Obit:Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire(1915-2019)

Subject: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 May 19 - 03:51 PM

They are dropping like flies. But a 103-year old fly.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: fat B****rd
Date: 17 May 19 - 04:20 PM

103 !!. Read and enjoyed The Caine Mutiny and Youngblood Hawke many years ago. RIP Mr. Wouk

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: robomatic
Date: 17 May 19 - 06:30 PM

RIP Indeed, Youngblood Hawke, Marjorie Morningstar, President, er, I mean Captain Queeg, et. al.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: EBarnacle
Date: 17 May 19 - 07:40 PM

He wrote a lot of good stuff. Some of it translated well to the screen.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 18 May 19 - 06:17 AM

I enjoyed the two-volume WWII saga The Winds of War and War And Remembrance, which I read after Caine Mutiny. I also loved Marjorie Morningstar, (devoured at a very impressionable age - 13 - almost in one sitting). His strait-laced attitudes on women and unmarried sex aren't mine - and weren't, even then - but he tells a good tale, driven by believable people. His characters are strong and sympathetic, male and female alike.

I see he wrote an autobiography when he turned 100, titled Sailor And Fiddler, which he intended to be his last book, declaring "I have said my say, done my work." NPR did a nice review, calling it "a lovely coda to the career of a man who made American literature a kinder, smarter, better place."

R.I.P. Mr. Wouk. The worlds you created gave us a lot of pleasure.

https://www.npr.org/2015/12/29/461281423/sailor-and-fiddler-is-a-lovely-coda-to-

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 May 19 - 03:30 PM

Saw an article calling him "the Jackie Robinson of Jewish-American authors - what?

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 May 19 - 03:45 PM

I always thought his name was Dutch. And who was Jackie Robinson?

I've always just sent his books for recycling when we get them donated to the charity shop where I work. And I don't see a revival on the way.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 May 19 - 03:59 PM

They covered much of what several of you have mentioned in this NPR obituary: Herman Wouk, 'The Jackie Robinson Of Jewish-American Fiction,' Dies At 103.

And Jackie Robinson - really?

From the link:

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."

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Donuel
Date: 18 May 19 - 07:20 PM

Wouk's 2 act play The Caine Mutiny Trial is where he demonstrably elucidates anti semitism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caine_Mutiny_Court-Martial

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 May 19 - 07:31 PM

It's been thirty years since I read the play, Donuel. Where's the anti-Semitism?

I think I read most of Wouk's books once upon a time. I liked them all, especially Winds of War.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 19 May 19 - 04:00 AM

How is Wouk, who was Orthodox Jewish and wrote books on religion, anti-semitic? I can’t see it in that wikipedia link either, which is mainly just a production history, list of characters, and plot summary. Anyway, the Jewish press doesn’t seem to think so. The following is only one example, but there’s plenty more in the way of laudatory memorials.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/herman-wouk-the-legendary-author-who-brought-judaism-into-the-mainstream/

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 19 May 19 - 04:12 AM

I also hadn’t realised that he knew Richard Feynman. The following anecdote is very interesting (Saul Bellow also features briefly, conversing with HW in Yiddish).

Herman Wouk, Richard Feynman, The Talmud

http://onthemainline.blogspot.com/2007/07/herman-wouk-richard-feynman-talmud-and.html

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 May 19 - 04:12 AM

Donuel said he "elucidated" antisemitism and he seems to know what "elucidate" means. It does not mean "advocate".

I've no idea how Americans manage to identify so many of their celebs as Jewish when neither their names nor any publicized facts about them suggest it.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 19 May 19 - 04:15 AM

Maybe because the writers identify themselves as Jewish?

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 May 19 - 04:56 AM

Nothing in the cover blurb for any of Wouk's books that I've seen says that.

Hardly any British Jewish writers make a public issue of their ethnicity (whereas it does matter to their image which county they're from). I didn't know George Szirtes was Jewish until I read a piece in a Jewish magazine about his move back to Hungary, where his ethnicity really is an issue.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 19 May 19 - 05:05 AM

I'm not sure I'm getting your point, Jack. Wouk's Jewishness has never been any secret, and Judaism is a theme in many of his works, including some devoted to religion. "Identifying as" only means that it's part of how someone defines themselves. But you have to look beneath the cover blurbs into the books themselves. I can't for the life of me see what the problem is.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 19 May 19 - 05:15 AM

Originally published in 1959:

This Is My God

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 19 May 19 - 05:29 AM

The updated version - which I've just bought - is:

The Will to Live On: This is Our Heritage

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 19 May 19 - 05:47 AM

Correction: The Will To Live On is not an update of TIMG so much as a sequel.

OK, so Wouk wasn't Tolstoy - but he's still a fine social historian of a particular time and place, as were Steinbeck or (in his fiction) Gore Vidal.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Donuel
Date: 19 May 19 - 09:15 AM

Wouk vividly exposed the cultural antisemitism of others in the last act of the play. No one ever accused Wouk of being antisemetic. Such is the weakness of language tricks of misunderstanding.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 19 May 19 - 09:43 AM

He exposed it bigtime in Winds of War and War & Remembrance. Sorry, I misread “elucidate” (which I certainly know the meaning of). Slip of the eye.

Subject: RE: Obit: Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 May 19 - 12:39 PM

indeed, there seems to be an echo in here !

Now as to the NPR story:
that headline is a quote taken from
remarks by the Simon & Schuster publishing house in the US.

So, for a start, the person who said this is not a fellow author
but someone at the top of the publishing business,
where celebrity as well as craft is important (for his bottom line),
and such is that person's bias.

A fellow author might indeed have an entirely different metaphor.

And different authors might have wildly different opinions.
Perhaps in a longer, more detailed piece of writing,
the Simon & Schuster talking head
could have justified his opinion, and his metaphor,
with a summary of
the history of 20th-century publishing of USA fiction?
Is there evidence, at some point in that century or even earlier,
of established publishers demonstrating
the prejudice of anti-semitism towards
authors who happened to be Jewish?
Without that evidence and history,
I don't know, myself, that Mr. Simon & Schuster makes any sense whatever.

Subject: RE: Obit:Herman Wouk, author extraordinaire(1915-2019)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 May 19 - 07:44 PM

I never knew from his writings -and I still don't care- that he was jewish. I think of him as a great *American* author.