Rating: 
Summary: Glorifying war, ridiculing natives, having fun
Review: "Tales of the South Pacific" is one of those books I don't want to believe. How can a book which puts such an romantic layer over something horrible become a classic?The book is a mix of a novel and a collection of short-stories, becoming more novel-like towards the end. Several characters reappear, some more often than others. They are integrated in stories about either a strange idea of love, heroic tales about ideal soldiers and detailed descriptions of war plans and battles. Following that order, the book is ridiculous, disgusting and boring. When in the second story "Coral Sea" a New Zealander gives a description what New Zealand will become if it is captured by Japan, you wonder what is going on here. Why is this description there, talking about "white men being used on farms"? It dehumanizes the enemy, the Japanese and is just one instance of many in this book where those people are described in the most defying ways one could imagine. Maybe I'm just not used to that, but the ongoing glorification of Americans versus the prejudiced description of the non-human Japanese in this book just made me sick. Of course war can only be fun if the enemies are pure evil, but I live in the real world where everybody is a human being. Next tale, "Mutiny" is about a captain who has to decide if some old trees are chopped down for an airstrip. Of course he does (after all, they're just trees), but what's interesting is the description of a girl called Lucy living on this island. The words used for her are the following: chubby, crazy, fat little moron, chubby moron, etc. Very nice and a good basis for the description of all natives. Lucy isn't a native but a mix between natives and white men, an idea that makes our "feel a bit sick his stomach". On other occasions natives are primitive beasts who are unable to understand anything (because they can't speak English which makes them not worth respecting them), who are dumb and naive, maybe greedy, often mysterious and odd. But there are also good things, because when the natives are female and young, they function as excellent sex objects. Really romantic, isn't it? In the "tragic" story "Fo' Dolla'" a poor American soldier falls in love (read "has a lot of sex") with a young native girl and just can't live his life with her. He doesn't need to explain why since his motives are quite logical. Right? He is an American and she is a native, so what other motives for dumping her, after using her, do you need? The rest of the book consists of terribly boring descriptions of battle plans of which I have no idea why anyone would want to read about them. There are also battles which aren't more exciting because you don't care about the characters, since you don't know them. The author doesn't care either, since most of the deaths are just mentioned without going into detail. "Then so-and-so many were killed... three were shot... we lost so-and-so many soldiers... etc." After all, they're soldiers, it is war, they're supposed to die. Right? And if they're white they're at least lucky enough to be heroes because, well, white soldiers are good and others... not. My favourite quote: "I thought of the dead Japs bobbing upon the shorelines... Even some of them had been good men... All men rotting in Iron Bottom Bay were good men too. etc. etc." Repeating it doesn't make it better or less disgusting. What is left is a view of war which is very far from realism. Criticiscm about war is unknown to the author. They did what they had to do, and there was enough fun, alcohol and girls to enjoy it even more. I don't deny that the book is sometimes entertaining, because some of the recurring characters are interesting. But it also is glorifying war, it depicts natives and Japanese as negative as possible and it replaces love with sex. If that has to be part of a classic, I have no problems with getting rid of some classics pretty fast. Read Steinbeck instead, or Spike Milligan's memories of the war, if you like. "Tales of the South Pacific" is most of the time just disgusting.
Rating: 
Summary: A Little Disappointed...
Review: ...but that's probably because I was more familiar with the musical first. While I always know there's so much more background to be found in any source material, I found my interest in the various stories ranged from extreme enjoyment (the stories involving Nellie, Emile, Emile's daughters, Joe Cable, the "passionate" doctor, and Bill Harbison) to vague interest (most of the Tony Fry stories) to just plain disenchantment (the sacrificial Boar story). I suppose part of it stems from the fact that in general I happen to not enjoy war stories, the exception being The Killer Angels which I also recently read. Just a personal note, so if you are the type who doesn't agree, well, there you go. :) Overall, I found that when I enjoyed a story, I really enjoyed it - and when I didn't, I tended to be slightly bored by the writing. I was absolutely a little disappointed since it was one of the Pulitzers I was looking most forward to reading; though I do feel the scope and portrayal of the people and events do warrant the award.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this book before watching the movie South Pacific!
Review: Because I had seen the movie South Pacific, which was based on this book, I already knew the main characters and the plot of the story once I reached for this tear-jerking book. But, Michener surprised me with this war-time, romancing drama that depicts realism in a manner of brashness. Michener never lost my attention, but he managed to change my views of Hollywood's renowned attributes of a "perfect" relationship and that happily-ever-after ending. Michener only takes you a little further. Read for yourself...
Rating: 
Summary: Like hearing stories while looking through a photo album
Review: Because this is Michener's first published book, because it is different from his subsequent works, and because many people are more familiar with the Rogers and Hammerstein musical than with the book, I will reveal my biases up front. I do not care for epic historicals, and so have never enjoyed Michener's writing before reading Tales of the South Pacific. The musical was Rogers and Hammerstein's second or third collaborative effort, and to me was a poor follow up to Oklahoma. That said, reading this book gave me the feeling I have when my father and I rummage through his collection of black and white war photos, postcards, and 78 RPM disks from his days as a Chief Petty Officer in the US Navy in and around the South Pacific. Each artifact stimulates a story, many of which are linked to another, and another. Sometimes the stories are about the war theater in Europe or Africa or home in the states. Most often, they are simply about friendships, loss and the discoveries of an eighteen year old doing a man's work in the first few months away from his parents' farm. Like my father's stories, Michener's Tales of the South Pacific could be set anywhere, but they are about being somewhere other than where one comes from. They are about finding belonging in new surroundings and accepting that great people are rarely 100 percent great. Michener's heroes are the very human people who were decent to one another, believed in the value of their nation's cause and the people around them, demonstrated leadership, but didn't take the trappings of the navy or rank very seriously. His nemeses were not just the Japanese, but American biggots, mean SOBs and phonies. Like Hersey's, Bell for Adano, the stories were practically current events when they were published, and Michener's perspective on sex and the races were shocking material for many Americans who had been fed years of propaganda about their boys (and girls) overseas and who only after 1945 could truly emerge from the depression of 1930s to enter a new, modern and more aggressively democratic age. Tales of the South Pacific foreshadowed the new world to come while honoring the great people who helped to make it possible. At the end of the book, the reader is glad to be among the survivors, standing in the graveyard among heroes, but worried that the supply of greatness might someday be used up.
Rating:
Summary: Better the second time around
Review: I first read this book when I was young, not long after I saw the movie "South Pacific". I didn't particularly like it because the characters were the same ones as in the movie but they didn't "fit" in the same way. After many, manyy years, I read it just the other night and loved it! It had been long enough since I saw the film that the characters could stand on their own. Mitchener wrote this soon after the war when his memories were still fresh and he displays a great deal of affection for the "typical" sailor caught thousands of miles from home. For many, they would never get home. To this American tale, he adds a lot of tropical spice: Bloody Mary, the Frenchman's Daughter, Emil De Becque himself. Mitchener shows the American fighting man as hero, coward, nice guy, louse, sacrificial, selfish, and mostly a combination of all of these traits. Although I have read many of Mitchener's books, this is still his best: young, filled with Mitchener's memories from his recently-concluded naval service during World War II. Deservedly one of the classics that came from World War II.
Rating:
Summary: Better the second time around
Review: I first read this book when I was young, not long after I saw the movie "South Pacific". I didn't particularly like it because the characters were the same ones as in the movie but they didn't "fit" in the same way. After many, manyy years, I read it just the other night and loved it! It had been long enough since I saw the film that the characters could stand on their own. Mitchener wrote this soon after the war when his memories were still fresh and he displays a great deal of affection for the "typical" sailor caught thousands of miles from home. For many, they would never get home. To this American tale, he adds a lot of tropical spice: Bloody Mary, the Frenchman's Daughter, Emil De Becque himself. Mitchener shows the American fighting man as hero, coward, nice guy, louse, sacrificial, selfish, and mostly a combination of all of these traits. Although I have read many of Mitchener's books, this is still his best: young, filled with Mitchener's memories from his recently-concluded naval service during World War II. Deservedly one of the classics that came from World War II.
Rating:
Summary: Micheners' Best
Review: I picked this up used last summer and, in light of ongoing world events, it seems as appropriate as any war story to read now. Indeed it may be more useful than most, since it is based on a point of view shared by many older Americans but not as many younger ones. This is from WWII, the Pacific Theater of course, a time and place where Americans felt they were fighting the good fight, and maybe they were. Still, this book presents a very serious subject - war - with unapologitic racism and, generally, a "white man's burden" perspective.
The writing itself is spare and Hemingway-esque, a good choice for the subject matter. Like Micheal Herr in the Vietnam-era "Dispatches", the author writes about the fighting from a distance, though Michener appears to have been a naval officer. Unlike Herr, Michener is uncritical of the idea of war, but he does show some of the seamier side of the soldiers' lives, for example their relationships with native women. The writing carries one along and builds (unevenly) to the climax, an island invasion that is bloody in a clinical way. No agonizing over spilled guts here, the attitude is "we had a job to do and we did it and blah blah." For those used to post-Vietnam literature, this may seem a bit cold.
I have read other Michener books, I recall Poland and The Covenant specifically, and Tales is clearly superior in readability and literary quality. Michener's historical novels suffer from forced, dragging plots, cardboard characters, and endless page counts, but Tales seems to be alive with real, if not always sympathetic, people.
All in all, a book worth reading if you are interested in the war, but hardly a complete source for any perspective.
Rating:
Summary: "Dispatches" it ain't
Review: I picked this up used last summer and, in light of ongoing world events, it seems as appropriate as any war story to read now. Indeed it may be more useful than most, since it is based on a point of view shared by many older Americans but not as many younger ones. This is from WWII, the Pacific Theater of course, a time and place where Americans felt they were fighting the good fight, and maybe they were. Still, this book presents a very serious subject - war - with unapologitic racism and, generally, a "white man's burden" perspective.
The writing itself is spare and Hemingway-esque, a good choice for the subject matter. Like Micheal Herr in the Vietnam-era "Dispatches", the author writes about the fighting from a distance, though Michener appears to have been a naval officer. Unlike Herr, Michener is uncritical of the idea of war, but he does show some of the seamier side of the soldiers' lives, for example their relationships with native women. The writing carries one along and builds (unevenly) to the climax, an island invasion that is bloody in a clinical way. No agonizing over spilled guts here, the attitude is "we had a job to do and we did it and blah blah." For those used to post-Vietnam literature, this may seem a bit cold.
I have read other Michener books, I recall Poland and The Covenant specifically, and Tales is clearly superior in readability and literary quality. Michener's historical novels suffer from forced, dragging plots, cardboard characters, and endless page counts, but Tales seems to be alive with real, if not always sympathetic, people.
All in all, a book worth reading if you are interested in the war, but hardly a complete source for any perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for the War in Paradise
Review: I picked up this book looking for some vivid imagery of the South Pacific to help build anticipation for my upcoming vacation to Bora Bora, which is said to have been the basis for Michner's fantastical Bali Hai. While this book wasn't quite what I was expecting, it was a terrific narrative of the war in the Pacific, and in several places painted a colorful picture of the natural beauty of South Pacific islands. A contrast to most wartime fiction I've read, the vast majority of this book occurs a great distance from the action. This distance causes the characters to reflect upon their role and purpose in the war, and forces them to preoccupy themselves with whatever they have available to them. The need to amuse themselves leads to this collection of entertaining antidotes, from courting nurses in a nearby hospital, to speculating about the mysterious life of a distant spy, to distributing medicine to a beautiful island of native women. Michener saves his best for last, as he releases the tension built upon the endless island waiting in an abrupt storm of war as he masterfully details the chronology of an island invasion. After the battle the characters reveal what they have learned about heroism and wartime contribution. While the characters in this book are lovable and memorable, Tales of the South Pacific doesn't leave you wondering what happens to them next. Rather, you wish the novel's focus could pan to another nearby island and start the whole process again, meeting and watching the next crew of airmen, officers, and enlisted men, as they wait for their chance to fight the enemy. I had to assume that the details of this novel were historically accurate (despite being a work of fiction), since it is said Michener wrote this novel while in a quansett hut on one such island. If you are going to read this novel, I would recommend making a conscious effort to remember names and places, because as the book progresses, familiar faces and intertwining references to past stories become more and more frequent. I have still not seen the musical, so I can make no comparison with the film or stage show.
Rating:
Summary: A Good World War II Novel
Review: I read this book one year over Christmas and I have not been able to forget it since. Sometimes it becomes a bit slow, but, once you get to the end of it and look back, you are very happy that you persevered through those few tedious parts.
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