I "discovered" James Michener's writing in 1975 while I was stationed in Burma. There were no bookshops in Rangoon but there were plenty in Singapore which I visited frequently in the course of my work. The first Michener-novel I found had been published just a few years earlier: The Drifters. I completely fell under its spell.
The novel follows six young characters from diverse backgrounds and various countries as their paths meet and they travel together through parts of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Mozambique: Joe, a disenfranchised twenty-year-old youth who is enrolled at the University of California during the Vietnam War; Britta, an 18-year-old girl from Tromsø, Norway; Monica who lives with her father in the Republic of Vwarda; Cato, the son of the Reverend Claypool Jackson; Yigal, the son of a dean at a college in Haifa, Israel; and Gretchen, a very intelligent girl from Boston who, at the age of 19, has already completed her bachelors degree, and is working for Senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign.
The story is told from the perspective of the narrator, George Fairbanks, who is an investment analyst for the fictional company World Mutual Bank in Switzerland. Mr. Fairbanks is connected with nearly every character in some way, and they all seem to open up to him throughout the novel in one way or another.
Some memorable quotes and quotes of quotes contained in the book:
Our country is wherever we are well off. -Cicero
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. -Stevenson
Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.
A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country guided by blind impulses of curiosity is only a vagabond. -Oliver Goldsmith
Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the long course of rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, and the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass themselves by. -St. Augustine
Young men should travel, if but to amuse themselves.-Byron
The book in its more than 800 pages explores many themes: the Vietnam war, the generation gap, drug addiction, the black problem in America, the future of Israel. It is a remarkabe novel of the Western world's social issues in the late sixties.
Strangely, I didn't identify with any of the young people but with Harvey Holt, who is introduced only in the ninth chapter. He works as a technical representative on radars in remote locations. He is an old friend of Mr. Fairbanks, and has been everywhere from Afghanistan to Sumatra to Thailand. He is a fan of classical music and old movies and very old-fashioned. Enough said?
P.S. Here is an insightful review of the book.
