Tales of the South Pacific

by James A. Michener

Book Overview

Tales of the South Pacific is the iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece that inspired a Broadway classic and launched the career of James A. Michener, one of America's most beloved storytellers.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0895776979
• ISBN13: 9780895776976
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Reader's Digest Association
• Length: 359 Pages
• Weight: 1.59 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Underrated American Masterwork--Provocative, Complex, Profound (and Patriotic)

The omission of this work from the academic canon is another comment on the discriminatory but hardly discriminating state of literary studies today. Michener is far more than a captivating storyteller, collector of colorful characters, painter of vivid natural imagery, and documentor of the orchestrations of world warfare. Each of the "tales" comprising his carefully-constructed epic narrative is at once thematically and stylistically related to the other smaller narratives and at the same time artistically whole in itself. If the reader has expectations of a single-minded patriotic paean to the fighting men of the South Pacific, a close reading of the early chapter, "Mutiny," should dispel any such illusions. Here, as throughout the book, Michener uses nature and the ocean as a test, a touchstone, and a foil--exposing the folly not just of warring nations and military campaigns but of arrogant, imperialist civilizations and many of their prideful citizens. Tony Fry, his anti-authoritarian, compassionate "hero," commits a subversive act that links him with the mutineers on board the Bounty and casts the American command in the role of Bligh and Hitler! In the next story, "Cave," Fry emerges as a war-time philosopher whose meditations on courage move him to acts of selfless, Christ-like charity. In "Boar's Tooth" Fry is able to overcome his resistance to a primitive religious ritual involving pain and sacrifice as he contrasts it with the empty and self-serving practices of modern religion. The American fighting men and women who come to the South Pacific bring no small amount of baggage from a flawed social order back home, and Michener's heroes are not simply the individuals who perform fearlessly in combat: they're just as likely to be the narrow-minded Americans who are transformed by their experiences in the South Pacific into better human beings. "Our Heroine," the story of Nellie Forbush, is a shocking expose of racism, delivering a reeling blow comparable to explosive moments in Flannery O'Connor or Faulkner. When Nellie learns that her fiance's former lover is dead and rejoices not because a rival has been removed but because a black person has been eliminated, she would seem to be beyond the redemption experienced even by O'Connor's most degenerate souls. But in an earlier story about "the Remittance Man" Michener's narrator has constructed a definition of heroism based on courage and an exclusive vision of the sacred status of all human life, allowing us to see how Nellie's eventual change of heart qualifies her for inclusion among the company of true heroes. The famous Bali Hai chapter ("Fo' Dolla"), far from an escapist love story, is at once romantic tragedy in the tradition of "Madame Butterfly" and tragicomedy in its portrayal of accessory characters who recall the nurse and friar in "Romeo & Juliet." And once again the narrative's definition of the "heroic" allows us to see the tragedy play out not merely as a tale of star

Children's Into to Michner's "South Pacific"

This is a wonderful children's version of "South Pacific". (Not the score of South Pacific as mentioned in the paperback reviews.) The illustrations in my first edition of 1992 are wonderful muted tones done in a charming old-fashioned style - not sepia as mentioned in the two professional reviews. A wonderful introduction to South Pacic, the literature of James Michner, or World War II history. Altogether highly recommended. (Refers to the Hardback version.)

Proud to own this!

If you're interested in this, then don't hesitate to get it! This Vocal Score contains all music from the show (from the Overture to bows and exit music).

Better the second time around

I first read this book when I was young, not long after I saw the movie "South Pacific". I didn't particularly like it because the characters were the same ones as in the movie but they didn't "fit" in the same way. After many, manyy years, I read it just the other night and loved it! It had been long enough since I saw the film that the characters could stand on their own. Mitchener wrote this soon after the war when his memories were still fresh and he displays a great deal of affection for the "typical" sailor caught thousands of miles from home. For many, they would never get home. To this American tale, he adds a lot of tropical spice: Bloody Mary, the Frenchman's Daughter, Emil De Becque himself. Mitchener shows the American fighting man as hero, coward, nice guy, louse, sacrificial, selfish, and mostly a combination of all of these traits. Although I have read many of Mitchener's books, this is still his best: young, filled with Mitchener's memories from his recently-concluded naval service during World War II. Deservedly one of the classics that came from World War II.

Spend an enchanted evening in the South Pacific

Its all here - fantastic locations, gripping stories love, death, war, bigots and racists, hope, waiting waiting waiting on desolate coral atols, disease, cowards and heros, an ancient avenue of noble pines cut down for a runway, a mountain moved in a week, wild tribes, brutal nature, life lived and lost. Michener wrote the book before being assigned the job described by the narrator. Read the book and rent the video SOUTH PACIFIC for fantasic songs and romance (I especially like the way they slip the red filter over the lense for each song - glorious 50's color). Like all good books this is about much more than is subject