In Memoriam: James Magnuson

If you were to go searching for the person who had influenced the most American writers in our time, you wouldn’t have to look any farther than a modest two-story house on the northern edge of the Forty Acres. There, in the former home of Texas legend J. Frank Dobie, James Magnuson spent 23 years leading the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, teaching and mentoring scores of fiction writers, screenwriters, poets, and playwrights, as well as working with just as many masters in those fields to help the Michener fellows grow into their voices and lay the groundwork for their careers as professional writers. Though Magnuson left the Michener in 2017, his legacy lives on there, in the programs and traditions and relationships he put in place during his stewardship of the center in that formative time. On Sunday, Jan. 18, Magnuson left this world as well, following a lengthy battle with ALS. He was 84.

Magnuson had an extensive and varied literary career before the Michener Center was established in 1994 (originally as the Texas Center for Writers). Early on, he was a playwright whose scripts were mounted at Princeton University, in churches and theatres in East Harlem, and at Playwrights Horizon. In 1974, he became a published novelist with Without Barbarians and followed that with nine more novels over the next five decades. In 1985, he was drawn to UT to teach creative writing in the English Department. Then in the early Nineties, there was that season he was story editor for the primetime soap Knots Landing. But it was when king of the bestseller lists James Michener dropped $20 million on UT to create the greatest graduate writing program in the country that fate came calling for Magnuson. Reading. Writing. Teaching. Working with young writers. Working with experienced writers. Working with writers in fiction and drama and poetry and screenwriting. It touched all the bases that mattered to Magnuson. Okay, there was the administrative side and dealing with multiple academic departments, but that was worth the trouble to get everything else.

And everything else turned out to be faculty members and visiting writers of the caliber of J. M. Coetzee, Colm Toibin, Denis Johnson, Adrienne Kennedy, W.S. Merwin, Marie Howe, Richard Ford, Geoff Dyer, Elizabeth McCracken, Stephen Harrigan, and Ben Fountain, to name a few. And the Michener fellows themselves, who went on to dazzle the literary world, among them Joseph Skibell, a screenwriter whose time at the center allowed him to finish the award-winning novel A Blessing on the Moon; Kieran Fitzgerald, screenwriter of Snowden and The Homesman, who came to the Michener writing fiction, as did Alex Smith of the films Walking Out and Winter in the Blood; Philipp Meyer, whose novel The Son was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; poet Carrie Fountain, whose collection Burn Lake was a National Poetry Series winner; Kevin Powers, author of the powerful Iraq War novel The Yellow Birds; and on and on. A full list of the publications, prizes, and awards earned by Michener fellows during Magnuson’s two decades-plus at the helm is too long for this space. Suffice to say that many, many important writers passed through the doors of the Dobie house while Magnuson served there. And fellows and faculty alike were touched by his devotion to the program and to the craft of writing.

At the Michener, Jim Magnuson modeled being a writer. He did the writing-first-thing-every-day routine, scratching out drafts in longhand on yellow legal pads. He put story above everything, including his own love of language, editing out the words that weren’t true to the characters he created. And when he was writing a satire set at a prestigious writing program at a large Texas university, he spared no one, not even himself. He made the MFA program director, as he put it, a bit of a buffoon. “I thought it was only fair,” Magnuson told Amy Gentry in an interview for the Chronicle in 2014. “I’ve got to go after myself if I’m going to go after anybody else.” (And if you haven’t read the satirical novel in question, Famous Writers I Have Known, treat yourself.)

More importantly, Magnuson modeled being a human being. You never got far in a conversation with the man without hearing him talk about generosity. He always recalled that as being one of the greatest qualities of James Michener, the center’s founding patron and namesake, and that inspired Magnuson to incorporate some of that quality into the program. Magnuson spoke of the importance of being generous with writers, especially as they were striking out into new territory, trying something different. Rather than force his own ideas or approach on a fellow or pick a new piece of writing apart in a thousand little ways, Magnuson would focus on the big picture, the one big idea that might provide the writer with direction, a place to go. Magnuson was, in his own words, “a natural encourager.” Poet Naomi Shihab Nye, a longtime visiting writer at the center, took that a step further, calling Magnuson “the ultimate kindest soul, the Greatest Encourager.” It’s not surprising, then, that Magnuson’s final novel was an origin story for Western culture’s mythic embodiment of generosity, Santa. Magnuson’s Young Claus was his way of digging down to the root of what it means to give to and support those around us.

Throughout his life, Magnuson gave freely – of his time, advice, laughter, fellowship, bear hugs – and always with intent. He chose to be generous. So when you measure this man’s impact on American letters, that must be taken into account alongside his novels, stories, and plays. Every writer he made contact with felt that choice embedded in his generosity, and that made a difference in who they were and how they approached their craft and profession. After knowing Jim Magnuson, they understood a little more about being human.

James Magnuson is survived by his beloved wife Hester, daughter Martha, son William and his wife Jane, four grandchildren, sister Mary, brother Mark, and numerous nieces and nephews. A service will be held at 11am, Monday, Feb. 2, at the Texas State Cemetery. The Michener Center plans a memorial program later in the spring. An obituary for Magnuson suggests that “in lieu of memorials, buy a good book for someone you love.” Amen.

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