Alaska

I went in with very little knowledge of and, sincerely, a little dubiousness about my interest in the 49th state, but the narrative immediately swept me up. And the scope of that narrative is pretty extraordinary, starting hundreds of millions of years in the past with wandering land masses colliding and forming seas, mountains, and land masses that we recognize today. Then the narrative runs through the supposed initial migration from the modern Asian continent across the land bridge, through early Russian exploration, the fur trade, whaling and seal hunting, American acquisition, the gold rush, and the general lawlessness, neglect, callous exploitation of natural resources, and harmful social policies of misguided paternalism that show more continued to shape Alaska and its people through the 20th century. Of course some of the history is abbreviated, but it has to be, in the service of readability.

Many of the characters are fictional, but almost without exception (and there are exceptions) Michener's characters are complex, realistically motivated, and just plain interesting. As Michener does, many of the characters are from the same family lines, told through successive generations of Voronovs, Venns, BigEars, Rosses, and Flatchs. And these characters themselves are metaphors for the kinds of people that have inhabited Alaska. They are used to animate historical, religious, economic, political, geological, sociological, commercial, and environmental forces that have shaped this region. You may think you aren't interested in prospecting, railroads, civil engineering on tundra, the economics of municipal development in the Arctic Circle, the salmon industry, or civil aviation but it all fits together and is simply interesting and surprising as it plays out through the characters ... throughout all 1,075 pages.

Yes, there are plenty of passages with dialogue and observations that are rife with racial hatred. And those spots will likely make readers cringe. But I think the discomfort is supposed to tell us something about those settlers (colonizers, really) thought of the indigenous people, what they thought of the Chinese labor they brought over and exploited, and what they thought of non-whites in general. The language sticks out, but it's supposed to stick out. We are supposed to see it and wince at it and reflect on how those attitudes literally contributed to the shaping of Alaska.

This was a pretty remarkable book, right up there among Michener's best. show less

James A. Michener is known for his highly detailed narrative and pages-long expository on the history of a region. When done correctly, a reader is taken on a whirlwind adventure through time, following the growth and development of an area through the eyes of the land and of a select few founding families. When done poorly, the effect is more like a lengthy history textbook. Alas, Alaska falls into the latter category.

What Michener does well can become nauseatingly boring over time without a human factor. Where there is a human factor, the construct of the overall novel is such that the human factor is deliberately interrupted. Each chapter is like an individual novella. There is some attempt to connect the characters through the show more generations and across the state, but the individual chapters and lack of depth of character development creates an extremely disjointed story.

In addition, there is an undercurrent of dispassion and lack of affection for Alaska that does not exist in some of Michener's other works. The best example of this would be Hawaii. His love of the South Pacific is palpable on every page. It is not overt, but it is something that permeates all of his descriptions and makes them more vivid. Unfortunately, the descriptions of Alaska are more rote and clinical. The fascination with the flora and fauna is missing, and the reader is left struggling through dry and lengthy descriptions.

At 868 pages, Alaska is simply too long. There are too many native Alaskans, too much land, and too much political infighting. Michener's choice of creating stand-alone chapters does nothing to help foster understanding or clarity. Readers looking for something similar to the magical Hawaii or even the excellent Chesapeake are guaranteed to be disappointed. The lack of memorable generational families and tedious descriptions make this more of a slog than something to enjoy. show less

When I first learned I would be moving to Alaska, courtesy of the Army, I was living in Georgia. The sticky-clothes humidity of Atlanta seemed such a far cry from the minty, glacial image I had of the 49th state. In the months preceding the move, I wanted to learn everything I could about Alaska before I ever set foot on my first snowflake.

[Note: “Learning everything‿ usually means reading books until my eyeballs dry up and fall out of my head.]

Alaska! I sniffed deeply of the humid Atlanta air, coughed on the exhaust fumes from the nearby interstate, then hiked down to the local bookstore. I grabbed John McPhee’s Coming into the Country, I snatched up Joe McGinniss’ Going to Extremes, I found Natalie Kusz’ Road Song. I read show more all those until my eyeballs went pink-a-plink onto the surface of my desk.

But there was one more book—the granddaddy of narratives, the mother of all tomes, the Mt. McKinley of literature: James Michener’s Alaska.

The simplicity of the title says it all. Of course, the same is true of nearly all his other books which masquerade as geography-history lessons. Iberia. Poland. Space. I’d never read a Michener book before. Alaska seemed as good a place to start as any.

Back in my sweltering apartment, I cranked the air conditioner on high and opened the book to the first of its 1,073 pages. About a billion years ago, long before the continents had separated to define the ancient oceans, or their own outlines had been determined, a small protuberance jutted out from the northwest corner of what would later become North America.

Uh-oh.

I settled myself in for a long summer’s nap. This is the trademark, start-with-prehistory method the author typically employs. It’s tedious, but I suppose he feels it’s necessary.

Michener goes on in a similar geologic vein for many pages, as he describes shifting subterranean plates, tectonic forces and the formation of the first snowballs in Alaska. It is a tough geology lesson; but to his credit, Michener makes it bearable.

It isn’t until 15 pages into Alaska that the first character is introduced. No, it’s not some bone-knife carrying Asian who wandered over on the Bering Strait land bridge. It’s a mastodon—you know, the kind of wooly mammoths that used to help Wilma Flintstone wash dishes. The first humans don’t walk onto the scene until page 39.

I think you see what I’m getting at. Michener takes his time. He is slow—glacially slow—at building the layers of the land’s history.

Reviewing Alaska the book is as daunting a task as reviewing Alaska the state. Oh, the sweep! The panorama! The cast of thousands (including mastodons and whales)!

Unlike Alaska the state, however, Alaska the book is dull. Oh, certainly Michener has all his facts in order and the reams of research—the very towering stacks of dust-collecting manuscripts he must have pored through!—is indeed impressive. This is history writ large, folks. But as I said, it’s also history writ lackluster. If I’m going to invest 1,073 pages and about twice as many minutes in a story about the Union’s largest and wildest state, then I want to come away shaking and dripping perspiration. The only time I broke a sweat was when the air conditioning went on the fritz and I was stuck reading about frigid blizzards in 90-degree Atlanta heat.

Mr. Michener knows his stuff when it comes to the events and people of Alaska. The ancient whale-hunters, the first Russian explorers, the fur traders, the missionaries, the gold prospectors, the salmon fishermen, the wilderness pilots, the World War Two combat troops on the Aleutian islands, the politicians wrangling for statehood in 1959, the environmentalists, the hunting guides, the oil-drilling roughnecks, the dog mushers, the mountain climbers, the urban latte-sipping Anchorage residents—they’re all here, crowded into this pulp-and-ink landscape. Does Michener take liberties with history? Probably. Is he comprehensive? Certainly. Does he keep you awake at nights with his epic narrative? Barely.

I work with a very nice lady who swears up and down that Michener is the greatest writer who ever walked the face of this earth. I would kindly point her in the direction of Messrs. Hemingway, Chekhov and Shakespeare, but the sad hell of it is, she’s read them, too.

“There was no one like James Michener!‿ she gushes.

“That’s true,‿ (muttering under breath) “thank God.‿

When it comes to creating believable characters and, most importantly, describing them in page-turning prose, Michener is downright clumsy. Here, for instance, is how he first describes just one of the thousand characters in Alaska:

Forty-three years old, he had a complete beard and heavy mustache to make his little face look more dignified, a matter which concerned him deeply, for he wished always to impress strangers favorably despite his diminutive stature. His exact height would always be a matter of debate, for his detractors, a numerous band, claimed that he was under five feet, which was preposterous; he referred to himself as five four, which was equally absurd; because he favored built-up shoes, he looked to be about five two. But whatever his height, he often looked a dwarf among men markedly taller than he.

A few paragraphs later, there’s an “action‿ sequence:

As he neared the top of the hill he was hit by a blast of snow borne by a strong wind what came howling over the crest, and for just a moment his little feet lost their hold and he slipped backward, but he quickly caught himself, struggled to the top, and saw below him, as he had know he would, the flickering lights of Deadhorse.

The rest of the book doesn’t vary much from that overwritten prose style. It’s as if Michener scrawled the manuscript with a pen clutched in a fist: large, bold, uninventive strokes.

In all fairness, I will say that I learned a great deal about the Last Frontier before I boarded the plane in Atlanta and traveled to Fairbanks for my first three-year stay in the state. As I flew over the endless mountain ranges—stacked like jagged rocks dusted with powdered sugar snow—I thought to myself, “Well, I certainly know as much about this place as the average high school student who sits through a year of State History.‿

[By the way, when I later moved to Texas for three years, I picked up Michener’s volume by the same name for a literary crash course of that state as well. Upon my return north to Fairbanks four years ago, I toyed with the idea of going through Alaska again as a refresher course, then I thought, “Naw…ain’t gonna be the same fool thrice.‿]

Of course, prior to coming here, I didn’t have a good grasp of what truly makes Alaska the pristine heaven it is. Reading Alaska, I had no way of knowing what it feels like to have the skin on your face stretched tight by minus-30-degree weather, or the way you can practically hear the multi-colored aurora borealis shimmering like folds of rustling silk or how you’ll use every last ounce of your strength when you’re in a wrestling contest with a 45-pound king salmon thrashing on the other end of the fishing line. That’s the Alaska I didn’t get from Alaska.

I suppose you don’t read a James Michener book for its page-turning prospects. You invest your time in his tomes for the education you receive about a particular land and its people—sort of a mini crash-course in science and history. That’s why you can bear up under passages like this:

In the early days the land was not hospitable to settlers. Animals and human beings who came to this promontory had to adjust to profound cold, great distances and meager food supplies, which meant that the men and women who survived would always be a somewhat special breed: adventurous, heroic, willing to contest the great winds, the endless nights, the freezing winters, the cruel and never-ending search for food. They would be people who lived close to the unrelenting land both because they had to and because they reveled in the challenge.

Not unlike reading Michener’s book itself. show less

I wanted to finish this book in 2018, but alas, I couldn't finish it by December 31st. Now, I've managed to push through the last 150 pages. It was an excellent read as are all of Michener's, and I learned a lot about a place I knew almost nothing about. I am amazed Alaska has been settled given the lengths to which all of the settlers had to go to even to survive. I'm not made of that stern stuff so kudos to all of them. I appreciate their efforts. Maybe someday I will be able to travel to Alaska and see some of the wonderful sights described in this book.

2 stars is being generous. but there is a lot of information and history here that is valuable so i guess i can give it to him for that. he covers so much territory here, from the formation of the land mass that becomes alaska to the mid-1980's. he does this the way he often does, by following a few different people and their descendants throughout history in the area, showing how the natives came to alaska and their way of life, and how the white people came in and took over, sometimes thinking they were helping but most often just pushing their own agenda. he doesn't shy away from the history that is full of awfulness, really, of how the native alaskans were treated.

i don't know if it's the way he wrote these characters - i didn't show more really care much about almost any of them - but there was also a good bit that didn't sit well with me when i was reading this book. mostly it was the lack of depth to the characters. we are with some of these people throughout their entire lives, showing us different parts of alaska history, but we never truly know them. and this is partially because he cares more about explaining the history of the salmon industry in alaska than he does about the people behind it (for example), but it made the reading of it all feel lacking to me. especially when, over and over, he'd have a native woman explain to some white man how and why what he or his company was doing was impinging on her family's way of life (so michener obviously understood the effect the white people had on native culture), and then he'd still have this woman fall in love with this man. it was so unrealistic and even offensive. these women would have fought for their way of life or, at a minimum, never loved these men who came there to ruin them. michener somehow both acknowledges what these white men are doing, while giving them a pass for it because they also have good qualities. the women whose families and history these men were destroying would never have fallen in love with the very people doing the destroying. i understand that historically, he was getting to the mixing of races and native tribes that actually happened, and to do it this way again and again might have made for ease of writing for him, but it made the reading kind of annoying. because it never would have gone down that way.

so the misogyny and racism that is baked in to those repeated storylines frustrated me, but also the historical inaccuracy that those storylines also indicated bothered me. i feel like michener is usually impeccable with research, and that felt sloppy and lazy, on top of being racist.

it makes me question my memory of hawaii, which i loved, because i know it was written in the same way. did that book romanticize colonization in the same way, and i didn't notice it when i read it?

i learned a lot about alaska, though, and am glad for that. show less

This is an epic novel. It contains many wonderful short stories and spans thousands of years from the prehistoric times of the land bridge right up to the 1990s. As always, there are many characters and scenarios; all enjoyable. As an audible listen, it's nearly 60 hours long and required over a week of listening. Michener made several historic political points, among them military, economic and political. All brought home through the book's characters. "Alaska" was made real for me this time because I just finished a tour there and the landscape was familiar from Dawson to Juneau.

A generation before streaming video and binge watching, Michener invented the epic historical miniseries, but in book form. And like those historical mini-series (John Adams & The Crown come to mind) readers often come away form a Michener novel feeling like they've learned a lot, but hardly able to remember what they've learned. So it was - or perhaps so it seemed to be - with Alaska, one of Michener's last and longest historical novels about place. At 800++ pages in hardcover, all in 8 point (or did it just seem 8 point and was maybe 10 point type), you simply couldn't get away with a novel this long today.( Marketer would at the very least carve it up into a three volume boxed set), But, having said that, Alaska is a comprehensive show more (if in places ponderous) history of the Last Frontier from Big Bang to the Prudhoe Bay Pipeline. AT times I was riveted to this novel; at other times, truly bored, but the test, for me, anyway, is what I actually took away with me after reading it. SO before I wrote this review, I sat down and made list of what I remembered learning from Alaska: So, here in random order as I remembered them is a list: 1) the meaning of cabotage, and how it shaped and restrained Alaska's potential; the central importance of the Jones Act; the power of Seattle as the puppet-master of frontier development and ALska's long term existence as an extractive colony for Seattle business elites; the relative civility and orderly nature of Alaska under Russian government, as opposed to the chaos created by COngress's refusal to form a territorial government after the much-mocked purchase; the brevity of the Gold Rush, and the importance of Nome as well as the Klondike in that epic moment; Michener's romanticized view of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; the immense wealth that came to Native corporations s a result of the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement, and the legal exploitation of the new corporations that followed; the strategic importance of Alaska in World War II, the origins of the ALcan Highway, the Japanese invasion of the Aleutians;the effect of tundra tires on bush planes' flight characteristics; the unpredictability and danger of Alaskan weather and the wetness of the southeast; the violence between the Russian settlers and the Tlingit, Michener's vision of a racially diverse future Alaska rooted in traditional values and lifestyles AND adapted to the advantages of modernity. SO, that's what I learned that was subject to relatively instant recall. Was it worth the month of reading that this book took? No. Would I read it again if I hadn't? Until the 21st century Michener write-alike does along, yes, but not ungrudgingly. show less