Caribbean (2 page)
Authors: James A. Michener
The treatment proved painful in a multitude of ways, perhaps the most difficult being that it prevented him from straying far from home. The man who’d visited nearly every country could no longer travel. He told an interviewer at the time, “I sit in the TV room and see shows on the big ships I used to travel or areas that I used to wander, and a tear comes to my eye. It’s not easy.”
And that explains his death—he simply decided there would be no more dialysis. Instead, he welcomed the end.
Michener died on October 16, 1997.
I recall the day vividly. A segment on the evening news reported that he was gone. A sadness came over me, as if I’d lost a close friend—which, in a sense, I had.
In preparation for writing this introduction, I reviewed many articles written just after Michener passed. Most came from folks who’d had some personal contact with him through the years—an experience that had clearly stuck in their memory. All of them recounted what happened as if they had been in the presence of a king or head of state. It seemed a privilege to have spent just a little time with James Michener.
And that legacy lives on.
Though he was known to be fanatically frugal, he gave away more than $100 million. Recipients of his generosity included libraries, museums, and universities. He donated $30 million to the University of Texas for the establishment of a creative writing program. Several million more went to the creation of the James A. Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania. One wing of that building was named for his third wife, Mari Sabusawa Michener, who died before him, in 1994.
He never really liked talking about himself, and he could frustrate interviewers. “Famous is a word I never use,” he would say. “I’m well known. I’ve written thirty or forty books. I’ve done a great deal. I let it go at that.” He was extremely generous with his autograph, so much so that he once noted, “The most valuable books are those that aren’t signed.”
Of my own collection, only one bears his signature.
To the frequently asked question, “Which book are you most proud of?” he would just smile and say, “The one I’m working on next.”
By no means was he perfect. He could be a difficult man to know. He wasn’t the type to start conversations with strangers, and he detested small talk. He had few close friends, and those who counted themselves in that number knew to tread lightly. He could be abrupt, even rude, and quite aloof. After his death we learned that he utilized collaborators on some of the big books, a fact he refused to acknowledge in life. He was married three times and at one point maintained a mistress. He was a multimillionaire, yet he would constantly fret about not having enough money to pay his bills. And though he was an orphan himself and a co-founder of an adoption agency, in the 1950s he gave up his claim to an adopted child when he divorced his second wife.
All of which shows that he was human.
But still, what a remarkable man.
Michener possessed an incomparable ability to simultaneously enthrall, entertain, and inform. Nobody else could write a two-hundred-word sentence with such grace and style. And he chose his subjects with great care: the South Pacific (
Tales of the South Pacific, Return to Paradise
), Judaism (
The Source
), South Africa (
The Covenant
), the West Indies (
Caribbean
), the American West (
Centennial
), the Chesapeake Bay (
Chesapeake
),
Texas, Alaska
, Spain (
Iberia
),
Mexico, Poland
, the Far East.
Like millions of other readers, I loved them all.
I never met James Michener. I would have loved to tell him how he sparked the imagination of a sixteen-year-old boy, which led first to a lifelong love of reading, then to a career as a writer. When, in 1990, I decided to write my first novel, it was Michener who influenced me most. By the end of that decade, though, changes had firmly begun to take hold. Today you won’t encounter many two-hundred-word sentences or millennia-long sagas involving hundreds of characters. Instead, in the twenty-first century, story, prose, and purpose are expected to be tight. In the Internet age—with video games, twenty-four-hour news, streaming movies, you name it—there is just little time for thousand-page epics. Toward the end of his life Michener gave an interview in which he doubted he would have ever been published if he’d first started in that environment.
Thank goodness he came along when he did.
Now his stories can live forever.
Though it is based on fact, this novel uses fictional events, places and characters. The following paragraphs endeavor to clarify which is which.
I. Croton
. The peaceful Arawaks were overrun by the warrior Caribs at about the time indicated. There is historical evidence for the life of the two tribes as portrayed. All characters are fictional.
II. Maya
. Tulúm, Cozumel, Chichén Itzá and Palenque are historic sites accurately portrayed. All characters are fictional.
III. Columbus
. Cristóbal Colón, King Ferdinand, Francisco de Bobadilla and the heroic canoeist Diego Méndez are historic characters; all others are fictional. Colón was heavily investigated and was sent home a prisoner.
IV. Spanish Lake
. Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake are historic, as is Viceroy Martín Enriquez, their Spanish adversary at San Juan de Ulúa. All other Spanish characters are fictional. The exploits of Drake are accurately summarized.
V. Barbados
. Lord Francis Willoughby, Sir George Ayscue and Prince Rupert are historic, all others are fictional. The various events are historic and are accurately presented.
VI. Buccaneers
. Henry Morgan and his various raids are historic and are accurately portrayed. All other characters are fictional. The circumnavigation of South America occurred, but with real buccaneers and in about the same route and elapsed time as given.
VII. Sugar
. Admiral Edward Vernon, General Thomas Wentworth and the Spanish naval hero Don Blas de Lezo are historic, and their confrontation at Cartagena is accurately portrayed. The great Beckford and Dawkins planter families are accurately depicted. William Pitt (the Elder) is historic, as were the Danish rules for disciplining slaves. All other characters are fictional.
VIII. Nelson
. Horatio Nelson, Admiral Sir Edward Hughes and Mrs. Nisbet are historic. All others are fictional, but everything said about Nelson and his frantic search for a wealthy wife is based on fact.
IX. Guadeloupe
. Victor Hugues was a real man, but while sources agree on his behavior during the French Revolution, both in France and in the islands, they vary as to his early years. Some deny that he had ever been a barber in Haiti. All other characters are fictional, but the grisly events in Guadeloupe are historic and Hugues did die a strong reactionary in responsible office.
X. Haiti
. The black General Toussaint L’Ouverture, Napoleon’s General Charles Le Clerc and his wife Pauline Bonaparte, the English General Thomas Maitland and the black voodoo leader Boukman are all historic, as was the ill-fated Polish battalion. All other characters are fictional, but the various swings of war and the ultimate black victory are accurately described.
XI. Martial Law in Jamaica
. Only the two plantation owners, Jason Pembroke and Oliver Croome, are fictional. Governor Edward John Eyre and all others are historic, especially the leaders of the debate in London: Tennyson and Carlyle of the pro-Eyre forces, Mill of the antis. Their attitudes are reported accurately. The actions of the two murderous martial-law enforcers, Hobbs and Ramsay, are historic, including their suicides. The ugly opinions of Carlyle can be found in his writings.
XII. Letters at All Saints
. The island itself is purely fictional, a composite of several real places. All characters are fictional, except that the great black cricketer Sir Benny Castain is based upon four real black athletes of considerable fame.
XIII. Trinidad Scholar
. The events and the characters who participate in them are totally fictional, but the two universities, West Indies and Miami, are faithfully presented. Events relating to the fraudulent marriage were verified by Immigration authorities and represent common practice.
XIV. Rasta Man
. All events and characters are fictional, but the characteristics of the Rastafarian and his religion are based on careful study and interviews.
XV. Cuba
. Fidel Castro is historic. All other characters are fictional, but none are exaggerated. Data on life in Miami and Havana are authentic, but the interview with Castro is based on reports of others.
XVI. Final Tour
. Thérèse Vaval is totally fictional, as are her ship the
Galante
and the cruise it makes and the characters she encounters. But some ten or a dozen ships like hers leave Miami or San Juan weekly for island routes that are markedly similar except that they do not visit Trinidad. The general conditions she finds can be easily duplicated and her conclusions are shared by many.
