On James Michener, and why knowledge fuels creativity

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he's always doing both. ”

- James Michener

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James Michener is my favorite author.  Hands down.  My favorite book of his, Chesapeake, is 1,024 pages long.  It’s hard to keep someone's attention for 1024 pages.  The best writers make you forget you’re reading at all—you just feel like you’re in the story.  No big words just to sound smart or make something feel more important, and somehow also uniquely their own style.

I'm a big fan of history, and reading biographies.  Michener is a great example of why historical fiction can teach you more about a time period than a the actual history book.  With a biography or non-fiction history, there are no liberties taken with what happened.  Writers like Michener do an immense amount of research to learn about the culture, social norms of the time, idiosyncrasies, vernacular, dress, local stories and events.  From this he creates fictional characters that help tell the story of a region or an era in a way that you really feel how they felt and what they felt.  And he somehow does this over covering many centuries without ever boring you.

There is a lot we can learn from him.  For me, one of the biggest lessons is the power of knowing all the details so you can create something that feels authentic—even if it isn’t literally true.  We see this in restaurants when, that dirty word, ‘fusion’ cuisine, pops up.  It definitely feels like fusion when the cultures being strung together aren’t truly understood—when no one did the homework.  When it’s natural, it’s a beautiful thing.  Like how Chef Gray Kunz brought his Swiss upbrining and years spent in southeast asia together with the french cuisine he learned cooking with chefs like Freddy Giradet.  There was no guessing. It was natural, and you could tell.

Michener beautifully bridges knowledge and technical skill, with creativity. He was a phenomenally skilled writer who put an exorbitant amount of effort into research and understanding a subject.  I think he loved the effort of the research and exploration as much (maybe more0 than the writing itself. Something worth aspiring to.  To pursue excellence and let others decide when we’re working and when we’re playing.

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