A Brief for Constitutionality : Michener’s New 192-Page ‘Legacy’

The news is not so much that James A. Michener has written another novel. The news is that with “Legacy” (scheduled for September publication by Random House), Michener has written a novel that is 192 pages long.

By contrast, “Texas” (Random House, 1985), the most recent of the 80-year-old author’s 32 works of fiction and nonfiction, measured in at a doorstopping 1,096 pages.

“As a matter of fact,” Michener said of his most recent literary effort, “it’s just about the length of one of the really great chapters--Chapter 8, it’s a goodie--in my Alaska book.”

At around 600 pages, a more normal-sized Michener epic, “Alaska” comes close to fulfilling Michener’s prediction when “Texas” was published that “I think the surgeon general is going to have to have a special label for the next one: ‘This book is dangerous if dropped on toe.’ ” Random House will publish “Alaska,” Michener’s chronicle of the North Pacific, in the spring of 1988.

Reached by telephone in Miami, where Michener is a guest professor at the University of Miami while doing research for a book on the Caribbean, the author described “Legacy” as “a remarkably short novelette” that arose from his indignation over the Iran- contra arms scandal. He began the book in early December, not long after details of the U.S. arms dealing with Iran and the Nicaraguan rebels started surfacing.

“When I see something in which the direct law of the land has been violated, I am not happy,” Michener said. “Bells start to ring and signals start to go off, and I feel obligated to say something.”

Though “Legacy” deals equally with Michener’s veneration of the U.S. Constitution, the Iran- contra tie-in is evident from the very first page, Michener said.

“The opening scene is an Army major who is involved with the contra affair,” he said, “and we see him as he is informed of the fact that the fat is now in the fire, and he will be called to testify before the Senate.”

Swiftly, he said, “the flashbacks begin,” tracing “the effects of the American Constitution on a family that persists from about 1720 until 1987,” and offering “the full spectrum of American history.”

With the bicentennial observance of the Constitution scheduled for September, Michener said he had been invited by “four or five different sources” to make some literary contribution to the celebration.

“It was always in the back of my mind,” he said. “But it never came into focus until last December.” Then, Michener said, “it was very urgent within me.”

Supreme Court

Michener said the circumvention of certain constitutional provisions was what troubled him in the face of the Iran- contra matter. “The interrelationship of the three branches of government is to me totally precious,” he said. “Often at night instead of saying my prayers, I thank heaven for the Supreme Court, which is a way of revoking temporary aberrations and so forth.”

But the current atmosphere in Washington puts the Constitution in jeopardy, Michener said. “For example,” he said, “you have Mr. Meese’s attack, saying you should go back only to the intentions of the framers of the Constitution. Well, the framers of the Constitution were strongly in favor of slavery, and we shouldn’t go back to that.

“The framers of the Constitution never had a Bill of Rights,” Michener went on. Those amendments “came very belatedly, and under great agitation from the Populists.”

While respecting the substance and theory of the document, Michener said, “I don’t want to go back to that day in September of 1787 and say that day is cast in concrete, because there were parts of it that were not so hot.”

One Stays Stable

Over the years, Michener said he has written “a lot about society--in Poland, in South Africa, in Israel, in the United States.” He has also taught and studied history, and one conclusion he has reached is that “I am terribly impressed by the fact that all the governments on the face of the Earth that were in existence . . . when we started underwent total, radical change. You’ve had the Russian Revolution, the Chinese revolution, even Great Britain getting rid of the king’s power. Every government has changed, except ours. Now that’s a remarkable fact.”

As to why he chose fiction to address the question of the Constitution, Michener said, “I have done both, fiction and nonfiction. Whenever I’m writing nonfiction, I wish to heavens it were fiction so I could have more liberty. Whenever I’m writing fiction, I wish it were nonfiction so it would have a better structure. I’ve oscillated between the two.”

His next novel, on the Caribbean, should be finished “three or four years down the line,” Michener said. After that, “I have about 15 or 18 great books I’d like to write.” In itself that prospect is not insurmountable, Michener said, “but that would carry me to about the age of 110.”