Herman Wouk

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Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox writer Herman Wouk (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell; May 27, 1915 – May 17, 2019) was an American author. He published 15 novels, many of them historical fiction such as The Caine Mutiny (1951), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1952. Other well-known works included The Winds of War and War and Remembrance (historical novels about World War II), the bildungsroman Marjorie Morningstar; and non-fiction such as This Is My God, an explanation of Judaism from a Modern Orthodox perspective, written for Jewish and non-Jewish readers. His books have been translated into 27 languages.<ref name="birthday">Template:Cite news</ref>

The Washington Post described Wouk, who cherished his privacy, as "the reclusive dean of American historical novelists".<ref name=birthday /> Historians, novelists, publishers, and critics who gathered at the Library of Congress in 1995 to mark his 80th birthday described him as an American Tolstoy. Wouk's career was extensive and he lived to 103.<ref name=tolstoy>Template:Cite news</ref>

Early life

Wouk was born in the Bronx, New York, the second of three children born to Esther (née Levine) and Abraham Isaac Wouk, Russian Jewish immigrants from what is today Belarus. His father toiled for many years to raise the family out of poverty before opening a successful laundry service.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

When Wouk was 13, his maternal grandfather, a Rabbi named Mendel Leib Levine, came from Minsk to live with them and took charge of his grandson's Jewish education. Wouk was frustrated by the amount of time he was expected to spend studying the Talmud, but his father told him, "if I were on my deathbed, and I had breath to say one more thing to you, I would say 'Study the Talmud.'" Eventually Wouk took this advice to heart. After a brief period as a young adult during which he lived a secular life, he returned to religious practice<ref name=bt>Template:Cite web</ref> and Judaism became integral to both his personal life and his career.<ref name=bio>Template:Cite web</ref> He said later that his grandfather and the United States Navy were the two most important influences on his life.<ref name=influences>Template:Cite book</ref>

After his childhood and adolescence in the Bronx, Wouk graduated from the original Townsend Harris High School in Manhattan, Townsend Harris Hall Prep School, the elite public prep school for City College.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1934 he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the age of 19 from Columbia University, where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.<ref name="2010directory">Membership Directory, 2010, Pi Lambda Phi Inc.</ref> He also served as editor of the university's humor magazine, Jester, and wrote two of its annual Varsity Shows.<ref name=columbia>Template:Cite web</ref> He became a radio dramatist, working in David Freedman's "Joke Factory" and later with Fred Allen for five years<ref name=loc>Template:Cite web</ref> and then, in 1941, for the United States government, writing radio spots to sell war bonds.<ref name=warbonds>Template:Cite web</ref>

Military career

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Wouk joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942 and served in the Pacific Theater during World War II, an experience he later characterized as educational: "I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans." Wouk served as an officer aboard two destroyer minesweepers (DMS), the Template:USS and Template:USS, becoming executive officer of the Southard while holding the rank of lieutenant. He participated in around six invasions and won a number of battle stars.<ref name=loc /> Wouk was in the New Georgia Campaign, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign, and the Battle of Okinawa.<ref>Wouk was not at the Battle of Lingayen Gulf, though his future ship Southard was. Wouk was still serving on the ship Zane during the battle of Lingayen Gulf, according to the more accurate Navy Source Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In off-duty hours aboard ship he started writing a novel, Aurora Dawn, which he originally titled Aurora Dawn; or, The True history of Andrew Reale, containing a faithful account of the Great Riot, together with the complete texts of Michael Wilde's oration and Father Stanfield's sermon. Wouk sent a copy of the opening chapters to philosophy professor Irwin Edman, under whom he studied at Columbia,<ref name="edman">Template:Cite web</ref> who quoted a few pages verbatim to a New York editor. The result was a publisher's contract sent to Wouk's ship, then off the coast of Okinawa. Aurora Dawn was published in 1947 and became a Book of the Month Club main selection.

Wouk finished his tour of duty in 1946.<ref name="Homberger">Template:Cite news</ref>

Writing career

His second novel, City Boy, proved to be a commercial disappointment when it was published in 1948. Wouk claimedTemplate:Citation needed it was largely ignored amid the excitement over Norman Mailer's bestselling World War II novel The Naked and the Dead.

While writing his next novel, Wouk read each chapter to his wife as it was completed and she remarked that if they did not like this one, he had better take up another line of work (a line he would give to the character of the editor Jeannie Fry in his novel Youngblood Hawke, 1962). The novel, The Caine Mutiny (1951), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A best-seller, drawn from his wartime experiences aboard minesweepers during World War II, The Caine Mutiny was adapted by the author into a Broadway play called The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. In 1954 Columbia Pictures released a film version of the book, with Humphrey Bogart portraying Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, captain of the fictional USS Caine.<ref name=guardian>Template:Cite news</ref>

Wouk's next novel after The Caine Mutiny was Marjorie Morningstar (1955), which earned him a Time magazine cover story. Three years later Warner Bros. made it into a movie of the same name starring Natalie Wood, Gene Kelly and Claire Trevor. His next novel, a paperback, was Slattery's Hurricane (1956), which he had written in 1948 as the basis for the screenplay for the film of the same name. Wouk's first work of non-fiction was 1959's This is My God: The Jewish Way of Life.<ref name="Homberger"/>

In the 1960s, he wrote Youngblood Hawke (1962), a drama about the rise and fall of a young writer, modeled on the life of Thomas Wolfe; and Don't Stop the Carnival (1965), a comedy about escaping mid-life crisis by moving to the Caribbean, which was loosely based on Wouk's own experiences. Youngblood Hawke was serialized in McCall's magazine from March to July 1962. A movie version starred James Franciscus and Suzanne Pleshette and was released by Warner Brothers in 1964. In 1997 Don't Stop the Carnival was turned into a short-lived musical by Jimmy Buffett.<ref name="foxnews.com">Template:Cite web</ref>

Wouk in 1972

In the 1970s, Wouk published two monumental novels, The Winds of War (1971) and a sequel, War and Remembrance (1978). He described Remembrance, which included a devastating depiction of the Holocaust, as "the main tale I have to tell." Both were made into successful television mini-series, the first in 1983 and the second in 1988. Although they were made several years apart, both were directed by Dan Curtis and both starred Robert Mitchum as Captain Victor "Pug" Henry, the main character. The novels were historical fiction. Each had three layers: the story told from the viewpoints of Captain Henry and his circle of family and friends; a more or less straightforward historical account of the events of the war; and an analysis by a member of Adolf Hitler's military staff, the insightful fictional General Armin von Roon. Wouk devoted "thirteen years of extraordinary research and long, arduous composition" to these two novels, noted Arnold Beichman. "The seriousness with which Wouk has dealt with the war can be seen in the prodigious amount of research, reading, travel and conferring with experts, the evidence of which may be found in the uncatalogued boxes at Columbia University" that contain the author's papers.<ref name=beichman>Template:Cite book</ref>

Inside, Outside (1985) was the story of four generations of a Russian Jewish family and its travails in Russia, the U.S. and Israel. The Hope (1993) and its sequel, The Glory (1994), were historical novels about the first 33 years of Israel's history. They were followed by The Will to Live On: This is Our Heritage (2000), a whirlwind tour of Jewish history and sacred texts and companion volume to This is My God.<ref name=heritage>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1995, Wouk was honored on his 80th birthday by the Library of Congress with a symposium on his career. In attendance were David McCullough, Robert Caro, and Daniel Boorstin, among others.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A Hole in Texas (2004) was a novel about the discovery of the Higgs boson, whose existence was proven nine years later. The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion (2010) was an exploration of the tension between religion and science which originated in a discussion Wouk had with theoretical physicist Richard Feynman.<ref name=language>Template:Cite news</ref>

The Lawgiver (2012) was an epistolary novel about a contemporary Hollywood writer of a movie script about Moses, with the consulting help of a nonfictional character, Herman Wouk, a "mulish ancient" who became involved despite the strong misgivings of his wife.<ref name=moses>Template:Cite news</ref>

Wouk's memoir, titled Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author, was published in January 2016 to mark his 100th birthday.<ref name=centenary>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name=dirda>Template:Cite news</ref> NPR called it "a lovely coda to the career of a man who made American literature a kinder, smarter, better place." It was his last book.<ref name=schaub>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Daily journal

Wouk kept a personal diary from 1937.<ref name=proust>Template:Cite magazine</ref> On September 10, 2008, he presented his journals, numbering more than 100 volumes Template:As of, to the Library of Congress<ref name=proust /> at a ceremony in which he was honored with the first Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award for the Writing of Fiction (now the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction). Wouk often referred to his journals to check dates and facts in his writing, and he hesitated to let the originals out of his possession. A solution was negotiated and the entire set of volumes was scanned into digital format.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life

In 1944 Wouk met Betty Sarah Brown, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Southern California, who was working as a personnel specialist in the navy while the Zane was undergoing repairs in San Pedro, California. The two fell in love and after Wouk's ship went back to sea, Betty, who was born a Protestant and was raised in Grangeville, Idaho, began her study of Judaism and converted on her twenty-fifth birthday. They were married on December 10, 1945.<ref name=beichman />

After the birth of the first of their three children the following year, Wouk became a full-time writer to support his growing family. His first-born son, Abraham Isaac Wouk, who was named after Wouk's late father, drowned in a swimming pool accident in Cuernavaca, Mexico, shortly before his fifth birthday. Wouk later dedicated War and Remembrance to him with the Biblical words "בלע המות לנצח – He will destroy death forever" (Isaiah 25:8). Their second and third children were Iolanthe Woulff (born 1950 as Nathaniel Wouk, a Princeton University graduate and an author<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>) and Joseph (born 1954, a Columbia graduate, an attorney, a film producer, and a writer who served in the Israeli Navy).<ref name=joe>Template:Cite web</ref> He had three grandchildren.<ref name="Homberger" />

The Wouks lived in New York, Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, where he wrote Don't Stop the Carnival, and at 3255 N Street N.W.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., where he researched and wrote The Winds of War and War and Remembrance,<ref name=life>Template:Cite magazine</ref> before settling in Palm Springs, California. His wife, who served for decades as his literary agent, died in Palm Springs on March 17, 2011.<ref name=bsw>Template:Cite news</ref>

"I wrote nothing that was of the slightest consequence before I met Sarah," Wouk recalled after her death. "I was a gag man for Fred Allen for five years. In his time, he was the greatest of the radio comedians. And jokes work for what they are but they're ephemeral. They just disappear. And that was the kind of thing I did up until the time that I met Sarah and we married. And I would say my literary career and my mature life both began with her."<ref name=npr>Template:Cite web</ref>

During the 1970s, Wouk was a member of the executive committee of the Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Wouk's brother Victor died in 2005.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> His nephew, Alan I. Green, was a psychiatrist at Dartmouth College.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Death

Wouk died in his sleep in his home in Palm Springs, California, on May 17, 2019, ten days before his 104th birthday.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Degrees

Awards and honors

Published works

Wouk in 2014

Novels

Non-fiction

Plays

Film and television scripts

See also

References

Template:Reflist

Further reading

  • Barbara A. Paulson, ed., The Historical Novel: A Celebration of the Achievements of Herman Wouk (1999)
  • Arnold Beichman, Herman Wouk: The Novelist as Social Historian (1984)
  • Laurence W. Mazzeno, Herman Wouk (1994)

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