Herman Wouk, 1915-2019 Entertainment with a deeper purpose.

Commentary ^ | 18 May2019 | John Podhoretz

[Rummyfan]

In 2013, I commissioned and published an apology to a writer who I felt had been mistreated in the pages of COMMENTARY—and by my father, no less!

“How This Magazine Wronged Herman Wouk” was the name of the article by Michael J. Lewis, and the occasion for it was the fact that the then-97-year-old Wouk had just published a new novel called The Lawgiver—a comic epistolary novel, no less, concerning the making of a movie about the life of Moses in which Wouk himself appears as a character. As Lewis wrote, “Wouk adapts the form to the modern world of instant messaging, faxes, and Skype, and pulls it off successfully—a startling achievement by an author who was born two years before the United States entered World War I.”

Wouk, who died Friday just two weeks shy of his 104th birthday, was extraordinary not only for his age, his durability, and the freshness of his ageless mind, but for his career as a popular novelist determined to explore themes of the deepest seriousness with all their moral complexities for a mass-market audience.

It was, I have to say, the very reason his work came in for scornful or dismissive treatment in the pages of COMMENTARY. The New York literary highbrows may have delighted in the frivolities of Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley, but they stood at the gates with buckshot at the ready against the philistine hordes of popular culture when the barbarians sought venture onto the turf of the Great Novel or the Great Play. Wouk’s breakthrough work, The Caine Mutiny, sold millions and was made into a successful movie and a smash-hit play, but in these pages it was found wanting as a seafaring tale next to Herman Melville...

[Rummyfan]

[miss marmelstein]

I guess the entire Poderetz family is full of rude idiots, no less.

I can’t wait to see the apology about Trump in the future from fat John.

[relictele]

I’m a fan but ashamed to admit I had no idea he was still alive.

As Wouk noted in the preface to The Caine Mutiny, it really wasn’t about the Navy or any particular person or vessel, real or imaginary.

I suppose you could say that Moby Dick is an allegory also but the sea was its essence...The Caine Mutiny could have occurred in almost any setting - it’s just that a ship in a typhoon is a very isolated place and thus subject to quick and permanent turns of fate.

[robowombat]

I have really enjoyed Herman Wouk’s novels since high school. “The Hope’ and ‘The Glory’ are more than novels and contain many bits of real history of Israel from the founding to the Yom Kippur War that did not for deliberate reasons get into the history books. Also they are simply brilliant large scale depictions of a sort of Israeli ‘War and Peace’.

I never figured out in the ‘Caine Mutiny’ what the uproar was about. LCDR Queeg was clearly hazarding his ship in the teeth of ‘Halsey's Typhoon’. That is prima facie reason for his officers to relieve him of command. The navy actually has a rather clear doctrine on this and it was used in WW2 see Leach's ‘Now Hear This’, which describes a real relief for cause by a commander by his officers.

[Seaplaner]

The Caine Mutiny was one of the finest novels, ever.

And, I've suspected for years (many, many of them) that Wouk's character Lieutenant Keefer was at least a bit of an autobiographical construction; except for the cowardliness and selling out of his shipmates character facets.

[Oratam]

My simple summary of The Caine Mutiny was smarty pants "90-Day Wonders" versus "Career Navy" types. World War Two was like nothing before in history and the Navy needed officers so it threw these two together and hoped for the best.

It's a credit to Wouk that I wanted Queeg destroyed only to pity him by the end of the novel. To me, it was a study in the madness of mobs writ small.

Absolutely fantastic movie by the way. When the party arrives on the flight deck of the carrier, the "real" navy, they all have misgivings.

[Kipp]

I got interested in Herman Wouk books after seeing the movie Marjorie Morningstar when I was about 11. I read that book and then the Caine Mutiny and others after that. “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” are my favorites. I’ve read them at least twice.

[ruthles]

Podhorwtz Doesn’t deserve to wash Herman Wouks
underwear. His weak apology and backhanded compliment are the sure sign of an envious narcissist

[EinNYC]

I really loved the movie miniseries War & Remembrance and The Winds of War. Really cried when Jastrow was killed in the gas chamber.

[dfwgator]

It's a credit to Wouk that I wanted Queeg destroyed only to pity him by the end of the novel. To me, it was a study in the madness of mobs writ small.

Jose Ferrer was fantastic in that scene after the acquittal...."I'm a lot drunker than you, so it will be a fair fight."

[dfwgator]

Really cried when Jastrow was killed in the gas chamber.

It made me physically ill, couldn't believe they would allow that to be shown on network TV, but the Producer basically told ABC in no uncertain terms to show it that way. And I'm glad he did. The other part that I'll never forget was the first gassing scene with the little girl whose mother picked a flower for her to calm her down.

[dfwgator]

Bawled like a baby in the final scene when Natalie and Louis were reunited.

[miss marmelstein]

He’s the son of an intellectual who helped launch Commentary. Everything he has gotten has been through nepotism which is why he is so jealous of anyone who has risen through the ranks on their own achievement. Small, small man. And one of the worst film reviewers I have ever come across. A genuine No-Talent!