NEW YORK -- James Clavell feels he has six more novels in him that will require 20 years of writing.
'My doctor is dedicated to keeping me alive that long,' said the 56-year-old author of 'Shogun' who has another best-seller, 'Noble House,' on his hands.
Clavell's fourth novel was published April 30 and was No. 1 on best-seller lists by the end of its first week of sales, an achievement matched only by James Michener's 'Covenant.' 'Noble House' is also a Literary Guild selection.
The pricey $19.95 novel will have to sell more than 6 million copies to top the sale of 'Shogun,' and Delacorte Press executives think it will. Foreign rights have been sold to almost every major country. The first printing was a staggering 250,000 copies.
The four-pound novel that took Clavell three years and two months to write undoubtedly will be serializedd for television as 'Shogun' was by NBC with Clavell as executive producer. That series drew an audience of 130 million and has been condensed to a 2 hour movie for release overseas.
Negotiations for the television rights to 'Noble House' are underway but everyone involved is keeping mum about it.
'It's part of our age to go on TV, part of a novelist's aim,' said Clavell over a vodka in the bar of a restaurant favored by the publishing world. 'I don't believe writing is something to be read by very few people. I want the biggest audience possible.'
Clavell, a craggy man with a slight limp from an old motorcycle accident, is making TV appearances and touring some major cities to promote sales of 'Noble House.' He said he hates lionization, photo-taking, bookstore appearances and all the attendant hoopla in the making of a best-seller.
'But if you're going to be in the big league, you have to play the game,' said the author who prefers a reclusive way of life. 'I have to perform for the people who are putting up the money. A 250,000 first printing is a big investment. To get a piece of the action you have to be a part of the team.'
'Noble House' is part of what Clavell calls his 'Asian Saga,' which started with 'King Rat' and continued with 'Tai-Pan' and 'Shogun.' Each novel has echoes of the others, sometimes a continuation of characters or their descendants. In his fifth novel, 'Nippon,' Clavell will return to Japan, the locale of 'Shogun' but a hundred or so years later.
'I'm telling the history of the Anglo-Saxon involvement in Asia,' said Clavell. 'I really don't know where the final novels will be set. I want to write one about China, but I have not yet visited there.'
In 'Noble House,' Clavell returns to the British crown colony of Hong Kong, the setting of 'Taipan' which depicted the founding of the colony in 184l. The new novel is set in 1963, the year Clavell and his family lived there after he decided 'to do for Hong Kong what Michener did for Hawaii.'
It is a many-level tale of romance and adventure, plus some espionage, involving the attempted takeover of a powerful trading company called the Noble House from its tai-pan (supreme leader), Ian Dunross. Dunross seems destined to be as popular a literary hero asJohn Blackthorne of 'Shogun.'
'No, Dunross didn't exist,' Clavell said. 'I've taken some real incidents from Hong Kong history but not recognizable persons, living or dead. I don't write about real people, only amalgums of people..'
When he's working on a book, which is most of the time, Clavell writes seven days a week at his hilltop home overlooking Los Angeles. He starts working -- which means either writing or thinking out the plot -- as soon as he gets up and continues until dinner time with a break to go out to a restaurant for lunch.
'Sometimes at dinner I'm just staring into space, thinking about the book, and my wife will say, 'Stop writing!'. Then after dinner I may do more work or maybe watch a little television. I enjoy working long hours. If I take a day off, it takes me four days to get back in stride.'
Clavell said he has a vague idea about a book's plot before he begins writing, but develops it as he writes based on solid research. He spent months studying Hong Kong court records and reading files of old Hong Kong newspapers to ground himself in the colony's history for 'Taipan' and 'Noble House.'
Asked about one book reviewer's charge that he left several plots at loose ends in 'Noble House,' he replied emphatically, 'I lost track of nothing.' If there were some unanswered questions at the end of the book it was because, he explained, 'Every ending is a beginning for me.
'If the reader is still concerned at the end of the book, I'm doing my job as a story teller,' he said. 'I often wonder what has happened to some of my characters. There are threads that I pick up later -- in another book. It's exciting. I don't really work. I just have a wonderful life.
'People ask me if writing is a lonely thing. It's not for me. With so many characters in my head, how can I be lonely?' Although Clavell has become rich by his writing, he has not changed what he describes as 'a fairly modest life style' and he still flies economy class.
'My wife and I say we starve at a higher level each year, with income taxes as they are,' he said with a laugh. 'It's the duty of every American to avoid taxes. Not evade -- avoid. I don't think the success of my books has changed me. But a lot of people around me have changed. They put into you something you're not just because you are successful.'
The British-born, U.S. naturalized writer tried his hand at novel writing for the first time during the 1960 screenwriters' strike in Hollywood, where he had written a dozen films. Since there was no film work, he used the time to write from his own experiences of having been captured in Java as a British soldier in World War II and spending three years in a Japanese prison camp in Singapore.
The result was 'King Rat,' a best seller for which he got $25,000 a year for five years for the film rights. That money gave him the chance to live in Hong Kong 'looking for the next book.'
'When I started writing 'Taipan,' the first four days of the novel took up 500 pages of story time, and I had 128 more years of Hong Kong history to go,' he said. 'I didn't know much about editing myself and I am still learning to write (the manuscript of 'Noble House' ran 2,125 pages and was edited down to 1,206). There was plenty of material left over from 'Tai-Pan' for 'Noble House.'
'You know, some wag said to me anyone can write a first novel, it's the second that separates the men from the boys. There's something in that.'
Clavell became interested in Asia through stories told by his father, a captain in the Royal Navy whohad been stationed in China. His ancestors came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066 and settled in Dorset the following year. They were a naval family serving the British crown, defending the empire and the traders who extended the empire for generations.
Because of this background, Clavell dedicated 'Noble House' to Queen Elizabeth II because 'She's done a wonderful job knitting the British people together.'
