“You must grab the reader in the first three paragraphs of a novel,” I was reminded once again at a presentation by a publisher last week. We live in a world of short attention spans and easily distracted focus. Raised on a diet of Sesame Street and graduating to USA Today, Twitter and Tumblr, our reading habits have been further shortened by social media. So much to read, so little time to read it all. There is no room in today’s literary market for the likes of James Michener.

Pulitzer Prize winner James Michener (1907-1997) was the author of such bestselling novels as Tales of the South Pacific (adapted as South Pacific in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical and Academy Award-winning film), Sayonara, Hawaii, Centennial and The Source. A prolific writer of more than 40 books, often selected for Book-of-the-Month club, Michener was known for his expansive sagas that followed generations of families, set in geographic locales that were described in great detail, including meticulously researched factual history.

Today, agents and publishers would reject Michener’s manuscripts without finishing page one. He viewed place as a major influence on characters, typically using the first 50-100 pages of his novels to describe the geophysical origins of a locale before introducing characters that would carry the plot forward. Readers could skip the lengthy place descriptions but they rarely did because of the strength of Michener’s writing. Today’s authors can’t afford to keep their main characters and action waiting for 50 sentences, let alone 50 pages. Readers have no patience for it. Agents and publishers have no patience for it. Alas, I no longer have patience for it. Sadly, Michener would fail today.