{"id":45240,"date":"2019-05-17T23:10:33","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T23:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/05\/17\/wwii-veteran-herman-wouk-a-consummate-writer-until-the-end-dies-at-103\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T19:54:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:54:27","slug":"wwii-veteran-herman-wouk-a-consummate-writer-until-the-end-dies-at-103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2019\/05\/17\/wwii-veteran-herman-wouk-a-consummate-writer-until-the-end-dies-at-103\/","title":{"rendered":"WWII veteran Herman Wouk, a consummate writer until the end, dies at 103"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NEW YORK\u2014 Herman Wouk was a prize-winning, million-selling author never quite in fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was a religious Jew among secular peers, a respecter of authority in a field of rebels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t brag like Norman Mailer and was spared the demons driving the madness of Philip Roth\u2019s \u201cPortnoy\u2019s Complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a Pulitzer early in his career for \u201cThe Caine Munity,\u201d he was mostly ignored by awards committees and was often excluded from anthologies of Jewish literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gore Vidal praised him, faintly, by observing that Wouk\u2019s \u201ccompetence is most impressive and his professionalism awe-inspiring in a world of lazy writers and TV-stunned readers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Wouk, who died Friday 10 days shy of his 104th birthday, was a success in ways that resonated with critics and readers, and with himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He created at least one immortal fictional character, the unstable Captain Queeg of \u201cThe Caine Munity.\u201d He was praised for the uncanniness of his historical detail in \u201cThe Winds of War\u201d and other books. He was among the first modern Jewish writers who appealed to the general public and had an enviably large readership that stayed with him through several long novels, many of which dramatized the conflicts between faith and assimilation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was working on a book until the end, said his literary agent Amy Rennert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Navy fast minesweeper wears the bogus hull number DMS – 18 while serving as the ship for the film “The Caine Mutiny,” most likely in 1954. The ship is perhaps the fast minesweeper Doyle. (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wouk\u2019s long, unpredictable career included gag writing, fiction and a musical co-written with Jimmy Buffett<\/a>. His two-part World War II epic, \u201cThe Winds of War\u201d and \u201cWar and Remembrance,\u201d was adapted by Wouk himself for a 1983, Emmy Award-winning TV miniseries starring Robert Mitchum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Winds of War\u201d received some of the highest ratings in history and Wouk\u2019s involvement covered everything from the script to commercial sponsors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heads of state read him and quoted from him, but Wouk shied from talk of greatness, telling one reporter he was not a “high stylist.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cWar and Remembrance,\u201d a writer notes in his journal, \u201cI could contribute nothing new; but writing as I do with a light hand, I might charm a few readers into pausing, in their heedless hurry after pleasure and money, for a look at the things that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Ernest Hemingway to James Joyce, major authors of the 20th century were assumed either anti-religious or at least highly skeptical. But Wouk was part of a smaller group that included C.S. Lewis, Chaim Potok and Flannery O’Connor, those who openly maintained traditional beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He contended that among writers, anti-conformity was a kind of conformity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt seems curious,\u201d he wrote in \u201cAurora Dawn<\/a>,\u201d his first novel, \u201cthat life \u2018as it really is,\u2019 according to modern inspiration, contains a surprising amount of fornication, violence, vulgarity, unpleasant individuals, blasphemy, hatred, and ladies\u2019 underclothes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Marjorie Morningstar,” published in 1955, was one of the first million-selling novels about Jewish life, and two novels, “The Hope” and “The Glory,” were set in Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of his most influential works was \u201cThis Is My God,\u201d a careful, but firm defense of faith that could be found in countless Jewish households. Into his 90s, he studied the Talmud daily and led a weekly Talmud class. He gave many speeches and sermons and received several prizes, including a lifetime achievement award from the Jewish Book Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the many years he lived in Washington, D.C., the Georgetown synagogue he attended was known unofficially as \u201cHerman Wouk\u2019s synagogue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1995, the Library of Congress marked his 80th birthday with a symposium on his career; historians David McCullough, Robert Caro, Daniel Boorstin and others were present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2008, Wouk received the first ever Library of Congress Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Writing of Fiction. In his mid-90s, he completed the comic novel \u201cThe Lawgiver,\u201d and at age 100 wrote a memoir. Wouk\u2019s longevity inspired Stephen King to title one story \u201cHerman Wouk is Still Alive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) poses in his classic white suit, 1905. (George Edward Perine, Prints and Photographs Division\/Library of Congress)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wouk, the son of Russian Jews, was born in New York in 1915. The household was religious \u2014 his mother was a rabbi\u2019s daughter \u2014 and devoted to books. His father would read to him from Sholem Aleichem, the great Yiddish writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A traveling salesman sold his family the entire works of Mark Twain, who became Wouk\u2019s favorite writer, no matter how irreverent on matters of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I found it all very stimulating,” Wouk, in a rare interview, told The Associated Press in 2000. “His work is impregnated with references to the Bible. He may be scathing about it, but they’re there. He’s making jokes about religion, but the Jews are always making jokes about it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A top student in high school, Wouk majored in comparative literature and philosophy at Columbia University and edited the college’s humor magazine. After graduation, he followed the path of so many bright, clever New Yorkers in the 1930s: He headed for California, where he worked five years on Fred Allen’s radio show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had war not intruded, he might have stuck to comedy sketches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor he enlisted in the Navy and served as an officer in the Pacific. There, he received the writer\u2019s most precious gift, free time. He read and read, from the Bible to Victorian fiction, and wrote what became his first published novel, the radio satire \u201cAurora Dawn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was just having fun. It had never occurred to me write a novel,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time “Aurora Dawn” came out, in 1947, Wouk was married and living in New York. His novel was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and he would soon publish “City Boy,” a coming-of-age story highly influenced by Twain.<\/p>\n\n\n\t