James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook: Explorations in Writing and Publishing by James A. Michener

Author:James A. Michener [Michener, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780804151641
Publisher: The Dial Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Hall’s Daughter Corrects My Error

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Pleased with what I had accomplished in saluting these two remarkable Americans, I flew off to Hawaii, where, as I was lolling in a Venetian gondola at one of the new hotels, I heard a joyous shout from the prow of a passing gondola: ‘Michener! What are you doing here?’ It was Nancy Rutgers, Hall’s daughter, and I shouted back: ‘Call me at this hotel,’ and when she did, she and her husband, Nick, arranged a meeting with my wife and me.

How fortunate it was that we met! For when I told Nancy about my report of meeting her father in Tahiti in 1944, she astounded me: ‘But Jim, Father was in Iowa all during the war!’

‘But I talked with him—at the beach house east of Papeete. I met Lala, I met you—don’t you remember?’

‘Sure, I remember. Dad liked you because you knew all his movies. But that was when you came back after the war. No way you could have seen him during the war, because he simply was not there,’ and Nick confirmed this.

There was nothing to do but rewrite the Tahiti scene in which I learned of Frisbie’s travail on his little islands. It must have been Lew Hirshorn, the wealthy expatriate from Long Island and owner of the interisland steamer Hiro, who had told me. As a lad out of college sometime in the thirties he had stepped off a tramp steamer and remained in Tahiti the rest of his life. A major citizen of the island, he was an invaluable guide.

I was astounded to learn that Hall had not been in Tahiti during the war, but I could not refute the evidence. The pages that follow show how a writer reacts to a devastating blow. He kills the erroneous text and substitutes a better. But if you were to ask me today who told me about Frisbie in Tahiti in 1944, I would still say: ‘James Norman Hall. I can see him sitting by the lagoon when he told me.’ Of course, the lagoon was still there when I visited Hall in 1950, but I’m still convinced I saw him there in 1944.

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