Herman Wouk, 'The Jackie Robinson Of Jewish-American Fiction,' Dies At 103

NPR ^ | 5/17/2019 | ROSE FRIEDMAN

[Borges]

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk has died. Wouk was famous for his sprawling World War II novels, including The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, and for his portrayal of Jewish-Americans in the novel Marjorie Morningstar. He died in his sleep today at his home in Palm Springs, Calif.

Many people might remember Wouk for a certain incident in involving strawberries in The Caine Mutiny, which became a film in 1954. After having a breakdown at sea, the tyrannical Captain Queeg accuses his crew of stealing a quart of strawberries and becomes obsessed with finding the culprit.

Humphrey Bogart played Queeg in the film, but he wasn't exactly what Wouk had in mind when he wrote the character. In the book, Wouk described the captain as "a small man" with "strands of sandy hair across an almost bald head." In 2004, the author told NPR, "Now Captain Queeg is Humphrey Bogart. There's nothing you can do about it, and I'm perfectly content with [it.] That was one of the great performances, I think, of his career."

The Caine Mutiny was Wouk's most celebrated book, but he had a substantial career both before and after it. He got his start in writing years earlier, in comedy. For five years starting in 1936, Wouk wrote jokes and sketches for the popular radio host Fred Allen. But after Pearl Harbor, the 26-year-old enlisted in the Navy and served in the Pacific. In his off hours, Wouk began to write Aurora Dawn, a novel that got mixed reviews. His second book, City Boy, did worse. But The Caine Mutiny put him on the map. It won a Pulitzer Prize, it was a bestseller and it became a play and a movie.

Wouk told NPR, "When I finished The Caine Mutiny, I wrote in my work journal ... 'Unless I'm mistaken, this is a good book. But it's not yet the war novel I mean to write.' "

In fact, it was the first in a run of ambitious books that included The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, each about a thousand pages long. And war wasn't Wouk's only subject. He wrote about the publishing world, a fictional Caribbean island and the founding of Israel. And in Marjorie Morningstar, he tapped into his own heritage as a New York-born child of Jewish immigrants to tell the story of a young girl trying to break into show business.

He really was the Jackie Robinson of Jewish-American fiction.

Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster

"He really was the Jackie Robinson of Jewish-American fiction," says Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster and editor of Wouk's last book, Sailor and Fiddler. "He was on the cover of Time magazine for Marjorie Morningstar, and he popularized a lot of themes that other writers — like [Saul] Bellow and [Philip] Roth and [Bernard] Malamud — would deal with in their novels."

Karp says that one of the reasons Wouk appealed to readers for so many years was the variety in his novels. "He really did not want to write the same novel twice. The writers he admired were the greats — they were the Victorian novelists, they were writers like [Thomas] Hardy. He wanted to write big novels about complicated lives and the cultures in which they took place."

Herman Wouk Says He's A 'Happy Gent' At 100 AUTHOR INTERVIEWS Herman Wouk Says He's A 'Happy Gent' At 100 Despite his popularity with readers, Wouk didn't always get a good critical response. The New York Times called The Winds of War long and "mildly interesting" with an "indifference to quality" and a "reliance on clichés."

According to Karp, many of the critics missed the point. "One of the reasons why he didn't get the kind of stellar reviews that writers like Saul Bellow got was because he was accessible." And Wouk did express serious ideas in his fiction. In one section of War and Remembrance, he reflects on the Holocaust:

"The accounts I have heard of what the Germans are doing in camps like [Auschwitz] exceed all human experience. Words break down as a means of describing them. ... The Thucydides who will tell this story so that the world can picture, believe, and remember may not be born for centuries. Or if he lives now, I am not he."

But Karp says Wouk was the writer to tell these stories. "I think he aimed high and had large ambitions for reaching a lot of readers — and he entertained millions of them." And with all of his major works still in print, chances are, in the years to come, Herman Wouk will entertain millions more.

[donaldo]

Ditto Bogey. In this scene he was Captain Queeg!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLUZ0Nv7UH4

[M Kehoe]

May he RIP.

5.56mm

[carton253]

He was my favorite author.

[bert]

well I’ll dig them out and watch all 20 segments again

Winds of War and War and Remembrance are the greatest fictional account of WW II there is.

Pug Henry, the definitive Naval officer was everywhere and saw it all. What a fabulous tale

[carton253]

The most poignant scene was when Jane Seymour was eating the apple on that over crowded box car. Powerful!

[Sans-Culotte]

I always thought The Caine Mutiny was a very good book. I don’t think I ever saw the movie.

I saw the movie on a local TV channel in the 70s not long after reading the book in high school. It was one of those rare times that a movie did the book justice. The ending involving the narrator was a touch different, but over all, it was faithful to the book and brilliantly cast. As others have mentioned, Bogie was superb as was Jose Ferrer. I never imagined Ferrer in the part of the lawyer, but he did a great job with it. Fred MacMurray made a great weaselly Lt. Keefer.

[nathanbedford]

One cannot read, The Caine Mutiny, without thinking about, Huckleberry Finn.

Each novel was like a well-crafted joke, they slapped the reader upside the head with a stunning reversal. In Huckleberry Finn we have the pivotal scene after the fog when Huck decides that he will commit the mortal sin of siding with a runaway slave rather than turn him in. This is contrary to Huck's upbringing which Mark Twain had artfully described in scene after scene leading up to that point. The pivotal scene represented a crashing down of the whole culture which supported slavery.

The Caine Mutiny worked a similar reversal. We all saw the pettiness of Capt. Queeg, his helplessness as a leader, and, finally, his flat out cowardice at the pivotal moment when the ship was about the founder in the typhoon. All of this is dramatically reversed not in the trial but in the posttrial party in which Jewish attorney Barney Greenwald (brilliantly played by José Ferrar) puts the blame squarely on the true culprit, the effete, elite, dilettante novelist, the officer-instigator of the mutiny but the moral coward who kept his hands clean.

The reversal suggests that, despite every scene in the film tending to tell us that military discipline is nothing but chicken shit, in time of war everything that effete elitists despise about the military is absolutely necessary for the survival of the nation. In this case the survival of the country, the winning of the war, is absolutely identified with the genocide against Jews. All of this is encapsulated in one sentence uttered by Barney Greenwald, half drunk but sober enough to tell the truth, "“You don’t work with a man because of the way he combs his hair. You work with him because he’s got the job or you’re no good!” (Accurate Quotation generously supplied to me by Chengdu54).

Both novels turn the world upside down in a stunning reversal and that is why they are both classics.

[trisham]

God bless him. Rest in peace, Mr. Wouk.

[carton253]

Did you read Inside/Outside. It’s good and so funny.

[JoeA]

No mention of Youngblood Hawke, also a brilliant novel, this one about a writer who burns out.
Wouk truly was one of the greats.

[irishjuggler]

Wow, great author. R.I.P. Loved Caine Mutiny book. And great flick with Humphrey Bogart.

Like Fritz Hollings a few weeks ago, though, definitely one for the category of “Wow, actually kind of surprised to hear that he was still alive so recently.” May we all end up in that category.

[dfwgator]

“I’m a lot drunker than you, so it will be a fair fight.”

[dfwgator]

The War and Remembrance miniseries certainly didn’t pull any punches when it came to the Holocaust scenes.

Arguably it may have been Gielgud’s greatest performance. The scene where he gives the sermon about Job “The Stinking Jew” was poignant.

[Captain Peter Blood]

What kind of title was that for this article? I find it kind of insulting.

I loved reading Herman Wouk novels.

[V V Camp Enari 67-68]

My ultimate best books for reading enjoyment ever. I still have the originals on my book shelves.

[dfwgator]

A lot of people thought Robert Mitchum was too old to play Pug, but I thought he was great.

[Alas Babylon!]

Robert Mitchum as Pug Henry was a very good fit.

[dfwgator]

War and Remembrance is the best min-series ever, and it has the toughest Holocaust scenes.

The character I thought was best played was Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz Kommadant. Not that I felt sorry for him or anything, but the actor portrayed him not as a monster, but a man who probably realized that what he was doing was evil, but he was also somewhat "trapped". There's a scene during a gassing where you can see Höss is very uncomfortable with what's going on, but then he quickly notices Himmler was staring at him and he straightens up.

[carton253]

Or The Hope or The Glory. I’ve read those books countless times.

[abigkahuna]

He was a bit old, but I think he was to be a man in his early 50s, so Mitchum fit the bill. With a nickname like Pug, one would assume the man to be shorter, but Mitchum was a big man...at least on the screen.

Loved the series and the books.