tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post6413658216276387132..comments2024-02-11T09:55:50.468-08:00Comments on The Eastside View: Michener: Caravans (The end of the world as we know it)Charles Sherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480432901356490235noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post-86898907207327984592010-01-15T06:48:48.789-08:002010-01-15T06:48:48.789-08:00Charles:
It's not clear whether you did read ...Charles:<br /><br />It's not clear whether you did read Prokosch's two novels, or have yet to. <br /><br />I had a brief flirtation with Prokosch when I bought, on a whim, nearly all his books one day that were languishing along the top shelf near the ceiling at Shakespeare Books. Prokosch was an odd bird, a true eccentric, and the subject of some minor literary scandal. <br /><br />Michener became the king of the blockbusters in the 1960's and after. I gave a copy of Caravans to my Stepfather for, I think, his 62nd birthday, but I don't think he even read it all the way through. As a fan of hard-boiled fiction, Michener's judicious, well-documented prose wouldn't have appealed to him. <br /><br />Michener actually began as an academic, and was a thoroughgoing researcher who for each project amassed a shoe box of note cards recording his vast reading. He had an enormous appetite for learning about things. At the end of his life, as I recall, he grew weary of being "kept alive" and had the plugs and wires pulled, allowing him to die. Michener deserved all the honors and praise he received, though his work was never formally challenging, and like Paul Theroux, he seemed irrepressibly optimistic about his ability to understand anything, and explain it to anybody. And boundless curiosity. <br /><br />Curiosity and perspicacity: absolutely essential attributes for being truly alive.<br /><br />How odd to think that I'm the age my Stepfather was when I gave him this book. He seemed ancient to me, whereas I still feel only about 47. Am I going too fast, or too slow?Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.com