Poland is a delightful book. Other than the chapter about Vienna called Mazurka and the way to short treatment of Kosciusko it is a great book. The chapter about Vienna shortly before WW1 is needed to set up the chapter where Poles kick Commie tail. This was a war my grandfather and uncles took part in on the side of Poland. I enjoyed that chapter, but I wish more pages were devoted to this topic.
I am in the last two chapters which deal with WW2 and Solidarity. It is an excellent and enjoyable book. However, as a Michener fan Texas, Centennial and Alaska are better.
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I largely agree with you, Beak. And thank you for the kind words.
To do Michener justice, his books are so voluminous and full of knowledge and details, that everybody who is, through studies or life experience, an expert on a topic will find something missing and then say: "Why didn't he cover THAT TOO?" Thus, Michener's erudition is turned against himself.
I find Texas his best, but I enjoyed Poland most because here he covers history which is part of my people's history as well. I have a Polish great-grandmother, too. Scratch a German and you'll find a Pole.
You want to read a good book about Texas? Why read the minor authors, then? Read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Now that's a great novel and an author on par with the likes of Faulkner and/or Melville.
Thanking the Editrix? Don't you mean kissing the enlarge arthritic knuckle of The Queen Mutter's ring finger, Beak?
Regarding Tales of the South Pacific, comparing the short stories to the musical, the following was found:
"The character of de Becque in the short story has eight mixed-race illegitimate daughters by four different women, none of whom he married, when he meets the nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush. (Nellie Forbush????) In the musical, he has two legitimate mixed-race children by a woman whom he had married and who had died."
I guess they cleaned all the sexual liberalism up in the musical, and made it palatable for mass consumption.
Michener's third wife's name was Mari Yoriko Sabusawa. I guess he was into miscegenation too. Sexual libertines flock together?
Was reading these long and laborious reads something akin what kids do nowadays when they read the long and lugubrious Harry Potter things so they can brag about having read a 1000 page minor pseudo-classic at the tender age of ten years old?
Being an American, and holding, in high regard, the artistic merits of, say, a Michener novel, over, say, a Melville novel, would be like being a German, and touting the merits of a Chrysler 300 over a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.
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