Herman Wouk

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Herman Wouk (WOHK), May 27, 1915 – May 17, 2019,) was an American author best known for historical fiction, such as The Caine Mutiny (1951), which received the Pulitzer Prize. The Winds of War and Remembrance, historical books about World War II, and non-fiction books such as This Is My God, an introduction to Judaism written for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences.

Wouk, who adored his anonymity, has been translated into 27 languages, according to the Washington Post, "the unconcerned dean of American historical novelists."

Historians, novelists, editors, and commentators who attended Wouk's 80th birthday in 1995 referred to him as an American Tolstoy.

Early life

Wouk was born in the Bronx, the second of three children born to Esther (née Levine) and Abraham Isaac Wouk, Russian Jewish immigrants from what is today Belarus. Before opening a profitable laundry company, his father labored for many years to keep the family out of poverty for many years.

When Wouk was 13, his maternal grandfather, Mendel Leib Levine, came from Minsk to live with them and took responsibility of his grandson's Jewish education. Wouk was dissatisfied by the amount of time he was supposed to study the Talmud, but his father told him, "If I were on my deathbed, and I had breath to say one more thing to you." 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 worship. Both his personal life and work will be influenced by Judaism. He would later say that his grandfather and the United States Navy were the two most influential influences on his life.

He graduated from the original Townsend Harris High School in Manhattan, which was the best prep school for City College, after his childhood and adolescence in the Bronx. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1934, where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. He also served as editor of the university's humor magazine, Jester, and wrote two of the university's annual Varsity Shows. He became a radio dramatist in David Freedman's "Joke Factory" and then with Fred Allen for five years and then for the United States government in 1941, writing radio ads to sell war bonds.

Personal life and death

When the Zane was undergoing repairs in San Pedro, California, we met Betty Brown, a Phi Beta Kappa scholar who was working as a personnel specialist in the navy when it was being repaired. Betty, a Protestant and raised in Grangeville, Idaho, began studying Judaism and converted on her twentieth birthday, and the two immediately fell in love, and after his ship went back to sea. They were married on December 10, 1945.

Wouk became a full-time blogger to help his growing family with the birth of the first of their three children this year. Abraham Isaac Wouk (1946-1951-1951), Wouk's first-born son, was named after Wouk's late father. He drowned in a swimming pond accident in Mexico a few weeks before his fifth birthday. "He will destroy death forever," Wouk later dedicated War and Remembrance to him with the Biblical phrase " he will destroy death forever" (Isaiah 25:8). Iolanthe Woulff (born 1950 as Nathaniel Wouk, a Princeton University professor and an author) and Joseph (born 1954, a Columbia graduate, a film editor, and a writer who served in Israel) were among their second and third children. He had three grandchildren.

The Wouks lived in New York, Saint Thomas, United States Virgin Islands (where he wrote Don't Stop the Carnival) and 3255 N Street N.W. Before settling in Palm Springs, California, he lived in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. (where he researched and wrote The Winds of War and Remembrance). On March 17, 2011, his wife, who worked for decades as his literary agent, died in that city.

"I wrote nothing that was of the slightest interest before I met Sarah," Wouk recalled after her death. "I was a gag man for Fred Allen for five years." He was one of the best of the radio comedians of his day. And parodies work for what they are, but they are ephemeral. They just disappear. I did that before I met Sarah and we married, so it was a little bit of work. And I'd say that both my literary career and my mature life began with her.

Victor's brother died in 2005. Alan I.'s uncle, Alan I. Green, a psychiatrist at Dartmouth College, was a professor.

Wouk died in his sleep in Palm Springs, California, on May 17, 2019, ten days before his 104th birthday.

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Career

Wouk joined the United States in the aftermath of the assault on Pearl Harbor. "I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans," the naval Reserve served in the Pacific Theater during World War II, an event he later described as educational: "I learned about computers, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans." Wouk served as an officer on two destroyer minesweepers (DMS), the United States Zane and US Southard, and Southard, becoming executive officer of the latter while holding the rank of lieutenant. He appeared in around six invasions and has gained a number of battle stars. Wouk was engaged in the New Georgia campaign, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands' campaign, the Mariana and Palau Islands campaigns, and the Battle of Okinawa. During off-duty hours aboard ship, he started writing Aurora Dawn, which was inspired by his father's testimony and Father Stanfield's sermon. Wouk sent philosophy professor Irwin Edman, who enrolled at Columbia, who referred a few pages to a New York editor, who quoted a few pages verbatim to a New York editor. The result was a publisher's deal sent to Wouk's ship, which was then carried off the coast of Okinawa. Aurora Dawn was first published in 1947 and became a Book of the Month Club main selection. In 1946, Wouk began his tour of duty.

City Boy, his second book, was a commercial disappointment at the time of its first appearance in 1948; Wouk later said that it was largely ignored amid the astonish anticipation surrounding Norman Mailer's best-selling World War II book The Naked and the Dead.

Wouk read each chapter to his wife as it was completed while writing his next book. At one point, she said that if they didn't like this one, they might as well do another line of work (as he would refer to editor Jeannie Fry's character in his book Youngblood Hawke, 1962). The Caine Mutiny (1951) book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Caine Mutiny was adapted by the author into a Broadway play based on his wartime experiences aboard minesweepers during World War II, and Columbia Pictures' 1984 film version portraying Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, captain of the fictional US Caine, is the commander.

Marjorie Morningstar (1955), which earned him a Time magazine cover story, was his first novel after The Caine Mutiny (1955). Natalie Wood, Gene Kelly, and Claire Trevor appeared in a movie three years ago from Warner Bros. Slattery's Hurricane (1956), which he had written in 1948 as the basis for the film of the same name, was his next book, a paperback. This is My God: The Jewish Way of Life, Wouk's first work of non-fiction.

Youngblood Hawke (1962), a drama about a young writer modeled on Thomas Wolfe's life, and Don't Stop the Carnival (1965), a comedy about escaping a mid-life crisis by moving to the Caribbean (loosely based on Wouk's own experience) in the 1960s. In McCall's magazine from March to July 1962, Youngblood Hawke was serialized. In 1964, Warner Brothers released James Franciscus and Suzanne Pleshette, a film adaptation. Do not Stop the Carnival was turned into a short-lived musical by Jimmy Buffett in 1997.

Wouk wrote two epic books, The Winds of War (1971) and its sequel, War and Remembrance (1978). He referred to the former as "the main tale I have to tell," which included a sad representation of the Holocaust. Both were turned into huge television miniseries, the first in 1983 and the second in 1988. Despite being produced several years apart, both were directed by Dan Curtis and the main character, Captain Victor "Pug" Henry, appeared on Robert Mitchum. The novels are historical fiction. Each has three levels: the tale told from Captain Henry's and his circle of relatives and acquaintances' viewpoints, a more or less realistic historical account of the war, and an analysis by a member of Adolf Hitler's military staff, the thoughtful fictional General Armin von Roon. These two books, according to Arnold Beichman, Wouk dedicated "thirteen years of remarkable study and long, arduous composition." "The seriousness with which Wouk has served as a war can be seen in the massive amount of study, reading, traveling, and consulting with experts, the results of which can be found in the author's papers' uncatalogued boxes at Columbia University."

Inside (1985) is the story of four generations of a Russian Jewish family's lives in Russia, the United States, and Israel. The Hope (1993) and its sequel, The Glory (1994), are historical books about Israel's first 33 years of history. They were followed by This Is My God, a whirlwind tour of Jewish history and sacred books, as well as the companion volume to This is My God.

Wouk was honoured by the Library of Congress in 1995 for his 80th birthday. Among other things, David McCullough, Robert Caro, and Daniel Boorstin were among those in attendance.

A Hole in Texas (2004) is a book about the discovery of the Higgs boson, whose existence was established nine years later, although The Language God Talks: Science and Religion (2005) is a research into the friction between religion and science, which started in a discussion in Wouk with theoretical physicist Richard Feynman.

The Lawgiver (2012) is an epistolary book about a modern Hollywood writer of a Moses script, with the help of a nonfictional character, Herman Wouk, a "mulish ancient" who is interested despite his wife's strong misgivings.

Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author was published in January 2016 to commemorate his 100th birthday. "A wonderful coda to a man who made American literature a kinder, more kinder place," NPR called it "a lovely coda to a man's career. It was his last book.

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Awards and honors

• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1952
• Columbia University Medal for Excellence, 1952
• Alexander Hamilton Medal, 1980
• Golden Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement, 1986
• United States Navy Memorial Foundation Lone Sailor Award, 1987
• Bar-Ilan University Guardian of Zion Award, 1998
• Jewish Book Council Lifetime Literary Achievement Award, 1999
• Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award for the Writing of Fiction (inaugural), 2008