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Letter to the editor

Not the Michener you know in 'Matecumbe'

The book is a lightweight compared with earlier works.

By William McKeen, Special to the Times
Published November 18, 2007

Matecumbe
By James A. Michener
University Press of Florida, 165 pages, $21 

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You all remember James Michener, the celebrated author of bestselling doorstops. Once he found the magic formula - around the time he published Hawaii in 1959 - he eased into a pattern: Every other year he published a massive book with a one-word title (Iberia, Centennial, Chesapeake, etc.) that somehow tied geology to the parade of humanity.

It went like this: Begin with creation of universe; discuss rocks and their formation; 200 pages later, tell us about people living on rocks thousands of years down the road.

It worked. Michener's books festooned coffee tables in the more fashionable American homes. But it was a hard schedule to maintain, particularly as he got older. He began employing ghost writers. And that's how Matecumbe came to be.

Michener wrote this short novel in the 1970s. Random House didn't want to publish it because a slim little love story would look out of place on the coffee table. So, before he died in 1997, Michener gave the Matecumbe manuscript and copyright to one of his ghost writers, and it landed at the University Press of Florida.

Before he discovered his formula, Michener wrote shorter, more intense books. His Korean War novel, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, clocked in at around 85 pages. One is tempted to cart out the coveted descriptor "lyrical."

Alas, I have read The Bridges at Toko-Ri, and Matecumbe, you are no Bridges at Toko-Ri.

The concept is good: parallel love stories of a mother and daughter. The execution is not. The dialogue is cloying and not believable; the story has no depth. The afterword claims Michener intended it as allegory. If so, he fired and missed.

Matecumbe is more entertaining than a soap opera, and it's probably something that completists need for their Michener collection. Collectors of Florida novels will enjoy the setting in the Keys. For the rest of us, it's mere footnote.

William McKeen is chairman of the journalism department at the University of Florida.

[Last modified November 15, 2007, 16:34:27]