http://history.nasa.gov/EP-125/michener.jpg
Serves in WWII, writes a bunch of short stories published as
Tales of the South Pacific that Rodgers and Hammerstein transform into a certain hit musical we all know by default now (surely) soon thereafter, spends the rest of his life alternating between various popular histories and travelogues and, a couple of semi-autobiographical exceptions aside, Big Ass Historical Novels that double as doorstops, nearly all of which follow the same extremely handy formula:
* Begins, sometimes after a prologue, at the dawn of creation or thereabouts
* Covers approximately the entire range of human/European/African/Asian/American history (strike out where appropriate)
* Usually uses the same specific fictional setting in a real place, the better to draw out bitter conflicts among the generations with
* Lots of historical figures come through the scene, sometimes glancingly
* Plenty of sex and violence
* Ends with some sort of ambiguous 'Hmm, now what?' equivalent
Sells millions upon millions, nearly everybody my age remembers their parents having at least one around, and nearly everything he published (at least the American-set stuff) was turned into a huge NBC miniseries that usually starred Richard Chamberlain or James Garner or the near equivalents.
My favorite:
The Source. Explains nearly the entirety of monotheistic religious history over a thousand pages and concludes that people are generally speaking selfish bastards. Does so with the setting of a big mound of rubble that Hot Archaeologists are unearthing.
My favorite miniseries adaptation:
Space. C'mon, it's SPACE! Among other things Harry Hamlin dully notes that Beau Bridges has died.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:10 (eighteen years ago)
And let's face it, I gotta like the guy for
this -- the quote's from 1991, one must assume he'd heard Rush L. or the like:
"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 perceptual 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."
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 18 March 2007 01:20 (eighteen years ago)
I read
Centennial and
Texas as a teenager and loved them; sucker for an epic, you see. He's one of those writers I'm afraid to go back to now in case I find out he's a bit crappy.
― Noodle Vague, Sunday, 18 March 2007 02:41 (eighteen years ago)
I was a big fan of
The Source, less of of
Chesapeake, but you know, The S might be crappy and cheesy but I deffo have a different appreciation of Judaism and the history of the people of Israel than I would otherwise have had. Plus I remember
Caravan as a ripping good yarn.
― Laurel, Sunday, 18 March 2007 04:20 (eighteen years ago)
I deffo have a different appreciation of Judaism and the history of the people of Israel than I would otherwise have had
True for me, I figure. The segment set in the Hellenized world where the conflict between father and son ends bloodily was particularly vivid.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 18 March 2007 15:34 (eighteen years ago)
I also remember my folks talking about how at least a couple of the novels -- I'm thinking of
The Covenant in particular, about South Africa -- helped them understand the areas in question better. That may seem a gauche judgment, but it strikes me that if Michener had an overarching theme it was how 'history' (as incredibly open ended concept, ranging from geography to internal assumptions) shapes humanity, and that what we find ourselves dealing with in the present time has real roots that condition our many responses -- he'd probably say it's not something one can easily sum up in a book, but which one can try and portray anyway. Arguably his tradeoff was that instead of detailed booklength portraits of two or three particular people, say, he took a long view in his novels where people are just smaller parts in a far larger situation, more often than not frightfully unfair and utterly out of their control. Which, frankly, is a pretty accurate description of most everyone's life on this earth -- whatever our individual sense of self most of us can be slotted into stereotypes more readily than we realize.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 18 March 2007 15:44 (eighteen years ago)
But since you've mentioned
Shogun, prepare for another thread...
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 18 March 2007 16:43 (eighteen years ago)