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WORKING WITH MICHENER

The Making of The Covenant

 

Errol Lincoln Uys and James A. Michener

 

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 The Assignment|The Plotting|The Research|The Manuscript

 

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The Plotting

I

Diamonds in the Sky

 1 2 3 4

 

In May 1978, Michener and I began the plotting of The Covenant sitting down for two four-day sessions with an intervening weekend during which I typed a draft outline. A year later on April 15, 1979, Jim wrote the first of two memos about those meetings suggesting that what I brought to the table was "an exciting adventure story about diamonds," while he'd already outlined a South African novel based on a "Dutch family, a Zulu component and a conflict with the British."

 

15 April, 1979

Long before he met me, Errol Uys devised what could have been an exciting adventure story about diamonds, Arabian emirs, prospectors and some rattling good South African and American characters. He outlined his proposed novel in extensive detail, featuring intricate plot relationships among a considerable collection of characters, but did no writing.

 

Long before I met Uys I had outlined a South African novel based on a Dutch family, a Zulu component and a conflict with the British. I stressed a Cape Town-to-Zimbabwe axis and ruthlessly excluded Natal, Southwest Africa and Kimberley, as I did not want to get involved in British settlements, Namibia or diamonds. But because of other pressures, and my inability as I saw it to get back to South Africa, I put this novel on the back burner and let it stay there for about eight years.

 

Then Tony Oursler of the Reader's Digest called one day to see if he could talk with me about his idea for a novel, and he told me of Uys's work, but more important, of Uys's presence in the United States and his eagerness to work with me on some South African materials. He outlined Uys's diamond novel briefly, and I said I'd not be interested in that line of development at all, but that I had long had my own thoughts on the matter and that if Uys and the South African arm of the Digest wanted to help with research material, I'd be interested. Especially, it was Oursler and Uys who proposed the diamond as the continuing factor in the story, and this appealed to me, but again, not as they supposed. In my version the diamond would never surface.

 

Then Uys and I met, most congenially, and I outlined my concept of the novel that I thought would make a contribution, and I rarely said one word but Uys immediately envisioned what I had in mind, and he rarely made a suggestion but what I could instantly see its applicability. (sic) We spent some four days with my outlining what was necessary, and he returned home to draft this document, using my ideas as a base line, adding his own inventive suggestions. We then met for another four days, after which he revised our outline along the lines my thoughts had been going. I then laid the whole aside and started to write from a fresh start, as it were, keeping basic structures in mind but allowing the story to develop itself. I write this memorandum as I finish Chapter VII, aware of how far I've strayed from our a priori ideas, but also aware of how valuable the preplanning has been. Until a story gets a life of its own, one never know where it is going to lead, and that's always the best way.

 

The memo of April 15, 1979 is typed on a frontispiece of the outline I drafted and titled "Covenant." The following day Jim returned to the same subject of plotting the book in a new and more polished statement that again references my "diamond" novel in more graceful and generous terms.

 

16 April 1979

This is the beautifully worked-out plot that Errol Uys had in his possession when we first met to discuss whether or not he could find it congenial to work with me, and I with him. It should be studied carefully to see the points at which he had anticipated some of my own ideas, where he paralleled some, and where he introduced lines that I found quite extraneous.

 

Examples of the latter are the Iranians in whom I could show no interest whatever, (Green); the American line (Black) although after having composed my last chapter with an Australian I diverted to an American as more fruitful; most of the English line (Green also) which seemed too melodramatic for me; and much of the Bantu (Blue and Brown) which again seemed too dramatic. There were, of course, elements in all the lines which had no attraction.

 

Examples of the first, in which Uys anticipated me beautifully, were the background materials on the creation of the diamond (that is the geology, which has always been a preoccupation with me and not specifically the diamond itself); the man-apes; Australopithecus, although I could express no interest in Pithecanthropus for the good reason that I know nothing whatever about him; the Bushmen; the fleeting allusion to Zimbabwe, which had always been of major importance to me. Indeed, it was Uys's interest in these pre-historical materials which attracted me to him, for without an understanding of how my mind works on such themes he would have been unable to keep pace... Click to read more

 

 

I first saw these memos in 2000 when Dr. Barbara Helly brought them to my attention. A post-graduate student at the University of Rennes, France, Helly was in the U.S. researching The Covenant as basis for her English doctoral thesis. Something about the two memos nagged at me: Why after we worked together for a year did Michener suddenly feel compelled to offer this explanation of the genesis of The Covenant? Why did he go to the trouble of analyzing a schema I'd drawn up following my initial talks with Oursler, a plan that was thrown out of the door the moment Michener and I sat down to serious discussion at Maryland?

 

Then the penny dropped and I saw what may have triggered Michener's concern. In my files, I have a letter written on March 30, 1979, two weeks before Jim made his comments on our plotting sessions.

 

30 March, 1979

Several well-intentioned people have written to me recommending that I read the books of Wilbur Smith, especially The Sun Bird and Gold.

 

For that reason it's important that I not read his books. As you know I've tried to steer completely clear of any novels, not wanting to run even the slightest risk of borrowing from them. The only novel I've read, so far as I can recall, is Prinsloo (Prinsloo of Prinsloo's   Dorp), and I think it is out of copyright. (I've also read, years ago, Jock of the Bushveld, and I suppose it's out of copyright too.)

 

Please do not in any of your work, cite material from novels or short stories, as I have always tried to avoid such work. I adopted this policy long ago and I believe I spoke to Philip about my attitude, but the recent court cases involving Alex Haley's Roots, in which he borrowed bluntly and without good judgment, have alerted us anew to this problem.

The memos of April 15 and April 16, 1979 would not be Jim's last word on my role in the plotting of his novel. For example, Michener's archival notes for The Covenant materials report:

 

 

2. This novel had an unusual genesis. I planned it first in 1970 or thereabouts, prior to my first visit to South Africa. At that time I knew the surrounding countries well, having made several extended trips into the area. But I needed to see the land at first hand, so during that first trip I plotted a series of major short stories, connected into novel form, and some of these exists in the finished novel. But I felt I didn't know enough, so that idea perished and I would certainly not have gone ahead had not Tony Oursler of the Reader's Digest called me on the phone to tell me that his organization had two highly skilled editors* free at the moment, and they had been thinking about a book on South Africa and were free to work with me if I ever planned to do such a book. Item #2 shows the planning that Errol Uys, the principal editor, had completed long before he ever heard of me. My note pasted to the front indicates the relationship of Uys and his material to the plan that I had devised much earlier.

 

3. This represents Uys' reporting and summary of the heavy planning we did over several extended meetings covering many days. There was little of Uys' super-dramatic outline I could use - his original, that is - and his excellent concept of the diamond as a continuing thread, while it worked well for me, was ultimately discarded by the editors, to my deep regret, I must say. But the book was over-long and something had to go. The four families were my idea, from far in the past, and the book would be built around that, but Uys's clever extensions and interlockings mark every chapter.

(* Note: I was the only editor involved at this stage. I subsequently engaged Philip Bateman as an assistant in South Africa. See Research.)

A final commentary on The Covenant's genesis appears in a 1980 message to members of The Literary Guild for the book club edition. Jim describes his five-week visit to South Africa in 1971 and writes:

 

 

I came home all steamed up about writing a novel on the South African experience. I framed it around four basic themes: (1) The Bushman moving south across the desert. (2) The coming of the Huguenots. (3) The Great Trek north of the Dutch. (4) The Mfecane, that amazing eruption of the Zulu in the 1820s. These stepping stones would bring me down to the present, where I would deal with several incidents in contemporary life which had stunned me. In no way would I be able to write about South Africa without speaking of apartheid, the system whereby the races are kept completely separated.

 

But when I came to draft my novel - which dealt with all these matters from the outside, as seen by a visitor - I realized this was not a satisfactory approach. The novel had to be written from the inside, and I did not at that time know enough to write in that fashion.

 

So I dropped the subject and wrote instead Centennial, which dealt with a land I knew well, the sugar-beet fields along the South Platte River in Colorado, and then Chesapeake, which dealt with waters I knew well. I supposed I would never know enough to go back to the South African subject.

 

Then a pair of wonderful accidents revived the topic. The Reader's Digest had two editors with spare time on their hands, one working in the United States, one in South Africa. Each was a citizen of South Africa. Each was a fine writer. Each knew a lot about editing and researching. And they were eager to help on exactly the kind of project I had visualized. Within four days an arrangement was concluded, and I was off to South Africa to resume my education.

 

This is, of course, a promotional piece for the Literary Guild prepared with benefit of hindsight. The statement about four basic themes going back to 1971 is interesting, if compared with what Michener says in his letter of April 22, 1978 with his initial response to my outline and notes sent to Maryland after the meeting with Oursler at the University Club, especially his disinterest in the Bushmen (San) and intention to bypass Shaka and the Mfecane. At that time, he wrote...

 

 

... Basically, the only difference between Uys's outline and mine is that as always I want to take things slowly, avoid the big central occurrences, avoid the big cities that others can write about better than I, avoid the super-dramatic confrontations, lay emphasis upon the physical settings which enclose all of us wherever we might be, and allow the story to unfold with its symbolism implied rather than stated, and its high moral instinct in the yarn rather than spelled out in chapter headings. These are devices and principles which I have worked out over several decades, and they fit my personality and skills, and to abandon them now would be perilous. (Also, they work!)

 

... I am impressed by Uys's belief that there out to be two interpositions between Australopithecus and Zimbabwe; the Bushmen and the putative Phoenicians, Arabians and Ophirites. I have done no work on the Bushmen and had planned to play them down in comparison with the Hottentots, whom I want to make a strong feature as those present when the Dutch arrived.

 

... Naturally I would not want to attempt this important and difficult book if I did not do ample justice to the great black tribes, and I have always had this in mind from the time years ago when I studied the Zulus intensely, visiting their new lands, their old battlefields, their university and their present-day homes. But I'm damned if I see clearly how best to handle this. I had thought I would focus on the Xhosa as the people who were forced south and west by Shaka, and this still appeals. But I belatedly see that the story is only half told if full emphasis is not given to Shaka, his antecedents and his followers in addition to Dingaan. But every instinct tells me to wait on this till after the Dutch have been established. It makes for a better book, I am convinced. I am, however, open for suggestions as how best to introduce the material.

 

 . . . Like Uys I want to stress the Huguenot strain, but as of now I have no clear plan for accomplishing this. I deem the French influence to be rather stronger than the average writer indicates; many of the profound strains of the Dutch-Boer-Afrikaans character show a clear Huguenot component. But this can be easily worked out as the characters move across the pages.

 

... My Chapter V, assuming that the French do not merit a chapter to themselves but an ancillary treatment, would leap directly to the Xhosa Wars and the coming of the English as a kind of afterthought. This could be a very solid and focal chapter, stressing the confrontation of Xhosa-Dutch and Dutch-English. But I have never done much work on the Xhosa, except as they were caught in Zulu history, and would need a lot of specific work to make myself competent. I much prefer the Zulus and the Matabele, but the more I think about Afrikaner history, the more significant the Xhosa become, a fact I did not appreciate some years ago.

 

Then the trek, on which I am fairly well informed. I have always thought it ought to be done as the South African version of the American trek to the west, and the Russian trek to the east, and I want to place it in its proper physical setting, comparing it with those other great treks which were so much more significant in terms of numbers of people involved and miles covered, and so much less important psychologically.

I had always intended, as you know from what I told you, to bypass Natal, which meant also bypassing Dingaan, because I have always been much more interested in the trekkers who did just that. I felt that I could get all the values I wanted from the Xhosa, but what Uys said at our meeting made a deep impression on me and I have restudied this issue. Blood River is too important to be ignored, even though all my antecedents as a writer warn me to do so, and I am beginning to see how I can digress to that tragic scene and then get back on what is for me my main line. In fact, this can be done with certain advantages and should be, primarily for two reasons: Blood River is too deeply ingrained in Afrikaner memory to be ignored and is too good a phrase to be wasted; and I now think that the blacks I want to follow in the powerful later chapters ought to be Zulus.

 

And there my specific planning comes to a halt. (In my earlier notes I leapfrogged almost directly to the workings of the pass laws, which is too enormous a leap for a book of the kind I now visualize.) I want of course to establish the diamond theme, but not too heavily. I do not want to make much if anything of the Rhodes-Kruger confrontation, for others have done this commendably. Nor am I concerned about the Uitlanders or the fracases between the two Republics.

 

Whatever I decide upon this lacuna must lead to the Boer War, which I have fairly well structured. But I am not making any firm decisions because I want to see what happens to our characters in the preceding episodes: Boer heroes; English actors: Black majority.

 

As they move into the Twentieth Century their obligations become clearer, and I have always had this fairly well in mind: much emphasis on 1938-1945; great stress on the intellectual conflicts of the 1948-1960 period; and in the final chapter a focus on perhaps only three central figures, each of which grows out of the preceding periods.

 

I have already given some thought to Oursler's idea that an American enter the final scenes, and now I see that Uys had the same idea. There may be some value in this: a fresh figure, a new view, a premonition of the 1990s. I don't want to use the diamond melodramatically, but if it is well handled in the opening chapter, and then again prior to the Boer War, there could be a way of utilizing it within the limitations I set myself. At any rate, I'm think about this and have so far come up with nothing. But the idea does persist, so maybe it's a good one.

Now you know all I know and the next move is yours.

(click to read the full letter:)

 

The Plotting (Contd.)  1 2 3 4

 

 

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©2007-2008 Errol Lincoln Uys All materials are from my personal archives, unless indicated otherwise. No items may be reproduced without permission. Web site illustrations added to material.

 

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