James Baquet

    The first modern adult novel I ever read — back in junior high — was “The Drifters,” written by the American author James A. Michener (1907-1997). It was about a group of young expats living in Europe, and I began to dream of such a life. It wasn’t until 30 years later or so that I left North America — not for Europe, but for Asia, where I’ve lived pretty much ever since.

    Still, you could say Mr. Michener had a big impact on my life.

    Michener may have had some deep, psychological impetus to write the books he did. Raised by an adoptive mother, he did not know who his biological parents were, or even where or when he was born. Most of his books are family sagas, situated in a particular place (reflected in titles like “Hawaii,” “Poland,” and “Caribbean”), and going deep into the past — sometimes beginning geologically. (One character in his book “Centennial” was a dinosaur!) One might say this was Michener’s way of establishing roots; if he did not know his own, he could at least create them for others.

    Most of his books are meticulously researched, and feature a wealth of characters. They are complex, to say the least: the television mini-series based on “Centennial” (which itself was over 900 pages long) was nearly 21 hours long, and had well over 150 named characters.

    His first book (which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1948) was “Tales of the South Pacific,” a collection of stories based on his time in the U.S. Navy during World War II. This was made into the musical “South Pacific” by Rodgers and Hammerstein. The financial success of this project enabled him to continue writing the books that became so popular, selling around 75 million copies worldwide.

    Coming from humble beginnings, Michener shared his success. He donated more than US$100 million to various colleges and programs that taught writing, and established a prize for the best short story written in Canada each year. He left the copyright (and thus the profits) for most of his books to his alma mater, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. ownership of the earnings from printed materials

    2. motivation, stimulus

    3. very carefully

    4. people who wander from place to place

    5. the school one graduated from

    6. novels that cover many generations of a family

    7. effect, influence

    8. play or movie in which songs tell part of the story

    9. related to the formation of the earth

    10. many