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So Jim Michener, who had met Saxe Commins, our editor, and liked him, but had not yet met me, came up and met me and we got along immediately and Saxe he liked very much. We promptly agreed that we would publish his next book. He said that he was going to write a novel. About eleven days later, this book of short stories that nobody had heard very much about won the Pulitzer Prize. It was called Tales of the South Pacific. A little later of course Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote South Pacific and Jim Michener became overnight an enormous literary property.

This was a case of pure luck. Every time that I would meet Brett, he would grumble, “You lucky bastard.” Well, I was. It was luck. But Brett had also let him go!

Do you know Michener well?

Yes, very well.

Of course he's become one of the great literary properties of the world. Two of his novels just made fabulous sums of money--Hawaii and The Source. The reprint sale on The Source is probably the biggest in history. We got $700,000 for the reprint rights, which is a fantastic sum of money. Hawaii, of course--well, The Source is even bigger. It goes right on selling. He's so popular that, although his novels have been out in paperback for a long, long time, they go right on selling in our hardbound editions.