Applying the Lessons of History to Our Own Lives; This Week: James Michener, Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author
Three Insights:
James Michener:
In September 1940, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, inaugurating the first peacetime draft in American history. All Americans between ages 21 and 45 had to register with the government.
At the time, James Albert Michener was a 33-year-old history professor at the Colorado State College of Education. The school, now known as the University of Northern Colorado, is located in the windswept plains near the Wyoming border, in a podunk part of the state best identified with the cattle industry.
On his draft card, Michener wrote his birthday as February 3, 1907. But that was just a guess. He knew he’d been born somewhere in New York, but he’d been put up for adoption as an infant and taken in by a Quaker widow in rural Pennsylvania who gave him his name.
He later observed, “My life at home in Doylestown [PA] could be rather bleak, for I had none of the clothes and games and equipment that boys my age would normally have had. All I really had was… music, the art I remember so well, and the endless books from the library.”
As a restless teenager, he hitchhiked across the country, visiting every state but Washington, Oregon, and Florida by the time he was 20. He graduated summa cum laude from a local Pennsylvania college with degrees in history and English, before deciding to study abroad in Scotland. From there he joined Britain’s Merchant Marines, which saw him explore the Mediterranean, particularly Spain.?
Colorado State College of Education’s history professor was no ordinary cowpoke teacher. He wrote a short story while in Greeley — his first to be published — about a rookie history teacher at an Indiana high school trying to make sense of his predecessor’s legacy, titled, “Who is Virgil T. Fry?” As the narrator comes to understand, his predecessor — the titular Mr. Fry — was an inspirational teacher who motivated his students to engage with the material and taught them more about reading and writing than their English teacher. But he was also extremely disorganized, had no consistency in his grading system, and was viewed by his colleagues with jealousy, particularly by the duller and more conventional English teacher.
James Michener, the worldly history professor in Greeley who had a passion for English, soon left northeastern Colorado for New York City, where he intended to take a book editor position with Macmillan. Not long after he started his new job, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Michener was once again traveling, this time to the far-off Solomon Islands, where he served as a record-keeper and historian of sorts.
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His experiences island hopping during World War II led him to write his debut novel, Tales of the South Pacific, which was published in 1947, two years after the war ended. The dramatic book, written in the first person, begins:
“I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting.”
Michener’s debut book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction — a stunning award for a first-time author, but not surprising given the beautiful prose and compelling characters in his work.
Tales of the South Pacific was then turned into a musical — South Pacific — which won the Tony Award for Best Musical. In 1958, the musical was turned into a movie — also named South Pacific — that won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
By that point, he had written several other novels, three of which had been turned into movies (Return to Paradise, starring Gary Cooper; The Bridges at Toko-ri, starring Grace Kelly; and Sayonara, starring Marlon Brando).
Michener really hit his stride with his 1959 novel, Hawaii, which epically covers the history of the island, from its geologic formation right up to statehood. It begins:
“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. It was 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.”
Hawaii, which also received a film treatment (starring Julie Andrews), launched a format for many of Michener’s future books: Picking a location and exploring that place’s history over the course of a thousand or more years.
Books he wrote in this model include The Source, which is about Israel; Centennial, which is about Colorado; Poland, Texas, and Alaska.
In his book-writing career, which lasted until shortly before his death in 1997, age 90, Michener wrote more than 50 books — fiction and nonfiction — although he’s best known as a historical fiction author.
Michener was humble about his ability as an author — “I don't think the way I write books is the best or even second best. The really great writers are people like Emily Bront? [author of Wuthering Heights (1847)], who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination. But people in my position also do some very good work.”