memoir by Herman Silverman; hardcover 1999, paperback 2003. Memoir by a long-time friend of Michener.
• Michener: A Writer's Journey, 2005.

External links

• Published books with covers
• James A. Michener Library at the University of Northern Colorado
• James A. Michener Society
• James A. Michener Special Collection: David A. Groseclose
• James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA
• Michener Center for Writers
• Michener: His Influence and Ethics by Edward Rutherfurd
• Working with James A. Michener — The Making of The Covenant
• Biographical Entry at the Texas State Cemetery

From Wikiquote

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

James Albert Michener (3 February 1907 - 16 October 1997) was an American author of more than 40 titles, the majority of which are novels of sweeping sagas, covering the lives of many generations in a particular geographic locale and incorporating historical facts into the story as well.

Sourced

• In 1948 I addressed some students at Washington and Lee University, and in the question-answer period one young man observed with asperity, "But it's easy for you to write. You've traveled."
  • Return to Paradise (1951) First lines

• I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.
  • On a heroine in Tales of the South Pacific (1947) in Commercial Appeal (31 December 1951)

• A group of two dozen nurses completely surrounded by 100,000 unattached American men.
  • On the heroines of Tales of the South Pacific (1947) in Commercial Appeal (31 December 1951)

• On a bleak wintry morning some years ago I was summoned to the office of our naval attache at the American embassy in Kabul.
  • Caravans (1963) First lines

• On Tuesday the freighter steamed through the Straits of Gibraltar and for five days plowed eastward through the Mediterranean, past islands and peninsulas rich in history, so that on Saturday night the steward advised Dr. Cullinane, "If you wish an early sight of the Holy Land you must be up at dawn."
  • The Source (1965) First lines

• Youth is truth.
  • The Drifters (1971) First lines

• Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of our small college in Georgia appeared at my classroom door.
  • Centennial (1974) First lines

• For some time now they had been suspicious of him.
  • Chesapeake (1978) First lines

• Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
  • Chesapeake (1978)

• It was the silent time before dawn, along the shores of what had been one of the most beautiful lakes in southern Africa.
  • The Covenant (1980) First lines

• If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.
  • As quoted in Good Advice (1982) by William Safire and Leonard Safir

• I was surprised when shortly after New Year's Day of 1983, the Governor of Texas summoned me to his office, because I hadn't been aware that he knew I was in town.
  • Texas (1985) First lines

• Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression.
  • "A Spelunker in the Caves of History" in Modern Maturity (August 1985)

• The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.
  • As quoted in "The Michener Phenomenon" by Caryn James in The New York Times (8 September 1985)

• The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
  • As quoted in "The Michener Phenomenon" by Caryn James in The New York Times (8 September 1985)

• About a billion years ago, long before the continents had separated to define the ancient oceans, or their own outlines had been determined, a small protuberance jutted out from the northwest corner of what would later become North America.
  • Alaska (1988) First lines

• The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east.
  • Caribbean (1989) First lines

• I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
  • As quoted in The Observer (26 November 1989)

• I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind—a secular humanist—I accept the accusation.
  • Interview, Parade magazine (24 November 1991)

• I had been sent to Mexico to cover a murder, one of a remarkable kind.
  • Mexico (1992) First lines

• I feel myself the inheritor of a great background of people. Just who, precisely, they were, I have never known. I might be part Negro, might be part Jew, part Muslim, part Irish. So I can't afford to be supercilious about any group of people because I may be that people.
  • CNN obituary (17 October 1997)

Hawaii (1959)

• Millions upon millions of years ago, when the continents were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others… a mighty ocean, resting uneasily to the east of the largest continent, a restless ever-changing, gigantic body of water that would later be described as Pacific.

• Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish... On these harsh terms the islands waited.

• No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.

• It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing.

• Others made jest of the missionary slogan, "They came to a nation in darkness; they left it in light," by pointing out: "Of course they left Hawaii lighter. They stole every goddamned thing that wasn't nailed down."

• On Artesian wells:

  ...there was a knock at his hotel room door, and a little man in an overcoat that reached down to his ankles entered. “My name's Overpeck, Milton Overpeck, and i hear you're interested in drilling a tunnel.”

  “That's right” Whip said. “Sit down, Mr. Overpeck. You like whiskey?”

  “I like anything,” Overpeck said.

  “You a tunnel man?”

  “Well, yes and no,” the little man replied, gulping a huge draft of whiskey. Coughing slightly he asked, “I understand you're drilling your tunnel in order to get water.”

  “You've followed me around pretty well, Mr. Overpeck. Another whiskey?”

  “Look, son, if you calculate on getting me drunk and outsmarting me, quit now, because you simply can't do it.”

  “I'm offering it in hospitality,” Whip assured him.

  “I never accept hospitality unless the host joins me. Now you gulp one down and catch up, and we can have a fine talk.”

  The two men, Whip Hoxworth twenty-four years old and Milton Overpeck in his early fifties, guzzled straight whiskey for several hours, during which the little engineer fascinated the Hawaiian landowner with a completely new theory about water. The doughty drinker, whose eyes were bright and clear after three quarters of a bottle, apparently knew more about Hawaii than Whip did, at least about the island of Oahu.

  “My theory is this,” he explained, using pillows, books and newspapers to build his island. “This volcano here and this one here built Oahu. That's perfectly obvious. Now, as they built, one surely must have overflowed the rightful terrain of the other. I judge all volcanic rock to be porous, so in Oahu it seems to me you have got to have a complex substructure, the bulk of it porous. All the fine water that falls on your island doesn't run immediately out to sea.”

  “Well, the engineer I sent out there did say that he thought the mountains were probably porous,” Whip remembered.

  “I'm not interested in the mountains you see above land,” Overpeck snapped. “I'm interested in the subterranean ones. Because if, as I suspect, there was a rising and a falling of the entire mountain mass...” He stopped, studied his friend and said, “Sorry, you're drunk. I'll be back in the morning.” But as he was about to leave he said, “Don't sleep on a pillow tonight. Leave everything just as it is.”

  Whip, through bleary eyes, tried to focus on the turmoil in his room and asked, “What's all this got to do with tunnels?”

  “I wouldn't know,” Overpeck replied, “I'm a well man meself.”

  He appeared at seven next morning, chipper as a woodchuck, his long overcoat flapping about his ankles in the cold San Francisco weather. He surprised Whip by completely dismissing the intricate construction of pillows, books and newspapers. “Best thing is to show you,” he said cheerily. “Wells'll be the making of Hawaii.” And he led Whip down to the foot of Market Street, where grimy ferries left for the other side of the bay, and when after a long walk through Oakland they stood before a well he had recently dug he pointed with unconcealed admiration at a pipe protruding from the ground, from which gushed a steady volume of water that rose fourteen feet into the air.

  “Does it run like this all the time?” Whip asked.

  “Day and night,” Overpeck replied.

  “What does it?”

  “Artesian, that's what it is. Artesian.”

  “How many gallons a day?”

  “A million four.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “Forever.”

  This was what Wild Whip had been dreaming of, a steady source of fresh water, but he had imagined that the only way to get it was to drive a tunnel through the mountains. If Overpeck were correct,where the water really lay was at his feet, but in business Whip was both daring and cautious. He was willing to take almost any gamble to obtain water, but he wanted assurance that he had at least a fair chance of winning. Carefully he asked, “Why did you have to bring me all the way over here to show me this well? Why didn't you show me one in San Francisco?”

  “Artesian water don't happen everywhere,” Overpeck replied.

  “Suppose there isn't any on my land in Hawaii?”

  “My job is to guess where it is,” Overpeck answered. “And I guess it's under your land.”

  “Why?”

  “That's what I was explaining with the pillows and the newspapers,” he said.

  “I think we better go back to the hotel,” Whip said. “But wait a minute. How did you get the well down there?”

  “A special rig I invented.”

  “How far down did you go?”

  “Hundred and eighty feet.”

  “You want to sell the rig?”

  “Nope.”

  “I didn't think so.” The two men returned to the ferry, and as Whip studied the cold and windy hills of San Francisco, imagining them to be Hawaii, he became increasingly excited, but when little Mr. Overpeck assured him that a layer of cap rock must have imprisoned enormous stores of sweet water under the sloping flatlands of Oahu, Whip could feel actual perspiration break out on his forehead.

  “What kind of deal can we make, Overpeck?” he asked bluntly.

  “You're sweating, son. If I find water, I'm handing you millions of dollars, ain't I?”

  “You are.”

  “I'm a gambler, Mr. Hoxworth. What I want is the land next to yours.”

  “How much?”

  “You pay for getting the rig over there. You give me three dollars a day. And you buy, before we start, one thousand acres of land. If we get water, I buy it from you for what you paid. If we don't you keep it.”

  “Are the chances good?”

  “There's one way we can test my theory without spending a cent.”

  “How?”

  “Think a minute. If there really is a pool of inexhaustible water hiding under your land, the overflow has got to be escaping somewhere. Logically, it's running away under the sea level, but some of it must be seeping out over the upmost edge of the cap rock. Go out to your land. Tell people you're going to raise cattle. Walk along the upper areas until you find a spring. Calculate how high above sea level you are, and the walk back and forth along that elevation. If you find half a dozen more springs, it's not even a gamble, Mr. Hoxworth. Because then you know the water's hiding down below you.”

  “You come out and check,” Whip suggested.

  “People might guess. Then land values go up.”

  Whip reflected on this shrewd observation and made a quick decision. “ Buy yourself a good bull. Bring him to the islands with you and we'll announce that you're going to help me raise cattle. Then everybody'll feel sorry for me, because lots of people have gone bust trying that on the barren lands. Takes twenty of our acres to support one cow, and nobody makes money.”

  Three weeks later little Mr. Overpeck arrived in Honolulu with a bull and announced to the Honolulu Mail that he was going to advise Mr. Whipple Hoxworth in the raising of cattle on the latter's big ranch west of the city. He led his bull out to the vast, arid, useless acres, and as soon as he got there he told Whip “Buy that land over there for me.” And Whip did, for practically nothing, and the next day he concluded that he had been victimized by the shrewd little man, for they tramped both Whip's acres and Overpeck's, and there were no springs.

  “Why the hell did you bother me with your nonsense?” the young man railed.

  “I didn't expect any springs today,” Overpeck said calmly. “But I know where they'll crop out after the next big storm up in the mountains,” and sure enough, three days after the rain clouds left, along the line that Overpeck had predicted, he and Whip discovered sure evidences of seepage. They stood on the hillside looking down over the bleak and barren acres, Whip's four thousand and Overpeck's one, and the little man said, “We're standing on a gold mine, Mr. Hoxworth. I'm mortally certain there's water below. Buy up all the land you can afford.”

  Eight weeks later the little man reappeared in Hawaii without any cattle, but with nine large boxes of gear. This time he informed the Mail: “It looks as if Mr. Hoxworth's investment in cattle is going to be lost unless somehow we can find water on those acres.”

  He set up a pyramidal wooden derrick about twelve feet high, at the bottom of which were slung two large iron wheels connected by an axle upon which rope could be wound when the wheels were turned by hand. This rope went from the axle and up to the top of the derrick, where it crossed on a pulley and dropped down to be lashed to the end of a heavy iron drill. Laboriously Overpeck cranked the heavy wheels until the iron drill was hauled to the top of the derrick. Then he tripped a catch and jumped back as the drill plunged downward, biting its way through sand and rock. Laboriously he turned the wheels and lifted the drill back into position; then a swift whirrrrr, and the next bite was taken.

  “How long will this take?” Hoxworth asked, amazed at the effort required.

  “A long time.”

  “Have you the strength?”

  “I'm boring for a million dollars,” the wiry little man replied. “I got the strength.”

  Days passed and weeks, and the determined engineer kept hoisting his drills, breaking their points on almost impenetrable hard pan, sharpening them by hand, and hoisting them once more. “You ought to have an engine,” Whip growled as the work made slow progress.

  “When I get some money, I'll get an engine.” Overpeck snapped.

  Now Whip saw the little fighter in a new light. “All your life you've been broke, haven't you?”

  “Yep. All my life I was waiting for a man like you.”

  “Are we going to hit water?”

  “Yep.”

  At two hundred feet the drills were hammering their way through cap rock, once soft ocean mud but now, millions of years later, rock as hard as diamonds. Whip grew despondent and was afraid to pass through the streets of Honolulu, where people already hated him for the way he had treated his former wife Iliki Janders, and where they now laughed at him for his folly in trying to raise cattle on his barren acres. At first, when those who had sold additional land saw Overpeck's drilling rig, there had been consternation: “Has Whip bamboozled us? Did he know there was water below that rubble?” Such fears relaxed when it was apparent that no water existed. “He's down to two hundred and fifty feet and is running out of rope,” spies reported.

  And then on the fourteenth of September, 1881, Milton Overpeck's plunging drill crashed through the last two inches of cap rock, and up past the iron, past the rope, gushed cold sweet water at the rate of one million three hundred thousand gallons a day. When it gurgled to the top of the well it kept rising until it reached the apex of the twelve-foot derrick and stood a steady fourteen feet in the air, hour after hour, month after month.

  When Whip saw the glorious sight he became agitated and cried “We must save that water!” But little Mr. Overpeck assured him. “Son, it'll run forever.” They scooped out a large depression in which the water was impounded and then pumped to wherever it was needed. They drilled additional wells, all by hand, and Whip said, “Overpeck, it's ridiculous for you to do so much work. Let's buy an engine that'll do it for you,” but the determined little man replied, “I finish these wells, I'm never going to work again. I'm going to get a hotel room, lease my land to you, and live easy.”

• • "IV: From the starving village", Fawcett Crest Book. New York: Ballantine Books, pp.591-596. ISBN 0-449-21335-8

Space (1982)

• On 24 October 1944 Planet Earth was following its orbit about the sun as it has obediently done for nearly five billion years.
  • First lines

• An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

Poland (1983)

• In a small Polish farm community, during the fall planting season of 1981, events occurred which electrified the world, sending reverberations of magnitude to capitals as diverse as Washington, Peking and especially Moscow.
  • First lines

• No invader has ever conquered the heart of Poland, that spirit which is the inheritance of sons and daughters, the private passion of families and the ancient, unbreakable tie to all those who came before.

• A Pole is a man born with a sword in his right hand, a brick in his left. When the battle is over, he starts to rebuild.

• ...the crucial Battle of Zamość, which is not stressed in most current histories because it involved a Polish-Russian battle in which the Poles won.

• Second, after a painful gap without any king, and a furious struggle by various foreign powers to elect men favorable to them, the Seym chose a pathetic Polish incompetent, who had the good sense to die rather promptly.
  • page 153

• Silence, much more powerful than before, much more shot through with the meaning of life and the accumulated wisdom of history.
  • page 361

• He had obtained a clearer view of his homeland by leaving it and seeing it through the eyes of others.
  • page 571

• Leonid Brezhnev needed a haircut, so he went down to the ground floor of the Kremlin and plopped into the chair. It was understood that at such times the barber was to say not a word, just cut hair. But this morning, after a few snips he said: "Comrade Brezhnev what are you going to do about Poland?" No reply. Some minutes later: "Comrade Brezhnev, what about Poland?" Again no reply. Then, pretty soon: "Comrade Brezhnev, you've got to do something about Poland." At this Brezhnev jumps out of the chair and tears away the cloth: "What's all this about Poland?" and the barber says: "It makes my job so much easier," and Brezhnev screams: "What do you mean?" and the barber says: "Every time I mention Poland your hair stands straight up on end."

page 567

• ...organizations like the church or General Motors promote a man up and up until he reaches a spot which he is obviously incapable of filling, and there they lay him to rest.
  • page 587

• [The church's] job is to provide permanent solace and spiritual leadership to the people as a whole, whatever their government at the moment, so long as it stays within the bounds of moral decency.
  • page 591

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

Interview, St. Petersburg, Florida (10 January 1991)

• I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss, but you live with that loss.

• I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers. With somebody else, it may be a boy scout master. With somebody else, it will be a clergyman. Somebody else, an uncle who was wiser than the father. I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning.
  My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.

• Not too many people work in a job where, waiting out there are three or four hundred people who are paid to tear apart what you've done. And often they are brighter than you are, or they know more about the subject than you do, or they wish they had written a book themselves, or done a lot better. Or they just don't like it! And you have to live with it. I have been very well treated by the critics in the long haul.

• Things are going to go wrong, and I think we are false to life if we don't portray it. But there is also the hope that some lucky clown is going to come along and stumble into the gold mine. And I think you are also entitled to hold out that hope.

The World Is My Home (1991)

• I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson — the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

• I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril.

About James A. Michener

• Rice Krispies happens to be one of my favorite junk foods, just as I regard Michener as superior among junk writers.
  • Christopher Lehmann-Haupt reviewing Chesapeake (1978) in the International Herald Tribune (8 August 1978)

• Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of National Geographics, is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener.
  • Wilfrid Sheed in The New York Times (6 July 1980)

• Texas is … "trotting" journalism, history in a hurry.
  • Hughes Rudd reviewing Texas (1985) in The New York Times (13 October 1985)

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

James A. Michener

• Brief biography at Kirjasto (Pegasos)
• Brief biography at The Academy of Achievement
  • Interview (10 January 1991)