Fellow novelists might grumble that he moralized too much, used too many cliches, digressed too often. As he told a radio interviewer in 1992: “My job is to be a hard-working man who sits at a modern typewriter and tries to write books that a lot of people will want to read.”īy that measure, he succeeded in the grandest possible style.Ĭritics might call Michener’s fiction flat, might carp about his cardboard characters or his dreary dialogue. He approached his craft with methodical, journeyman style.

postage stamps.īut his true love-and his true gift-was telling stories. He served on a committee that recommended worthy figures to adorn U.S. Proud to be called a knee-jerk liberal, Michener was also passionately political he even ran for Congress himself. He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this country’s highest civilian honor. And an art collector who wrote two books on Japanese prints. He was a philanthropist who donated a fortune to education.

To be sure, Michener did much else in his long life besides pump out bestsellers. The Michener Phenomenon, publishers called it. But that book-”Tales of the South Pacific,” typed out in a Navy Quonset hut by the glow of a foul-smelling lantern-won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1948.įrom then on, he wrote, and wrote, and wrote.įorty-seven books. Michener did not write his first manuscript until he was 40. “His generosity of spirit was palpable in the books he wrote, which gave pleasure to millions the world over.”

Hawaii author james a michener