Letter from Herman Wouk American world-famous historical fiction author for Sale

Letter from Herman Wouk American world-famous historical fiction author For Sale

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Letter from Herman Wouk American world-famous historical fiction author:
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Herman Wouk Herman Wouk (/woʊk/ WOHK; May 27, 1915 – May17, 2019) was an American author best known for historical fiction such as The CaineMutiny (1951) for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. His other majorworks include The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, historical novelsabout World War II, and non-fiction such as This Is MyGod, an explanation of Judaism froma Modern Orthodox perspective, writtenfor Jewish andnon-Jewish audiences. His books have been translated into 27 languages. The Washington Post called Wouk, whocherished his privacy, \"the reclusive dean of American historicalnovelists\".[1] Historians,novelists, publishers, and critics who gathered at the Library of Congress in 1995 to mark Wouk\'s80th birthday described him as an American Tolstoy. Early life Wouk was bornin the Bronx,the second of three children born to Esther (née Levine) and Abraham IsaacWouk, Russian Jewish immigrants from what is today Belarus.His father toiled for many years to raise the family out of poverty beforeopening a successful laundry service. When Wouk was13, his maternal grandfather, Mendel Leib Levine, came from Minsk to live withthem and took charge of his grandson\'s Jewish education. Wouk was frustrated bythe amount of time he was expected to study the Talmud,but his father told him, \"if I were on my deathbed, and I had breath tosay one more thing to you, I would say \'Study the Talmud.\'\" EventuallyWouk took this advice to heart. After a brief period as a young adult duringwhich he lived a secular life, he returned to religious practice. Judaism wouldbecome integral to both his personal life and his career. He would latersay that his grandfather and the United States Navy were the two mostimportant influences on his life. After hischildhood and adolescence in the Bronx, he graduated from the original TownsendHarris High School in Manhattan, Townsend Harris Hall Prep School,which was the elite prep school for City College. He earned a Bachelor ofArts degree at the age of 19 from Columbia University in 1934, where he wasa member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. He alsoserved as editor of the university\'s humor magazine, Jester, and wrote two of its annual Varsity Shows. Soonthereafter, he became a radio dramatist, working in David Freedman\'s\"Joke Factory\" and later with Fred Allen forfive years and then, in 1941, for the United States government, writing radiospots to sell war bonds. Career Military career Followingthe attack on Pearl Harbor, Wouk joinedthe U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942 and servedin the Pacific Theater during World War II,an experience he later characterized as educational: \"I learned aboutmachinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned aboutAmericans.\" Wouk served as an officer aboard two destroyer minesweepers (DMS),the USS Zane and USS Southard, becoming executive officer of the latter whileholding the rank of lieutenant.He participated in around six invasions and won a number of battle stars.[10] Woukwas in the New Georgia Campaign, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign,the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign,and the Battle of Okinawa. During off-duty hoursaboard ship he started writing a novel, Aurora Dawn, which he originallytitled Aurora Dawn; or, The True history of Andrew Reale, containing a faithfulaccount of the Great Riot, together with the complete texts of Michael Wilde\'soration and Father Stanfield\'s sermon. Wouk sent a copy of the openingchapters to philosophy professor Irwin Edman,under whom he studied at Columbia, who quoted a few pages verbatim to a NewYork editor. The result was a publisher\'s contract sent to Wouk\'s ship, thenoff the coast of Okinawa. Aurora Dawn was published in1947 and became a Book of the Month Club mainselection. Wouk finished his tour of duty in 1946. Writing career His secondnovel, City Boy, proved to be acommercial disappointment at the time of its initial publication in 1948; Woukonce claimed[citation needed] it was largelyignored amid the excitement over Norman Mailer\'sbestselling World War II novel The Naked and the Dead. While writinghis next novel, Wouk read each chapter to his wife as it was completed. At onepoint she remarked that if they did not like this one, he had better take upanother line of work (a line he would give to the character of the editorJeannie Fry in his novel YoungbloodHawke, 1962). The novel, The CaineMutiny (1951), went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A best-seller,drawing from his wartime experiences aboard minesweepers during World WarII, The Caine Mutiny was adapted by the author into a Broadway play called The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and,in 1954, Columbia Pictures released a film versionwith Humphrey Bogart portraying Lt. CommanderPhilip Francis Queeg, captain of the fictional USS Caine. His first novelafter The Caine Mutiny was Marjorie Morningstar (1955), whichearned him a Time magazine cover story. Three yearslater Warner Bros. made it into a moviestarring Natalie Wood, Gene Kelly and Claire Trevor.His next novel, a paperback, was Slattery\'s Hurricane (1956), which hehad 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 Wayof Life. In the 1960s,he authored Youngblood Hawke (1962), a drama about therise 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 (looselybased on Wouk\'s own experience). Youngblood Hawke was serializedin McCall\'s magazinefrom March to July 1962. A movie version starred JamesFranciscus and SuzannePleshette and was released by Warner Brothers in 1964. Don\'tStop the Carnival was turned into a short-lived musical by Jimmy Buffett in1997. In the 1970s,Wouk published two monumental novels, The Winds ofWar (1971) and its sequel, War and Remembrance (1978). He describedthe latter, which included a devastating depiction of the Holocaust,as \"the main tale I have to tell.\" Both were made into successfultelevision miniseries, the first in 1983 and the second in 1988. Although theywere made several years apart, both were directed by Dan Curtis andboth starred Robert Mitchum as Captain Victor\"Pug\" Henry, the main character. The novels are historical fiction.Each has three layers: the story told from the viewpoints of Captain Henry andhis circle of family and friends, a more or less straightforward historicalaccount of the events of the war, and an analysis by a member of Adolf Hitler\'smilitary staff, the insightful fictional General Armin von Roon. Wouk devoted\"thirteen years of extraordinary research and long, arduouscomposition\" to these two novels, noted ArnoldBeichman. \"The seriousness with which Wouk has dealt with thewar can be seen in the prodigious amount of research, reading, travel andconferring with experts, the evidence of which may be found in the uncataloguedboxes at Columbia University\" that contain the author\'s papers. Inside, Outside (1985) is the storyof four generations of a RussianJewish family and its travails in Russia, the U.S. andIsrael. The Hope (1993) and its sequel, The Glory (1994),are historical novels about the first 33 years of Israel\'shistory. 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 volumeto This is My God. In 1995, Woukwas honored on his 80th birthday by the Library of Congress with a symposium onhis career. In attendance were DavidMcCullough, Robert Caro, and DanielBoorstin, among others. A Hole inTexas (2004) is a novel about the discovery of the Higgs boson,whose existence was proven nine years later, while The Language God Talks:On Science and Religion (2010) is an exploration into the tension betweenreligion and science that originated in a discussion Wouk had with the theoretical physicist RichardFeynman. The Lawgiver (2012)is an epistolary novel about acontemporary Hollywood writer of a movie scriptabout Moses,with the consulting help of a nonfictional character, Herman Wouk, a\"mulish ancient\" who gets involved despite the strong misgivings ofhis wife. Wouk\'s memoir,titled Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author,was published in January 2016 to mark his 100thbirthday. NPR calledit \"a lovely coda to the career of a man who made American literature akinder, smarter, better place.\" It was his last book. Daily journal Wouk kept apersonal diary from 1937. On September 10, 2008, Wouk presented the Library of Congress with his journals,which number more than 100 volumes as of 2012, at a ceremony that honored himwith the first Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award for the Writingof Fiction (now the Library of Congress Prize forAmerican Fiction). Wouk often referred to his journals to checkdates and facts in his writing, and he was hesitant to let the originals out ofhis personal possession. A solution was negotiated: a scanning service bureauwas selected to scan the entire set of volumes into digital formats. Personal lifeand death In late 1944Wouk met Betty Sarah Brown, a Phi BetaKappa graduate of the University of Southern California,who was working as a personnel specialist in the navy while the Zane wasundergoing repairs in San Pedro, California. The two quicklyfell in love and after his ship went back to sea, Betty, who was born a Protestant andwas raised in Grangeville, Idaho, began her study of Judaismand converted on her twenty-fifth birthday. They were married on December 10,1945. With the birthof the first of their three children the next year, Wouk became a full-timewriter to support his growing family. His first-born son, Abraham Isaac Wouk,was named after Wouk\'s late father. He drowned in a swimming pool accidentin Cuernavaca, Mexico shortly before hisfifth birthday. Wouk later dedicated War and Remembrance to him withthe Biblical words \"בלע המות לנצח –He will destroy death forever\" (Isaiah 25:8). Their second and thirdchildren were Iolanthe Woulff (born 1950 as Nathaniel Wouk, a Princeton University graduate and anauthor and Joseph (born 1954, a Columbia graduate, an attorney, a filmproducer, and a writer who served in the Israeli Navy).He had three grandchildren. The Wouks livedin New York, Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (wherehe wrote Don\'t Stop the Carnival) and at 3255 N Street N.W. inthe Georgetown section of Washington,D.C. (where he researched and wrote The Winds of War and Warand Remembrance) before settling in Palm Springs, California. His wife, whoserved for decades as his literaryagent, died in that city on March 17, 2011. \"I wrotenothing that was of the slightest consequence before I met Sarah,\" Woukrecalled 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 forwhat they are but they\'re ephemeral. They just disappear. And that was the kindof thing I did up until the time that I met Sarah and we married. And I wouldsay my literary career and my mature life both began with her.\" Hisbrother Victor died in 2005. Hisnephew, Alan I. Green, was a psychiatrist at DartmouthCollege. Wouk died inhis sleep in his home in Palm Springs, California, on May 17, 2019, at the ageof 103, ten days before his 104th birthday. Degrees ColumbiaUniversity, New York, 1934 (A.B. with general honors Yeshiva University, New York, 1954 (Hon.L.H.D.) ClarkUniversity, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1960 (Hon.D.Lit.) American International College, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1979 (Hon.Litt.D.) Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel,1990 (Hon. Ph.D.) Awards andhonors Pulitzer Prizefor Fiction, 1952 ColumbiaUniversity Medal for Excellence, 1952 AlexanderHamilton Medal, 1980 Golden PlateAward, American Academy of Achievement, 1986 United States Navy Memorial Foundation LoneSailor Award, 1987 Bar-IlanUniversity Guardian of Zion Award, 1998 Jewish Book Council Lifetime LiteraryAchievement Award, 1999 Library of CongressLifetime Achievement Award for the Writing of Fiction (inaugural), 2008 Published works The Man in theTrench Coat (1941, play) Aurora Dawn (1947) City Boy: The Adventures of HerbieBookbinder (1948) The Traitor(1949 play) The CaineMutiny (1951) The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1953,play) Marjorie Morningstar (1955) Slattery\'s Hurricane (1956) The\"Lomokome\" Papers (written in 1949, published in 1956) Nature\'s Way (1957,play) This is MyGod: The Jewish Way of Life (1959, revised ed. 1973, reviseded. 1988, non-fiction) YoungbloodHawke (1962) Don\'t Stop the Carnival (1965) The Winds ofWar (1971) War and Remembrance (1978) Inside, Outside (1985) The Hope (1993) The Glory (1994) The Will toLive On: This is Our Heritage (2000, non-fiction) A Hole inTexas (2004) The LanguageGod Talks: On Science and Religion (2010, non-fiction) The Lawgiver (2012) Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year Old Author (2015,non-fiction)