Bonus FFB on Wednesday: The Novel -- James A. Michener

I haven't read many books by James Michener.  I haven't even read Texas.  In fact, the only other book I've read by him is Hawaii, and I read that one because it was required in a graduate course I took on Herman Melville.  We had to write a paper comparing and contrasting Hawaii with Melville's South Seas novels.  All I remember about this is that I spent most of a Christmas break reading Hawaii and that I wrote the paper.  I have no idea what I said, but I'm sure it was great stuff.

Probably I skipped out on Michener's other books because they're so long.  As I recall, Hawaii begins with the creation of the heavens and the earth and moves on from there to modern times over the course of thousands of pages.  The Novel isn't that long, but it's still long, 435 pages in the edition I read.   So why bother?  Well, I'd bought it long ago because it's a book about a writer, about writing, and about the publishing industry.  Since the industry has changed a lot since the book's publication (1991), and it was changing rapidly even then, there's a great deal about the takeover of the publishers by large corporations.

The book is divided into four sections: The Author, The Editor, The Critic, and The Reader.  The author is Lukas Yoder, now hugely successful although his early career was nothing at all.  His success is largely owed to the editor who stuck with him and fought for him when sales were small.  He's a principled man who doesn't back down from his beliefs, and he's adjusting to the new world of publishing, with floppy discs and email.  He knows that further changes are on the way and says "No writer in 1990 can visualize in what form his or her book might take at the end of this century."  

The editor is Yvonne Marmelle (not her birth name), who's struggling with the possible takeover of her publishing house by a large German firm and with the possibility that Yoder's new novel isn't as good as the ones preceding it.

The critic is Karl Streibert, who lives in Yoder's area and who's trying to rise in the academic ranks. He hates Yoder's books but isn't encouraged to say so.

The reader is Jane Garland, and what a reader she is.  She also lives in Yoder's area, and she knows plenty about life and literature.

Michener packs the books with details about the lives of all four of his main characters.  He doesn't give a whistle for the "show but don't tell" advice that we hear so often.  He's telling a story, so  he does a lot of telling.  I'm not bothered at all by this, as I've said before.  And much of the book is about reading, with discussions about a wide range of literature.  It's a lot like a series of lectures, and we even get lectures on authors whose works the characters don't like.  I get the feeling that many of them are speaking for Michener, although I know I shouldn't think that.

There are plenty of minor characters, too, and Michener even throws in a murder mystery in the final section.  It's a weak one, since everybody's going to know almost immediately who the killer is.

In spite of the book's flaws, I had a good time reading it.  I nearly always enjoy books about books and writers, and while I doubt that I'll ever read another book by Michener, I'm glad I finally got around to reading this one.