The World Is My Home: A Memoir

527 Pages·2007·30.99 MB·English

by  James A. Michener

ALSO BY JAMES A. MICHENER
Talcs of the South Pacific
The Fires of Spring
Return to Paradise
The Voice of Asia
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Sayonara
The Floating World
The Bridge at Andau
Hawaii
Report of the County Chairman
Caravans
Caribbean
Iberia
Presidential Lottery
The Quality of Life
Kent State: What Happened and Why
The Drifters
A Michener Miscellany: 1950-1970
Centennial
Sports in America
Chesapeake
The Covenant
Space
Poland-
Texas
Legacy
Alaska
Journey
Caribbean
The Eagle and the Raven
Pilgrimage
The Novel
James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook
Mexico
Creatures of the Kingdom
Recessional
Miracle in Seville
This Noble Land: My Vision for America
with A. Grove Day:
Rascals in Paradise
with John Kings:
Six Days in Havana
"JAMES MICHENER IS A GREAT STORYTELLER....
Like his best novels—and the author himself—The World Is My
Home is plainspoken, a little old-fashioned, and immensely
informative." —Atlanta Journal & Constitution
"The Michener saga is as full of twists as any of his monumental
works. . .. His output, his political interests, his patriotic service, his
diligence, and the breadth of his readership are matched only by the
great nineteenth-century writers whose works he devoured as he grew
up—Dickens, Balzac, Mark Twain." —Chicago Tribune
"Sweetly nostalgic... The portrait Michener draws of himself shows
us an honorable, driven, high-minded man who hangs on to his
optimism at all costs." —Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Engaging ... There are splendid yarns about his wartime doings in
the South Pacific. There are hilarious cautionary tales about his
service on government commissions. There are wonderful inside
stories from the publishing business. And always there is Michener
himself—analyzing his own character, assessing himself as a writer,
chronicling his intellectual life, giving advice to young writers."
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"The World Is My Home is as monumental as his novels. ... In a
compelling plainspoken style, Michener reveals that he got where he
wanted to be through talent, discipline, outsized ambition, and luck."
—New Woman
"Michener's own life makes one of his most engaging tales—a classic
American success story in an almost forgotten mode. ... [The World
Is My Home] displays the old-fashioned virtues of modesty, open¬
mindedness, fortitude, and curiosity that have fueled his bestsellers."
—Entertainment Weekly
"THE QUINTESSENTIAL TELLER OF STORIES ...
The retelling of his remarkable and prolific life ranks along with the
best." —The San Diego Union
"Eschewing traditional autobiography, Michener looks back on his
long, globe-trotting life from more than a dozen vantage points—
travel, people, politics, health. . . . Michener spins a wealth of
marvelous yarns about his years as a teacher, editor, WW II naval
officer, omnivorous reader, itinerant lecturer, occasional show-biz
advisor, and, more recently, member of government commissions....
Engaging." —Kirkus Reviews
"An excellent volume of memoirs ... [They] benefit from a marvelous
honesty, a straightforward grappling with the most profound
questions any of us can ask." —The Sacramento Bee
"This relaxed account, from his gee-whiz days to his ninth decade,
reveals an unabashed patriot and die-hard liberal who has never lost
his awe at the variety of human emotions and natural landscapes....
Stuffed with bits of folk songs, weather lore, etymological detail, old
tales retold, this book is testament to a long life of broad study. His
sweeping intellectual curiosity alone, defiantly generalist rather than
specialist in focus, makes it worthwhile reading, as does his candor
about his weaknesses." —Wichita Eagle
"The World Is My Home is splendid!... [A] delightful page-turner ...
It is a pepper-upper, an encourager, a challenge to live life to its
fullest." —Winter Haven News Chief(FL)
"Quite enjoyable reading." The State (Columbia, SC)
The
World Is
My Home:
A Memoir
James A.
Michener
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS
NEW YORK
2007 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 1992 by James A. Michener
All rights reserved.
Published in Ihe United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division
of Random House, inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon
are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States
by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., in 1992.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc., for
permission to reprint excerpts from Ross and Tom, by John Leggett (Simon
and Schuster, 1974). Copyright © 1974 by John Leggett. Reprinted by
permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.
ISBN 978-O-8129-7813-1
Printed in the United States of America
www.atrandom.com
246897531
Book design by Carole Lowenstein
Contents
I Mutiny 3
II Tour 23
III Vice 92
IV Travel 115
V People 144
VI Politics 173
VII Ideas 231
VIII Writing 261
IX Intellectual Equipment 296
X Trios 325
XI Best-seller 360
XII Health 403
XIII Wealth 434
XIV Meanings 475
Index 513
The World Is My Home: A Memoir
Mutiny
THIS
WILL BE a strange kind of autobiography be­
cause I shall offer the first seven chapters as if I had never written
a book, the last seven as if that were all I had done.
I segregate the material in this way for two reasons: I want the
reader to see in careful detail the kind of ordinary human being who
becomes a writer and then to see the complex and contradictory
motivations that enable him to remain one.
I have been impelled to attempt this project because of an experi­
ence that occurred eighty years ago when I was a country lad of five,
and was of such powerful import that the memory of it has never left
me. The farmer living at the end of our lane had an aging apple tree
that had once been abundantly productive but had now lost its energy
and ability to bear any fruit at all. The farmer, on an early spring day
I still remember, hammered eight nails, long and rusty, into the trunk
of the tree. Four were knocked in close to the ground on four different
sides of the trunk, four higher up and well spaced about the circum­
ference.
That autumn a miracle happened. The tired old tree, having been
goaded back to life, produced a bumper crop of juicy red apples,
bigger and better than we had seen before. When I asked how this
4 THE WORLD IS MY HOME
had happened, the farmer explained: 'Hammerin' in the rusty nails gave
it a shock to remind it that its job is to produce apples.'
'Was it important that the nails were rusty?'
'Maybe it made the mineral in the nail easier to digest.'
'Was eight important?'
'If you're goin' to send a message, be sure it's heard.'
'Could you do the same next year?'
'A substantial jolt lasts about ten years.'
'Will you knock in more nails then?'
'By that time we both may be finished,' he said, but I was unable to
verify this prediction, for by that time our family had moved away from
the lane.
In the 1980s, when I was nearly eighty years old, I had some fairly
large rusty nails hammered into my trunk—a quintuple bypass heart
surgery, a new left hip, a dental rebuilding, an attack of permanent
vertigo—and, like a sensible apple tree, I resolved to resume bearing
fruit. But before I started my concentrated effort I needed both a ration
alization and a guide for the arduous work I planned to do.
As had happened so frequently in my lifetime, I found the intellectual
and emotional guidance I needed not in the Bible, into which I dipped
regularly, but rather in the great English poems on which I had been
reared and many of which I had memorized. I was particularly im
pressed by the relevancy of the opening lines of that splendid sonnet
which young John Keats had penned when he feared, with good cause
as events proved, that he might die prematurely, which he did, at age
twenty-six:
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain ...
How apt those words seemed because there was such a wealth of entic
ing subjects about which I wanted to write that my brain, too, could
justly be termed teeming. But I was almost eighty years old; much of
what I would like to do would have to be left unfinished. Since it took
me about three years to write a long work, if I had thirty viable subjects
the task would require ninety years. That would make me one hundred
and seventy when I finished, and I could not recall any writers who
continued working so long, not even the doughty ancients in the Old
Testament.