Tales of the South Pacific

1946 short story collection by James A. Michener

Tales of the South Pacific

First edition cover

Author| James A. Michener
Language| English
Genre| Interrelated short stories
Publisher| Macmillan, New York

Publication date

| January 28, 1947
Publication place| United States

Tales of the South Pacific is a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of sequentially related short stories by James A. Michener about the Pacific campaign in World War II. The stories are based on observations and anecdotes he collected while stationed as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy at the Espiritu Santo Naval Base on the island of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides Islands (now known as Vanuatu).

Written in 1946 and published in 1947, the book was loosely adapted in 1949 as the Broadway musical South Pacific, which itself formed the basis of two films dating from 1958 and 2001.

## Book

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The stories take place in the environs of the Coral Sea and the Solomon Islands. Michener as narrator gives a first-person voice to several of the stories as an unnamed "Commander", performing duties similar to those that he himself performed during World War II. Two stories are narrated by a named Navy pilot.

The stories are interconnected by recurring characters and several loose plot lines. One plot line in particular is the preparation for and execution of a fictitious amphibious invasion, code-named "Alligator". The focus of the stories is, however, the interactions between Americans and a variety of colonial, immigrant, and indigenous characters.

The chronology of the stories begins with the building of an airfield on Norfolk Island before the Battle of the Coral Sea, in 1942, and goes through the early 1944 invasion of one of Michener's fictional islands. Although the stories are primarily about the U.S. Navy, most of the action is shore-based, and none of the stories concerns ships larger than a Landing Craft Infantry.

### Structure

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Tales of the South Pacific comprises nineteen stories, which are thematically linked in pairs: the first and final stories are reflective, the second and eighteenth involve battle, the third and seventeenth involve preparation for battle, and so on.

1\. The South Pacific  | 19\. A Cemetery at Hoga Point

|

2\. Coral Sea  | 18\. The Landing on Kuralei
3\. Mutiny  | 17\. Frisco
4\. An Officer and a Gentleman  | 16\. The Strike
5\. The Cave  | 15\. Those Who Fratenize
6\. The Milk Run  | 14\. The Airstrip at Konora
7\. Alligator  | 13\. Wine for the Mess at Segi
8\. Our Heroine  | 12\. A Boar's Tooth
9\. Dry Rot  | 11\. Passion
10\. Fo' Dolla'

### Recurring Characters

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The following characters appear in more than 2 stories:

Tony Fry (Navy): Stories 3, 5, 12 and 13.

Bus Adams (Navy pilot): Stories 6, 13, 14 and 15.

Luther Billis (SeaBee): Stories 9, 12 and 14.

## Adaptations

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### Musical

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The highly successful musical play South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein, which opened on Broadway on April 7, 1949, was based on the stories in Tales of the South Pacific. In particular, the stories used were "Fo' Dolla'", about Bloody Mary, Liat, and Lieutenant Joe Cable; and "Our Heroine", about Nellie Forbush and Emile de Becque. Characters from other stories, such as Bill Harbison, Bus Adams, and Luther Billis, play minor or supporting roles.

Some of the characters from the stories were merged and simplified to serve the format of the musical. For example, the coastwatcher in the musical is an American Marine (Lt. Cable) assisted by an expatriate French plantation owner (Emile de Becque). In Michener's short story "The Cave" the coastwatcher is an English expatriate assisted by native islanders, and is a disembodied voice on a short-wave radio identifying himself only as "The Remittance Man". He is never seen by the other characters in Michener's short story until a search-and-rescue party finds his head impaled on a stake. The character of Liat, Cable's lover in the film, is a much more sophisticated and intelligent young woman in the book, but is reduced to a childlike caricature in the movie. The character of Emile de Becque in Michener's short story has eight mixed-race daughters by four different women, none of whom he married, when he meets the nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush; in the musical, he has two children (one daughter and one son) by a Polynesian woman whom he had married but who had died.

#### Films of the musical

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The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific was made into a feature film in 1958 with scenes shot on Kauai. It was adapted as a made-for television film 2001 filmed in Queensland and Moorea.

### Television

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American television producer Bob Mann wanted Michener to co-create a weekly television anthology series from Tales of the South Pacific, with Michener as narrator. Rodgers and Hammerstein, however, owned all dramatic rights to the novel and did not give up ownership.[1] Michener did lend his name as the creator of a different and unrelated television series, Adventures in Paradise, in 1959. The series had nothing to do with World War II, but rather followed the fictional adventures of a current-day schooner sailing around the South Pacific.[1]

## See also

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* Guadalcanal Campaign

## References

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1. ^ a b Hayes, John Michael. James A. Michener: A Biography. Bobbs-Merrill, 1984. pp. 158–159.

## External links

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* Photos of the first edition of Tales of the South Pacific

* v
* t
* e

James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific

Characters|

* Bloody Mary

Adaptations|

* South Pacific (1949 musical)
* Awards and nominations
* South Pacific (1958 film)
* South Pacific (2001 film)

Songs|

* "Some Enchanted Evening"
* "There Is Nothing Like a Dame"
* "Bali Ha'i"
* "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair"
* "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy"
* "Younger Than Springtime"
* "Happy Talk"
* "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught"

Albums|

* South Pacific (1958 soundtrack)

* Category

* v
* t
* e

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Previously the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel from 1917–1947

1918–1925|

* His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
* The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919)
* The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921)
* Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922)
* One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923)
* The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (1924)
* So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)

1926–1950|

* Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926; declined)
* Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927)
* The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928)
* Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929)
* Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930)
* Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931)
* The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1932)
* The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling (1933)
* Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford Miller (1934)
* Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935)
* Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936)
* Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937)
* The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938)
* The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939)
* The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940)
* In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942)
* Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (1943)
* Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944)
* A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945)
* All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947)
* Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948)
* Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949)
* The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1950)

1951–1975|

* The Town by Conrad Richter (1951)
* The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952)
* The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953)
* A Fable by William Faulkner (1955)
* Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956)
* A Death in the Family by James Agee (1958)
* The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959)
* Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1960)
* To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961)
* The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962)
* The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963)
* The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965)
* The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (1966)
* The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967)
* The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968)
* House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969)
* The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1970)
* Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972)
* The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973)
* No award given (1974)
* The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)

1976–2000|

* Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976)
* No award given (1977)
* Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)
* The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979)
* The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980)
* A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981)
* Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982)
* The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983)
* Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984)
* Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985)
* Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986)
* A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987)
* Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988)
* Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989)
* The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
* Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991)
* A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992)
* A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993)
* The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994)
* The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995)
* Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996)
* Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997)
* American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998)
* The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999)
* Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)

2001–present|

* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001)
* Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002)
* Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003)
* The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004)
* Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005)
* March by Geraldine Brooks (2006)
* The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
* The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2008)
* Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009)
* Tinkers by Paul Harding (2010)
* A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
* No award given (2012)
* The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (2013)
* The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2014)
* All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015)
* The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016)
* The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017)
* Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2018)
* The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019)
* The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2020)
* The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2021)
* The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (2022)
* Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Trust by Hernan Diaz (2023)
* Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (2024)

* v
* t
* e

James A. Michener

Novels|

* The Fires of Spring (1949)
* The Bridges at Toko-ri (1953)
* Sayonara (1954)
* Hawaii (1959)
* Caravans (1963)
* The Source (1965)
* The Drifters (1971)
* Centennial (1974)
* Chesapeake (1978)
* The Watermen (1979)
* The Covenant (1980)
* Space (1982)
* Poland (1983)
* Texas (1985)
* Legacy (1987)
* Alaska (1988)
* Caribbean (1989)
* Journey (1989)
* The Novel (1991)
* South Pacific (1992)
* Mexico (1992)
* Recessional (1994)
* Miracle in Seville (1995)
* Matecumbe (2007)

Non-fiction|

* The Voice of Asia (1951)
* The Bridge at Andau (1957)
* Rascals in Paradise (1957)
* Iberia (1968)
* Collectors, Forgers – And A Writer: A Memoir (1983)
* The Eagle and the Raven (1990)
* My Lost Mexico (1992)
* The World Is My Home (1992)
* Literary Reflections (1993)

Short story collections|

* Tales of the South Pacific (1947)
* Return to Paradise (1951)

Adaptations|

* South Pacific (musical) (1949)
* The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1953)
* Return to Paradise (1953)
* Sayonara (1957)
* Until They Sail (1957)
* South Pacific (film) (1958)
* Adventures in Paradise (1959-1962)
* Hawaii (1966)
* The Hawaiians (1970)
* Centennial (1978)
* Space (1985)
* Texas (1994)
* South Pacific (film) (2001)

Related|

* Mari Yoriko Sabusawa (wife)
* Michener Center for Writers
* Journey Prize
* James A. Michener Art Museum

Authority control databases

International|

* VIAF

National|

* Germany
* Israel
* United States
* Australia

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