James Albert Michener was born on
February 3, 1907, in New York. As a foundling, he was given to
the care of a woman named Mabel Michener in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
She gave him her name and he remained part of her household in
his childhood and adolescent years. Throughout his life, he looked
back with great affection and gratitude to Mrs. Michener, whose
principles and fortitude he admired and often emulated.
As a young man he earned a
scholarship to Swarthmore College, from which he graduated
summa
cum laude in 1929. He earned a master’s degree at the
University of Northern Colorado in 1937, and intermittently over
the years, spent time as a graduate student or doing research
at half-a-dozen universities in this country, in Britain, and
elsewhere. He held teaching jobs in various institutions in the
late 1930s and then served as an associate editor at Macmillan
from 1941 to 1949, with an interruption for several years of
naval service in the Pacific during the War.
His experience in the Pacific
led to his first book,
Tales of the South Pacific, published
in 1947. It won the Pulitzer Prize and served as the basis for
a monumentally successful Broadway musical. Thus Michener’s
first novel was not published until he was forty years of age,
but it set the tone and the precedent for a career as a writer,
which he pursued with unfailing vigor and success for the rest
of his life. His output was prodigious. By our count, he was
the author of some forty-three books, though there may be a few
we have missed. Most of them were novels, but there were other
books as well – on sports, on politics, on travel, on geography,
and on social analysis. And, with all of that, Michener never
liked to be called an author. He always said the term "author" suggested
somebody who was living on his dignity on some lofty plateau.
He said a man who made his living by writing should be called
a writer.
Michener was a great teller
of tales, although his stories were always based on thorough
and meticulous research. When he began a new book, he read everything
he could find on the subject and then invented characters to
represent people important in the history of the area he was
writing about. He did have helpers from time to time, but, as
many were surprised to learn, he did all the writing himself.
The assistants pursued ideas and places, and explored possibilities.
But the writer of Michener’s books was Michener.
One quality that marked his
literary image was that his books were often very long. Beginning
perhaps with
Hawaii in 1959, he established a pattern
by which his fictional accounts of an area began far back in
the origins, even the geological origins, of the place. Indeed,
one of his books actually began with the phrase, "Some five
billion years ago . . .." No doubt that historical reach
helped explain the length of some of his books. Michener traveled
far, in space as in time, and he wrote about most of the places
he visited. As one wag has said, pretty soon we will hear from
somebody up there who has seen the page proofs of a new 1,000-page
novel called
Heaven by James A. Michener.
The man who really prompted
Michener’s move to Texas was Governor Bill Clements. Some
time in 1982 he invited Michener to visit him in Virginia, where
Clements was living while serving as Deputy Secretary of Defense.
They talked about Michener’s plans for the future, and Clements
urged him to move to Austin and write a book about Texas. Michener
agreed.
The University welcomed him
to its midst, found him a house and an office, arranged for a
couple of graduate students in history to serve as research assistants,
and got him appointed to the faculty – as Jack Taylor Professor
Emeritus. The only man in our history whose first appointment
was as Professor Emeritus. Rather curious.
He started work on his
Texas novel
in his customary fashion. He met hundreds of people, read dozens
of books, traveled to every corner of the state, made friends
with scores of Texans, and when he started the writing, he did
it with the same rigorous discipline that he had always employed.
Every morning at 7:30 he sat down at his typewriter and stayed
there until midday. He would write, re-write, edit, and write
again (he always scoffed at writers who said they never revised
what they first wrote), and then take a break for lunch and perhaps
a short nap. His afternoons were spent reading, talking, walking,
traveling, attending functions, and experiencing life. He had
an endless curiosity, a boundless energy, and a prodigious memory.
He never forgot what he learned about the things that interested
him – and he was interested in everything.
In the course of his life,
Jim Michener devoted a great deal of time to public service.
In 1962, he ran for Congress as a Democratic candidate, but lost
in a tough race in a traditionally Republican district. In 1968,
he served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention.
In 1979-1983 he was a member of the Advisory Council of NASA.
In 1978-1987, he served on the Stamp Selection Committee of the
U.S. Postal Service. He testified several times before Congressional
committees. In 1983, he was appointed to the governing board
of Radio Free Europe, which he served with enthusiasm and effectiveness
for more than a
decade. And in 1977, President Ford
1 bestowed
upon him the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom.
He touched The University of
Texas in all sorts of ways, and supported it with zest and enthusiasm,
not only by writing a book about Texas, but by becoming an active
member of the University community, by providing funds for the
purchase of art, by creating professional fellowships at the
UT Press, by donating an enormous collection of modern American
art, by contributing millions of dollars to the creation of the
new art museum, and by inspiring and funding a professional writing
program called the Texas Center for Writers, which, upon his
death, was renamed the Michener Center for Writers.
In all of this, it should be
said, Michener was the central figure of a team. One other member
of that team was his long-time associate John Kings, who assisted
him in all sorts of ways, public and private, personal and professional.
The other member of that team was Mari, his well-loved wife of
many years. They went everywhere together, they celebrated everything
together, they collected art together, and she was a figure of
inestimable importance in Michener’s life. She provided
the setting in which he could do his work, she protected him
when he needed protecting, and she goaded him when he needed
goading – just as he curbed her when she needed curbing.
Each gave first place to the other, and they called each other "Cookie."
Michener believed very strongly
in the values of education, and to support them was a major purpose
in his life. He pursued that purpose in many places and in many
ways. He taught in schools and in universities, and he shared
with them what he always considered his lucky and astonishing
financial success. But he pursued that educational purpose in
his books as well, for in them he was as much the teacher as
he was the teller of tales.
In the telling of his tales,
Michener always made clear his own feeling for the oppressed
and the hard-pressed. In many of his novels – in
South
Pacific, in
Hawaii, in
Texas, in
The Covenant,
in
Sayonara, and in others – his sympathy for the
underdog is made clear, and his outrage at the injustice imposed
upon one people by another became a kind of hallmark of his literary
effort. As a writer and as a human being, Michener was a liberal
in the finest sense of that fine old term. He believed in liberty,
in law, and in human rights, and in many of his tales he made
that concern a central theme.
His books overflowed with history
and with characters representative of the times and places of
which he wrote, and his stories were always gripping. He is remembered,
however, not as a stylist, but a writer of straightforward, sometimes
dogged, prose, and an inventor of ingenious plot lines. To the
surprise of nearly everyone, he emerged in his last years as
something of a closet poet. On the stage, at his 90
th birthday
celebration in 1997, there was announced the publication of a
book of one hundred sonnets, and quite elegant sonnets they were.
A
Century of Sonnets it was called, and it too was received
with acclaim.
In 1992, Michener published
a personal memoir called
The World is My Home, but the
dust jacket shows him looking out over the hills of Austin from
the top of Mount Bonnell. In an important sense, the world was
indeed his home. He visited all seven continents and wrote about
all of them except Australia and Antarctica. And of the seven
seas, he sailed every one. But if the world was his home, Austin
was his residence, and The University of Texas was his place
of business. He enjoyed being part of the University, and he
took great pride in its art collections, its Press, and its Center
for Writers.
In his last months, Michener
suffered a variety of bodily impairments – a bad heart,
a bum knee, and a failed kidney which required unremitting dialysis.
He suffered them bravely and with continued good humor, but the
old body finally gave out, and when he died on October 16, 1997,
the University was saddened and the world of contemporary literature
was diminished. He was mourned at memorial services in Austin,
Colorado, Pennsylvania, and New York. He was cremated and the
ashes placed next to those of his wife in the Austin Memorial
Park.
His mark on The University
of Texas was deep and permanent. As faculty and students, we
enjoyed him and were proud to have him among us. In 1991, President
William H. Cunningham bestowed upon him a Presidential Citation,
the University’s highest honor. Dr. Cunningham described
him as "not only a preeminent author," but also as "a
profound and ardent spokesman for the liberal arts and for liberal
education." Above all, he said, Jim Michener had "a
vast yearning to leave the world a better place than he found
it." And that is what he did.
Dear friend and colleague,
requiesce
in pace.
<signed>
Larry R. Faulkner, President
The University of Texas at Austin
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The General Faculty
This memorial resolution was prepared by a
special committee consisting of Professors William S. Livingston
(chair), John A. Kings, James L. Magnuson,
and Elspeth D. Rostow.
1Changed November 10, 2003.
