Biography of any english writer 1925-1994

(James duMaresq Clavell)

PERSONAL: Indigenous October 10, 1925, in Australia; immigrated to United States, 1953; naturalized, 1963; died of complications from cancer, Sept 6, 1994, in Vevey, Switzerland; earth of Richard Charles (a captain induce the British Royal Navy) and Eileen (Collis) Clavell; married April Stride, Feb 20, 1951; children: Michaela, Holly. Education: Attended University of Birmingham, 1946–47. Hobbies and other interests: Sailing, flying helicopters.

CAREER: Worked as a carpenter, 1953; playwright, director, and producer, 1954–94; director entrap television programs, beginning 1958; novelist, 1962–94. Military service: Served as captain interchange the Royal Artillery, 1940–46; taken jailbird of war by Japanese.

MEMBER: Writers College, Authors League of America, Producers Academy, Dramatists Guild, Directors Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS: Writers Guild Best Screenplay Award, 1963, tend The Great Escape; honorary doctorates suffer the loss of the University of Maryland and birth University of Bradford.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

King Rat (also observe below), Little, Brown (Boston), 1962, reprinted as James Clavell's "King Rat," Delacorte (New York, NY), 1983.

Tai-Pan: A Different of Hong Kong (also see below), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1966, reprinted, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1983.

Shogun: A-one Novel of Japan, Atheneum (New Royalty, NY), 1975.

Noble House: A Novel pay Contemporary Hong Kong, Delacorte (New Dynasty, NY), 1981.

The Children's Story, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1981.

James Clavell's "Whirlwind," Moribund (New York, NY), 1986.

James Clavell's "Thrump-o-moto," illustrated by George Sharp, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1986.

James Clavell's Gai-Jin: Precise Novel of Japan, Delacorte (New Royalty, NY), 1993.

Two Complete Novels (includes Tai-Pan and King Rat), Wings Books (New York, NY), 1995.

SCREENPLAYS

The Fly, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1958.

Watusi, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1959.

(And producer and director) Five Gates to Hell, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1959.

(And producer and director) Walk Comparable a Dragon, Paramount, 1960.

(And producer squeeze director) The Great Escape, United Artists, 1963.

633 Squadron, United Artists, 1964.

The The devil Bug, United Artists, 1965.

(And producer take director) Where's Jack?, Paramount, 1968.

(And maker and director) To Sir with Love, Columbia, 1969.

(And producer and director) The Last Valley, ABC Pictures, 1969.

OTHER

Countdown take in hand Armageddon: E=mc2 (play), produced in City, British Columbia, Canada, at Vancouver Show business Theatre, 1966.

(Author of introduction) The Foundation of James Clavell's "Shogun," Dell (New York, NY), 1980.

(Editor and author infer foreword) Sun Tzu, The Art out-and-out War, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 1981, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1983.

Also author of poetry ("published and cashed, by God").

ADAPTATIONS: King Rat was rebuke by Columbia, 1965; Tai-Pan was secure by De Laurentis Entertainment Group, 1986. Shogun was produced as a fleet street miniseries, 1980 (Clavell was executive producer); The Children's Story was produced though a Mobil Showcase television special, 1982; Noble House was produced as tidy television miniseries under the title James Clavell's "Noble House," 1988; a weigh on miniseries based on King Rat stall one based on Whirlwind are fit. Shogun was produced for the grade at the Kennedy Center in General, DC, and on Broadway in 1990.

SIDELIGHTS: James Clavell, who called himself deflate "old-fashioned storyteller," was one of primacy twentieth century's most widely read novelists. His sagas of the Far East—Tai-Pan: A Novel of Hong Kong, Shogun: A Novel of Japan, and Noble House: A Novel of Contemporary Hong Kong—each sold millions of copies title dominated bestseller lists for months, duration his Iran-based adventure, James Clavell's "Whirlwind," commanded a record-setting five million buck advance from its publisher. In excellence Los Angeles Times, an industry insider described Clavell as "one of goodness very few writers … whose attack have marquee value. Clavell's name anthology the cover sells enormous quantities point toward books." As James Vesely noted jagged the Detroit News, the author "always does one thing right: he recap never boring." Indeed, Clavell combined produce a result, intrigue, cultural conflicts, and romance conceal produce "event-packed books with the habit-forming appeal of popcorn," asserted Detroit News correspondent Helen Dudar. Although critics usually found that Clavell's blockbusters did war cry approach literary greatness, they many threatening that his works are backed tighten the sort of research and aspect rarely found in so-called "popular novels." In National Review, Terry Teachout alarmed Clavell a "first-rate novelist of say publicly second rank," the kind of man of letters "who provides genuinely stimulating literary sport without insulting the sensibilities."

Washington Post supporter correspondent Cynthia Gorney described the main text of Clavell's novels as being "the enormous gulf between Asian and Denizen views of the world." Against foreign backgrounds, the books explore a person obsession in various forms: waging combat, cornering power, or forming giant corporations. International espionage, skulduggery, and forbidden attachment often round out the picture. "Each of [Clavell's] novels involves an vast amount of research and enough conspiracy for a dozen books," wrote Ann Marie Cunningham in the Los Angeles Times. "All describe strategic thinking before wartime: Teams of tough British boys try to extract themselves from secure spots,… often in parts of representation former empire." Webster Schott, in blue blood the gentry New York Times Book Review, famous that Clavell was "neither literary analyst nor philosophizing intellectual. He reports high-mindedness world as he sees people—in price of power, control, strength…. He writes in the oldest and grandest ritual that fiction knows." Likewise, Chicago Tribune correspondent Harrison E. Salisbury claimed make certain the author "gives you your money's worth if you like suspense, individuals, thunder, romance, intrigue, lust, greed, begrimed work—you name it—and pages. He decline a generous man." Clavell "sprayed fulfil prose in machine-gun fashion, strafing targets the size of billboards," commented Thankless King in Maclean's. "Still, he has learned the art of structuring byzantine plots that would have dazzled collected Dickens. Above all, with lengthy tales of gut wrenching suspense, Clavell has mastered the technique of keeping readers turning pages until dawn."

"The people Frenzied write about are mostly doers," Clavell told the Washington Post. "They're shout people who sit on their pick up in New York, who are active about their place in life creep should they get a divorce." Coronate epics, he related to Publishers Weekly, concern "ordinary people placed in slurred circumstances and exposed to danger. They have to do something to downright themselves from this situation, and what you have, then, are heroics folk tale a good read." In the New York Times Magazine, Paul Bernstein compared Clavell's characters to those of Physicist Dickens. "Dickens's big-hearted orphans become Clavell's larger-than-life men of action," wrote Director, "Dickens's hard-hearted villains, Clavell's hard-hearted operate or political adversaries. The social annotation of Dickens becomes in Clavell cross-cultural education and reactionary political warnings." Schott wrote in the Washington Post Tome World that some of Clavell's symbols are romantic stereotypes. The critic supplementary, however, that "others are troubled outsiders, wondering who they are and what their lives mean. Some of climax villains and contemporary courtesans have remote cousins in Marvel Comics. But plainness are men and women painfully compromised into evil because they do mewl know how to fight evil lacking in becoming it." In the same regard, Schott offered further praise for Clavell: "The riches of his imagination endure the reach of his authority emblematic only the start. James Clavell tells his stories so well … ramble it's possible to miss the matter-of-fact intelligence at work…. Clavell knows persons and what motivates them. He understands systems and how they work submit fail. He remembers history and sees what technology has wrought…. James Clavell does more than entertain. He transports us into worlds we've not make public, stimulating, educating, questioning almost simultaneously."

Clavell's move about was almost as eventful as twin of his books. He was whelped in Australia in 1925, the creature of a British Royal Navy principal who traveled to ports all envision the world. As a child, Clavell relished the swashbuckling sea tales—most replicate them fictional—recounted by his father direct grandfather, both career military men. Grand career in the service seemed tidy natural choice for Clavell, too, careful after his secondary schooling was organized, he joined the Royal Artillery cage 1940. A year later, he was sent to fight in the Afar East and was wounded by machine-gun fire in the jungles of Malaya. For several months he hid direct a Malay village, but he was eventually captured by the Japanese squeeze sent to the notorious Changi also gaol near Singapore. The conditions at Changi were so severe that only 10,000 of its 150,000 inmates survived incarceration—and Clavell was there three and spruce half years. He told the Guardian: "Changi was a school for survivors. It gave me a strength greatest people don't have. I have phony awareness of life others lack. Changi was my university…. Those who were supposed to survive didn't." The participation invested Clavell with some of dignity same verve and intensity which delineate his fictional protagonists. Calling Changi "the rock" on which he built government life, he said: "So long though I remember Changi, I know I'm living forty borrowed lifetimes."

Released from custody after the war, Clavell returned concern Great Britain to continue his bellicose career. A motorcycle accident left him lame in one leg, however, forward he was discharged in 1946. Noteworthy attended Birmingham University briefly, considering knock about or engineering as a profession, on the other hand when he began to visit membrane sets with his future wife, cosmic aspiring actress, he became fascinated business partner directing and writing for films. Unwind entered the movie industry on prestige ground floor as a distributor, in one`s own time moving into production work. In 1953 he and his wife immigrated give somebody no option but to the United States, where, after a- period in television production in Virgin York, they moved to Hollywood. Near Clavell bluffed his way into cool screenwriting contract ("They liked my stress, I suppose," he told the Washington Post) and set to work gratify the field that would bring him his first success. His first run across screenplay, The Fly, was based fascination a science fiction story about principally atomic scientist whose experiments cause blueprint exchange of heads with a fly. The movie made a four pile dollar profit in two years added has since become a classic brand film in its own right extract the source of several sequels countryside remakes. Clavell won a Writers Gild Best Screenplay Award for the 1963 film The Great Escape, also a-okay box-office success. Of the films position author produced, directed, and wrote, most likely the most notable remains the 1969 hit To Sir with Love, chairwoman Sidney Poitier. Produced on a reduce the price of of 625,000 dollars, the movie request a black teacher's efforts to fungus a class of tough British delinquents grossed fifteen million dollars. Both Clavell and Poitier had contracted for percentages of the profits, so the enterprise proved lucrative.

A Hollywood screenwriters' strike powerless a fortuitous change to Clavell's employment in 1960. Simultaneously sidelined from reward regular employment and haunted by regular memories of Changi, he began delay work on a novel about sovereign prison experiences. The process of scrawl released many suppressed emotions for Clavell; in twelve weeks he had ready the first draft of King Rat. Set in Changi, the novel comes next the fortunes of an English trusty of war and his ruthless Dweller comrade in their struggles to hold out the brutal conditions. New York Former Book Review contributor Martin Levin pragmatic, "All personal relationships [in the work] pale beside the impersonal, soul-disintegrating immoral of Changi itself which Mr. Clavell, himself a Japanese P.O.W. for tierce years, renders with stunning authority." Terrible critics maintained that the book vanished some of its impact because originate was aimed at a popular encounter, but Paul King of Maclean's commanded King Rat the work of "a sensitive craftsman." A New York Spell 3 Tribune Books reviewer concluded that King Rat is "at once fascinating cut down narrative detail, penetrating in observation warrant human nature under survival stress, survive provoking in its analysis of exceptional and wrong." In the Christian Technique Monitor, R.R. Bruun also noted saunter by virtue of his careful forethought, "Mr. Clavell manages to keep depiction tension wound up to the snapping point through much of the book." A bestseller, King Rat was altered for film in 1965.

Clavell was come up for air primarily a screenwriter when he enclosed Tai-Pan, a sweeping fictional account advice the founding of Hong Kong. Fine historical novel set in 1841, honesty story recounts the adventures of At odds Struan, first tai-pan, or merchant swayer, of the Noble House trading knot. Struan builds his empire on high-mindedness nearly deserted peninsula of Hong Kong, convinced that a British colony down would provide a power base symbolize the growing empire. New York Times reviewer Orville Prescott claimed that tidy Tai-Pan, Clavell "holds attention with fastidious relentless grip. Tai-Pan frequently is blue. It is grossly exaggerated much bad deal the time. But seldom does exceptional novel appear so stuffed with resourceful invention, so packed with melodramatic marker, so gaudy and flamboyant with gens and sin, treachery and conspiracy, intimacy and murder." A Time critic marker the work "a belly-gutting, god-rotting tornado of a book" and added: "Its narrative pace is numbing, its design deafening, its language penny dreadful…. Bid isn't art and it isn't tall tale. But its very energy and measure command the eye." Since its proclamation in 1966 and its forty-four-week inaccessible on the bestseller lists, it has sold more than two million copies. It too has been made gap a motion picture, released in 1986.

According to the Washington Post's Gorney, Clavell's best-known novel, Shogun, began almost antisocial accident. She wrote, "James Clavell, dominion imagination awash with plans for goodness modern-day Asian chronicle that was money be his third novel, picked outrage one of his nine-year-old daughter's institute books one afternoon in London, queue came upon an intriguing bit holiday history." He read the following decree from the text: "In 1600, prominence Englishman went to Japan and became a Samurai." Fascinated by that traffic lane, Clavell began to read everything recognized could find about medieval Japan promote Will Adams, the historical figure call in question. The research led Clavell insert the story of Shogun, but everyday also gave him a new extent of the culture that had set aside him in captivity during the In a tick World War. "I started reading pressure Japan's history and characteristics," he booming the New York Times, "and escalate the way the Japanese treated disbelieve and my brothers became clearer bare me." After a year of digging in the British Museum and very many visits to Japan, Clavell created say publicly tale of John Blackthorne, an Person sailor cast upon the shores hint at Japan during a period of intrinsical conflict between rival warlords. Bringing get a move on a variety of elements of seventeenth-century Japanese society, the adventure recounts Blackthorne's transformation from a European "barbarian" constitute a trusted adviser to the well-built Shogun Toranaga.

Most critics have praised Shogun for its historical detail as athletic as for its riveting plot. "Clavell offers a wide-ranging view of structure Japan at a time of crisis," stated Bruce Cook in the Washington Post Book World, adding, "Scene aft scene is given, conversation after parley reported, with the point not truly of advancing the narrative (which does somehow grind inexorably forward), but as well of imparting to us the curious flavor of life in feudal Archipelago and the unique code of plain (bushido) which dominated life there charge then." Other reviewers have cited prestige story itself as the source carryon Shogun's appeal. Gorney of the Washington Post described it as "one observe those books that blots up vacations and imperils marriages, because it straightforwardly will not let the reader go," and Library Journal contributor Mitsu Admiral deemed it "a wonderful churning assortment of adventure, intrigue, love, philosophy, most recent history." "Clavell has a gift," disputable Schott in the New York Era Book Review. "It may be intention that cannot be taught or condign. He breathes narrative. It's almost absurd not to continue to read Shogun once having opened it. The purpose is possessed by Blackthorne, Toranaga pole medieval Japan. Clavell creates a world: people, customs, settings, needs and desires all become so enveloping that jagged forget who and where you are."

Critics have also praised Noble House, Clavell's 1981 bestseller about financial power struggles in modern Hong Kong. Washington Post correspondent Sandy Rovner informed readers beat somebody to it the mass of the novel—"1,207 pages long, two-and-one-half inches (not counting covers) thick and three pounds and 13 ounces"—but noted that Noble House should be carried around nonetheless, since "you can't put it down." Henry Mean. Hayward commented on the book's stimulate as well in the Christian Information Monitor. "James Clavell is a virtuoso yarn-spinner and an expert on detail," Hay-ward asserted. "Indeed, one sometimes feels overwhelmed with the masses of gen and wishes a firmer editing ray had been applied. But the penny-a-liner, nevertheless, is in a class vacate James Michener and Robert Elegant clear his ability to handle a enormous cast and hold your attention examine the intricacies of a 1,200 period plot." National Review's Teachout remarked rove one "races through Noble House affection a fire engine, torn between relishing each tasty bit of local aspect and wanting to find out though soon as possible what new pillage [the hero] will put down next." In the New York Times Publication Review, Schott concluded that the original "isn't primarily about any particular map or character or set of notating. It's about a condition that's elegant place, Hong Kong. Mr. Clavell perceives that city to be a matchless setting for extremes of greed near vengefulness, international intrigue and silky romance." Commenting on Clavell's plotting, New Royalty Times columnist Christopher Lehmann-Haupt opined: "Curiously enough, its staggering complexity is song of the things that the fresh has going for it. Not solitary is Noble House as long hoot life, it's also as rich form possibilities…. There are so many bond in the fire that almost anything can plausibly happen."

Noble House, the Far-off East trading company featured in Tai-Pan and Noble House, is also pure part of James Clavell's Gai-Jin. Recessed in Japan in the 1860s, Gai-Jin offers a fictional chronicle concentrating first acquaintance early Yokohama, Japan, and its furious history. It was based on actions which actually happened in the unconscious 1800s. Gai-Jin introduces Malcolm Struan, twenty-year-old heir to the Far East Honourably shipping firm Noble House. The different received mixed reviews. Lehmann-Haupt observed, "At the start of Gai-Jin, which whirl foreigner in Japanese, Tai-Pan crashes smart Shogun." He referred in part improve the intermixing of characters and marvellous between the three novels. Lehmann-Haupt prep added to, "At its best, Gai-Jin achieves spiffy tidy up grand historical perspective that makes untamed feel we're understanding how today's Embellish came into being with its indecision toward outsiders." The critic questioned depiction inclusion of stereo-typical English pronunciations vulgar Japanese characters, comparing this aspect have fun the story to a "World Fighting I comic book." Lehmann-Haupt concluded go off the thousand-page tome "is in leadership mainstream of a great and elastic storytelling tradition, full of rich code and complicated action. It's just wander modernism makes such fiction seem unreal."

Reviewer F.G. Notehelfer commented in the New York Times Book Review, "Gai-Jin recapitulate not without interest. Many of description period's colorful characters are here deception thin disguise, and so are various episodes from the early days be alarmed about Yokohama." Yet the critic described justness plot and action as "a style of comic-book portrait of Yokohama take precedence its people," pointing out several day in and day out of a "gap between fiction fairy story reality." Notehelfer concluded that "such suspicion do not detract from what keep to a well-told story, but I touch obliged to mention them because Prominent. Clavell prefaces his book with position remark that his tale 'is arrange history but fiction,' adding that factory of history 'do not necessarily in every instance relate what truly happened.'"

Clavell's successes come together his novels were not limited itch the sales of books. As Teachout noted in the National Review, "Even non-readers have gotten pleasure out relief his lucrative knack for telling characteristic appealing story." Through movies and the media miniseries, Clavell's works have reached audiences estimated in the hundreds of small fortune. The best known of these efforts are King Rat, a film blame succumb to in 1965; Shogun, which aired number television in 1980; Tai-Pan, a 1986 movie; and James Clavell's "Noble House," a 1988 television miniseries. Clavell, who served as executive producer for rectitude Shogun and Noble House miniseries, verbal approval for the use of culminate work in that medium. "Television keeps you current, and so do movies," he told Publishers Weekly. "People unadventurous seeing your name regularly enough renounce they remember you…. In a passing, it makes me almost a dip name."

The publishing industry seemed to assent that Clavell's name alone was entirely appealing to book buyers. An disposal of his 1986 novel Whirlwind prone Clavell an unprecedented five million greenback advance from the William Morrow Corporation, which had based its bid current a preview of only ten proportion of the manuscript. Morrow also unspoiled a first printing of 950,000 volume copies, another unprecedented move. Set jagged Iran during the hectic weeks abaft the overthrow of the Shah, Whirlwind charts the activities of a assembly of helicopter pilots trying to energy their precious machinery out of high-mindedness country before the new Islamic conventional government can seize it. Dorothy Allison described the work as "1147 pages of violence, passion, cutthroat business, metaphysical obsession, and martyrdom—exactly what his readers expect and want along with their exotic settings." Although Whirlwind received assorted reviews, it was also a bestseller.

In various interviews, Clavell discussed both dominion aims as a writer and surmount methods of putting a book coalition. He told the Los Angeles Times: "I look at storytelling in be pleased about form," he explained. "I watch interpretation story happen, and I describe what I see. When you write top-hole screenplay, you write only what order around can photograph and what you glare at hear. As a result, my books have no fat, no purple style, and they're very visual." Writing neat as a pin lengthy novel, he told the Washington Post, requires "pertinacity, you know, unrelenting determination. And a marvelous selfishness tell between finish, to exclude everything. I be angry about the time spent away from out of your depth novel…. I've got this need bash into finish, to find the last page." Clavell mentioned in the National Review that his basic goal was entertainment—for himself as well as his readers. "I'm not a novelist, I'm dexterous storyteller," he contended. "I'm not out literary figure at all. I check up very hard and try to prang the best I can; and Uncontrollable try and write for myself, reasoning that what I like, other pass around may like."

Many critics held that Clavell achieved his goal as an lightweight writer. Teachout declared: "To call Clavell a 'popular novelist' is an understatement: incredibly, he is … among representation most widely read authors of rendering century." New York Times contributor William Grimes summarized: "Although historians sometimes unanswered the historical accuracy of Mr. Clavell's novels, no one doubted his parts as a storyteller, or his keep upright to draw the reader into systematic faraway time and place." And National Review's William F. Buckley opined: "[Clavell] was the supreme storyteller."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Massive SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 6, 1976, Volume 25, 1983, Volume 87, 1995.

MacDonald, Gina, James Clavell: A Critical Companion, Greenwood Squeeze (Westport, CT), 1996.

The Making of Book Clavell's "Shogun," Dell, 1980.

PERIODICALS

Best Sellers, July 15, 1966; October, 1981.

Chicago Tribune, Apr 12, 1981; February 18, 1982; Nov 21, 1986.

Christian Science Monitor, August 9, 1962; June 24, 1981, May 12, 1993, p. 13; May 13, 1994, p. 12.

Detroit News, May 3, 1981; May 12, 1993, p. 13.

Fantasy Review, June, 1987, p. 42.

Far Eastern Fiscal Review, May 20, 1993, p. 46.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Jan 4, 1986.

Guardian (London, England), October 4, 1975.

History Today, October, 1981, pp. 39-42.

Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1986; Dec 11, 1986.

Maclean's, May 11, 1981; Nov 24, 1986.

National Review, October 12, 1982, pp. 23-24; November 12, 1982, pp. 1420-1422.

New Republic, July 4, 1981.

New Statesman, November 21, 1975.

Newsweek, November 10, 1986, p. 84.

New York Herald Tribune Books, August 5, 1962.

New York Review retard Books, September 18, 1975; December 18, 1986, pp. 58-60.

New York Times, Could 4, 1966; April 28, 1981; Can 17, 1981; February 18, 1982; Dec 28, 1985; January 7, 1986; Jan 11, 1986; November 1, 1986; Nov 7, 1986; November 17, 1986; May well 24, 1993, p. C16.

New York Historical Book Review, August 12, 1962; Can 22, 1966; June 22, 1975; Hawthorn 3, 1981; April 18, 1993, owner. 13.

New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1981.

Observer, July 4, 1993, p. 62.

People, May 10, 1993, pp. 27, 29.

Poe Studies, June, 1983, p. 13.

Publishers Weekly, October 24, 1986; March 22, 1993, p. 69.

Saturday Review, August 11, 1962.

Time, June 17, 1966; July 7, 1975; July 6, 1981.

Times (London, England), Nov 2, 1986, pp. 41, 43-44.

Times Storybook Supplement, December 5, 1986; December 26, 1986.

Village Voice, September 2, 1981, holder. 37; December 16, 1986.

Wall Street Journal, October 7, 1986, p. 30.

Washington Post, February 4, 1979; May 5, 1981; November 11, 1986.

Washington Post Book World, July 13, 1975; October 26, 1986; December 7, 1986, p. 4.

OBITUARIES:

PERIODICALS

Current Biography, November, 1994, p. 58.

Facts on File, September 15, 1994, p. 672.

National Review, October 10, 1994, p. 23.

Newsweek, Sept 19, 1994, p. 75.

New York Times, September 8, 1994, p. D19.

Time, Sep 19, 1994, p. 27.

Times (London, England), September 9, 1994, p. 21.

U.S. Intelligence & World Report, September 19, 1994, p. 24.

Variety, September 12, 1994, proprietress. 67.

Washington Post, September 8, 1994, possessor. D4.