Again, on James Michener's Recessional --

Again, on James Michener's Recessional, by Kyi May Kaung.

I just finished reading this penultimate novel of James Michener's and find it an outstanding piece of work.

Except for some patches which are heavy on facts and debate--such as a debate on the right to die and euthanasia or mercy killing, on the whole the interlocked stories of inter-generational professional and romantic relationships is quite compelling and also realistic.

As befits a novel set in a retirement and assisted living facility, there is a lot of death in this novel, but each death is presented even handedly as the outcome of lives led.

As befits a masterly bestselling author, he never judges any of his characters, and does not even mention how the young black athlete got AIDS.  I think this shows great authorial discipline and control. 

He does not favor one character over another, even if that character literally happens to be a great big rattlesnake.

Also each character's story comes to a believable conclusion.

That it's a story mainly about old people does not mean there are no plots and subplots.

In fact, I like it better than his final novel The Novel, which is more or less autobiographical, I think, although presented as the story of a writer who is Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutch) in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

That story seems more linear.

Also in Recessional, he breaks one of the unwritten rules beloved of writing groups and courses:  You must explain what the title means by page 5.  :)

He only has a short definition of the word "recessional" in the very beginning, and then at the very end someone, in her head, reflects on the meaning of "recessional."

I think it is just super, and shows that at age 87 and already suffering from kidney failure, Michener was as sharp as ever and still at the top of his game.

I have read that Michener was abandoned as an infant by his biological mother and never knew his real name.  "Michener" was said to have been the surname of the woman who ran the foster home or orphanage he was brought up in.

This may or may not have been the source of his apparent burning desire always to write.

If so, he more than succeeded.

Not least is the money he and his wife donated to The Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Recently, a Michener Fellow, poet and Iraq veteran Kevin Powers wrote and published The Yellow Bird, widely acclaimed as the definitive Iraq novel and a finalist for the National Book Award.

Thank you, James Michener, wherever you are, for your lived example and hours and hours of seamless interesting travel in different times and places.

Bravo!

Copyright Kyi May Kaung www.kmkaung.com
1-10-2014