Citizen Jim Remembered

James A. Michener, the late “writer-citizen of the world” is being remembered this month: 100 years after his birth and nearly a decade after he passed away in October of 1997.

Christopher Reynolds, an L.A. Times staff writer who, in 1997, conducted one of the last interviews with Michener, takes an affectionate look at the writer who is often denigrated for his “brick-sized paperbacks”:

This man -- who was born on or about Feb. 3, 1907, and died in 1997 -- may have taught more Americans more about the rest of the world than any other writer in his century. And once that teaching made him rich, he plowed the money back into charity, perhaps as much as $100 million, with the lion’s share going to the University of Texas at Austin, home of the James A. Michener Center for Writers.

Celebrations of Michener’s own centennial are scheduled throughout the United States -- and on the Web -- throughout the month. Authorlink, for example, is offering up an audio interview with Kate Medina, a Random House editorial director and vice-president who was Michener’s editor at the time of his death.

In honor of the centennial, Michener’s 1991 memoir, The World Is My Home, was reissued in trade paper by Random House last month.

In a two part series that began last weekend, Richard Keppler Brunner of Allentown’s Morning Call, takes another affectionate look at the writer:

On this, the centenary month of his birth, it is appropriate to use the author's own words to understand the man, his work and how Citizen Jim saw his times and his world.

Part one is here. Part two is here.

The James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, has what looks to be a pretty complete listing of events being held to commemorate the life of one of the 20th century’s top-selling -- and -producing -- writers.