Working with James A. Michener/ Online literary archive/Index
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I was James Michener's assistant on his South African novel, The Covenant, involved in every stage of the book from conception to final manuscript. This archive offers a unique look at what went into the making of The Covenant, and provides an intimate view of two writers and their shared passions.
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"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." "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..."
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"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 plus 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." Notes
Each section contains cross-linked plotting notes, research papers, correspondence and manuscript drafts, all of which open up in the supporting pages |
"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." I
was back at my desk at the Reader's Digest in February
1980, when out of the blue I got a broadside in the shape of what
I've come to call "the Avenick letter." Jim had previously told
me that Joseph Avenick, who assisted him with Sports in America,
was going round saying that he'd ghost-written the book. Michener
had sought to dismiss Avenick by suggesting he was lost in a miasma
of letter writing to the President, the Pope, Ted Kennedy et al.
In his missive to me, Michener threatened me with the same woeful
fate should I claim to have done more than vet his manuscript.
© 2007-2009 Errol Lincoln Uys |
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