Michener: A Writer's Journey (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Valerie Hemingway (Foreword) "Who am I?..." (more)
Key Phrases: South Pacific, New York, Random House (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The best thing and the worst thing that happened to James Michener (1907–1997) was the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his first book, Tales of the South Pacific. Suddenly famous, he endured the backlash—the disdain of many critics—for the rest of his career. May, biographer of Zane Grey, uses Michener's complete papers and other sources to construct a picture of a man who excelled as a journalist and a writer of popular fiction, yet craved the literary acclaim that he never achieved. Michener is seen as a man of paradoxes; he was a benefactor of libraries and young writers, but "in at least two cases" used collaborators "without proper acknowledgment." He callously returned his adopted son to a group home after his first marriage broke up. May speculates that growing up poor and fatherless (he believed himself to be adopted) stunted Michener's emotions, and that the generational histories in his fiction were an attempt to compensate for a black hole in his life. The research is assiduous. and Michener's years as a textbook editor at Macmillan and his association with legendary editors Saxe Commins and Albert Erskine will interest those in the trade. Though this is a dutiful portrait, May cannot reach beneath the impenetrable surface of a man who seems to have lived fully only within the pages of his books. 19 b&w photos.
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From Booklist

May's is the first biography of Michener concerned with the private as well as the public man. May draws on the best-selling author's complete papers and on interviews with his friends and associates to trace Michener's journey from an impoverished childhood in Doylestown, Pennsylvania (oddly, the facts of his birth, birth date, and paternity remain unknown). Accounting for all the best-sellers is only part of what makes the book intriguing, as illuminating discussions of Michener's three marriages, the second to a struggling writer who thought of herself as "the catalyst to Jim's writing career," also prove engaging. May delves beneath Michener's public persona of beloved storyteller to see a more complex and shadowy figure loving the detail work as he pores over maps in Denver while preparing Centennial (1974) and smarting from the politically influenced loss of President Nixon's American Revolution Bicentennial Commission (and with it, Michener's role), which the self-centered Michener took personally. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 339 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press; 1ST edition (October 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806136995
• ISBN-13: 978-0806136998
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #550,461 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)