Reading James Michener's Hawaii

 

This morning, CNN's Brian Stelter suggested that one of the things we might look forward to in a Biden administration is a slow news day. As he writes:

Coming soon: A "slow news day?"

[Maggie] Haberman told me that one of the constants of the Trump era was the "constant sense of incoming," a sense driven in large part by his Twitter feed.

 

His Twitter feed is gone now, but that duck-and-cover sense hasn't totally faded away yet. Years of history are happening in days. "We thought with 2020 behind us, things might slow down," but so much for that, USA Today editor Nicole Carroll said on Sunday's show.

 

John Dickerson brought this up in a piece for "CBS Sunday Morning." He said "the new Biden administration may benefit by simply offering a steady stream of useful information -- potentially reviving the long-forgotten 'slow news day.'"

 

He interviewed Jill Lepore, who said, "You actually just have to show up, have actual information, bring people in who are doing their jobs, and answer the questions that the press and the public have." Sounds simple -- and refreshing...

 

With a likely reduction in drama coming as we move from a Trump administration to a Biden administration, I am looking forward to having time to read long books without checking on the news too often. So, I decided it was time that I read  something by James Michener. I decided to start with his first popular book, Hawaii.

 

 

The New York Times, in their 1997 obituary of the author, Michener had published before Hawaii, but it was his first big book.

It was not until Mr. Michener moved from his brief tales of people to his monumental sagas of places -- beginning with ''Hawaii'' in 1959 -- that he became one of those rare writers whose books are snatched up by the book clubs and become almost automatic best sellers even before they hit the book stores. As of late 1992, he was one of only eight authors who had written six or more No. 1 best sellers in the half-century history of the weekly New York Times best-seller list.

In the years after ''Hawaii,'' Mr. Michener was often scorned by critics even as he achieved a huge and appreciative following. Expertly applying his tried-and-true formula, he wove big, old-fashioned narratives involving generations of fictional families as they moved through expertly documented events in history. As a writer, he liked to celebrate the all-American virtues of patriotism, frugality, common sense and courage and to enrich his episodic, educational fiction with the geological origins and prehistory of the territory he staked out as his subject.

I think it was remarkable that so many millions bought and read Michener's books. But this phenomenon is even more remarkable when one considers that Michener's books were easily twice as long as the other popular books at the time. My edition of Hawaii is nearly one thousand pages long. 

One of the pleasures in my life is finding time to read long and satisfying books. I am currently ten percent of the way through James Michener's Hawaii.