Talk:The Drifters (novel)

Personal Memories

Personal Memories of James Michener and The Drifters

I was a graduate student in Madrid in 1969 when I met Mich. He was writing a series of articles for the Reader's Digest and his American, but Madrid-based, Digest colleague, DM, introduced us.

Mich, Mari, DM and I traveled to Morocco from the Michener's apartment in Torremolinos. What an adventure it became!

We traveled across the country, staying a the finest hotels yet spending lots of time in some of the grubbiest where we inhaled hashhish while sipping beer with the Americans traveling or living in Morocco. Mich, as always, listened and said little yet when he spoke all were attentive. It was many years later when I reflected upon those times that I realized I was 'bait' to attract my contemporaries to meet with this tall, grey-haired 60+ year old American man in a baseball cap.

We had competitions to see which team could come up with the most imaginative picnics. Mich and I won the top award, don't recall now what it was, when we put together a picnic that included a pink marzipan pig. A feat for a Moslem country although something one sees often in French patisseries.

The Drifters was intended, I think, to be about Michener at the same age. Yes, he had the image of those college age travelers as off to see the world as he had done while a young man. He found most of them went to the American Express office to pick up money from home, used their parents' credit cards and were not interested in the larger world around them. He was disillusioned and said as much to me with frequency.

We met later when he wrote pieces for the Reader's Digest. There was the drive around Portugal, at war in three African countries at the time, then meetings in Madrid and London. I did not accept an invitation to join the trio in Italy where he was writing about Italian Good Taste in the Arts, i.e. design whether fashion or industrial.

He was an intellectual man with great self-discipline. A gentle giant with the quiet intellect that was not to impress but to share and enjoy. Mari was fiercely protective of "Cookie" and his time - he wrote at least 5 hours a day even when traveling. They had met in Chicago, as biographers cite, but had a year plus courtship by post while he was researching Caravans in Afghanistan and points East.

As he wrote in my copy of Iberia - "We didn't see Spain together but we sure as hell saw Morocco. Our picnic award will remain the finest."

I wish that The Drifters had better reflected his disillusionment with the spoiled, shallow young people who weren't exploring the world around them but their own navels. Then again, he did draw attention to the aimlessness of most he met. I think he liked me since I, too, as he had, was in love with exploring the unknown of other lifestyles and lands. - These Unsigned notes were posted by User:FC94404 on May 12, 2009.