Michener and Me: A Memoir
by Herman Silverman
Running Press, $17.95 hard
Herman Silverman was one of James Michener’s best friends, yet he didn’t learn of Michener’s first marriage until decades after it happened, and found out about his third marriage through an article in Life magazine. “I never asked him anything of a personal nature; I figured if he wanted me to know, he’d tell me,” Silverman says in his memoir Michener and Me. While this may seem a strange principle to apply to a friendship, it obviously worked: The two men remained in close contact for over 50 years.
Silverman’s respect for Michener’s intense privacy may have helped sustain their friendship, but it makes for a flat memoir. One usually reads memoirs and biographies to get a clearer sense of a person, and a crucial part of that sense is his or her emotional life: the passions, dreams, fears, hopes. Silverman tells us little about these things, apparently because Michener rarely told him. Michener and Me mainly consists of loosely organized anecdotes which either showcase Michener’s political beliefs or illustrate just how secretive he was. In other words, he’s covering familiar ground: One could get the same sense of Michener through reading earlier biographies and interviews; Silverman just adds more detail to the outline. In fact, it is almost essential to have read other material on Michener since Silverman provides little context, instead assuming his readers already know the basics about Michener’s work and lifestyle.
Silverman’s writing is simple and unreflective, which makes the memoir a quick, if uninspiring, read. He clearly wants to be fair and balanced, and includes evidence of Michener’s negative traits as well as his positive. What’s lacking is any real analysis of these traits, so the portrait of Michener that emerges is somewhat two-dimensional.
This article appears in October 1 • 1999.