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WORKING WITH MICHENER

The Making of The Covenant

©2007 Errol Lincoln Uys

 

Errol Lincoln Uys and James A. Michener

GUIDE TO THE ARCHIVES

               The Assignment    The Plotting     The Research      The Manuscript

 

I was James A. Michener's assistant on his South African novel, The Covenant. I was involved in every stage of the book from conception and plotting to final manuscript, a collaboration that spanned two years from 1978 to 1980.

These pages offer a unique look at what went into the making of The Covenant, and provide an intimate view of two writers and their shared passions.

The website is organized in four major sections:

 

"About an hour ago Mari brought me the mail and I had the pleasure of reading Uys's notes about a proposed book on South Africa. I was impressed by his organizing ability, his thoroughness, and his keen insights into the problems of arranging a mass of material so as to be usable, especially in fictional form.
 

It became immediately apparent that he is prepared to start talks with me right away, because we have both done a great deal of thinking on this matter, along our separate lines, and we have come up with striking parallelisms, as I suppose any two reasonably intelligent persons would, faced with identical data."

  The Plotting

 

"Uys showed such a mastery and predilection for plotting that again and again he came up with dazzling ideas that again and again attracted my attention. I am no good at plotting, hold it to be almost an excrescence, and pay far too little attention to it, so that Uys's bold suggestions were often appreciated. It was he who suggested most of the coincidences, most of the confrontations, most of the wild occurrences and it was I who rejected a vast majority of them but I was deeply indebted to him for certain plot lines...

He really was a remarkable man in his ability to visualize instantly and I rarely had to waste a moment explaining anything. Also, he had the capacity and willingness to catch an idea and run with it in his own direction, often proposing something so far from my intention that I was bedazzled. I judge he could plot six novels a year with intricate beauties; he should have been in G-2 in some complicated war situation.”

 

Uys "Scribbling Block" Plotting Notes

    

  The Research

      

“Not one of characters, Tjaart Van Doorn, Naude, Bronk,Nel etc. even suggest picture of ‘frontier Boer' – i.e. the wilder, independent, hard as nails individual. What we have is a picture that evokes American Centennial-type character + the Pennsylvania Dutch.
 

Unsettling frontier element isn't there, the balance between Bible-living Van Doorns and wild renegade types, which if time allowed, I'd show in 50/50 proportion, is lacking.

We have a stylized Afrikaner-heroic interpretation = Good enough for the past and Nathan (Manfred Nathan, The Voortrekkers of South Africa, 1937) but inadequate for 1980.

In addition, we have scant reference to the dominant issue then and now, i.e. LABOR. Sure, one might argue that the American reader only needs simplistic view. But it's wrong to offer it this simply. It just wasn't so.”

"Every excerpt, every page you have written for my book these past weeks shows that you are a writer with a superb use of the English language, a remarkable vocabulary and a very special turn of phrase.

You unquestionably have the talent to write almost anything you direct your attention to. You are a great researcher, as your copious notes prior to our work sessions together indicated. And you know how to put words together most skillfully as your work on the manuscript proved."

 

Uys rough draft

Each section contains numerous cross-linked items, such as plotting notes, research papers, correspondence and manuscript drafts, all of which open up in the supporting pages:

Finally, there is a brief post-script The Long-DistanceWriters, which details a few testy exchanges Jim and I had as we came to the end of our long and complex journey together.

 

Go to THE ASSIGNMENT

 

I'm the only one of Michener's assistants ever to go on and write my own epic. On my web site, I share my quest for Brazil, originally a whopping 750,000 handwritten words. First published in the U.S. by Simon and Schuster, the book became an 'orphan' when my editor left two months before it hit the bookshelves. Overseas, Brazil was a bestseller hailed by French and Brazilian critics and readers. In Fall 2007, Les Presses de la Cité, Paris published a 20th anniversary edition of La Forteresse Verte.

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