A fitting and insightful tribute to a great American novelist.
2
I read WoW, WaR, "Caine Mutiny", and Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific" as a teenager in the late '70s/early '80s. I felt like I was getting a peek into the adult world, where adults did serious things, and had affairs, and thought about the moral consequences of their actions. I'm considering whether I should now plunge into James Jones.
I don't know if these are great books, but I think they give a better sense of the time than do more self consciously "literary" works.
5
This is a good article as far as it goes, but it does not link up to the Jews' predicament today. Today, the vilification of Jews takes the form of harassment and murder of Jews in Europe, and occasionally at home as recent history attests only too well. The main Jewish target in our time, though, is Israel, the evergreen subject of disproportionate and selective criticism.
1
Just about all of you commenters here have grown up reading books, as I have, and because of this we have taken in a wealth of knowledge without even realizing it. Not only do we know about the world and its history but we apparently are much more empathetic for having read fiction. Sadly, kids today, because of their devices, are hardly reading at all. I’m so worried that not only will they be less empathetic and able to understand other people’s perspectives, they will be ignorant of history. Ignorance is how someone like Donald Trump gets elected. We need to ditch the devices and get back to the books.
10
Not necessarily so @Laurie Gough. I used to think the same way. Most young people read. Just not the traditional. They read books, newspapers on Kindle, Nook, etc. They read just not the traditional us old timers think of reading. As long as people read. It doesn't matter how it is delivered.
2
@Laurie Gough. I fall to see how an enlightened populace would have elected HR Clinton?
2
I have not read any of Wouk's novels, but I love this summary of his most significant works. It sounds like he's underrated while some of his more respected literary contemporaries are overrated. I think it's time I read The Winds of War.
10
Both books are our War and Peace; brilliant, insightful stories and lessons of war and fascism and anti-semitism. Complex parables to teach us . . . . . and so timely now, alas.
15
For another; very humorous as well as insightful side of Herman Wouk the writer, I recommend "The Lawgiver," published when he was 97, in which he used faxes and other modern and traditional means of communication to write about his (fictional) lifelong desire to write a book about Moses.
...on the other hand, I long ago found Marjorie Morningstar to be smug and condescending toward bright, young New York Jewish women.
1
When I read of Wouk's death, I elected to re-read Winds of War and War and Remembrance, which I had read and loved shortly after their publication. I appreciate how they retained their currency, particularly in 2019 America. I was also intrigued at the difference in what registered as a twenty-something versus what registered as a seventy-something. The focus on moral weakness, rationalization and dismissal was one of those differences. Thank you for your insightful review.
13
I can only echo the comments made by Adelle Waldman in her summation of Herman Wouk's novels about the Second World War. I read "The Winds of War" as a young teenager in the early seventies and it made a profound impression on me. My parents were married in 1933 and my father served in the Navy in the South Pacific during the war. While their experiences during the prewar and war years were not as worldly as those of the Henry's, the book did inspire some fascinating discussions related to those years and how the unfolding political events in Europe impacted their lives. Mr. Wouk's book introduced me to the concept of the "banality of evil" and how easily adaptable many ordinary people are to not only "turning a blind eye" to the growing evil around them, but also accepting and actively participating in extreme acts of depravity and horror.
12
I read W&R as a young adult decades ago. The narrative and scenes (Pug’s son’s death at Midway stands out) were great but I always had trouble grasping the meaning of the dialogue of some of his characters. (How could he or she say that offensive or misguided comment.) Thanks for this remembrance and for clearing up a few things for me.
I need to pull W&R off the shelf and don’t forget The Glory and the Dream!
7
MS Waldman has named the up to now unspeakable malaise permeating our All American souls: insidious moral weakness.
7
"Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" are two of my favorite novels. I have had a lifelong crush on Pug Henry. When I moved to the D.C. area in the late 90s one of the first things I did was find Foxhall Road. In the years that I lived there I would drive up Foxhall Road from Georgetown to its terminus at Nebraska Avenue whenever I was feeling blue.
Farewell Hermon Wouk, and thank you.
10
Reading the Winds of War books as a teenager in the 1970s helped me empathize with the young people impatiently waiting for the next Harry Potter book to appear. In Wouk's case, I kept wondering what could possibly be taking so long. Didn't he already know who won WWII?
5
To understand the Holocaust you need only Wouk’s books, William Manchester’s work on the Krupps, and Alain Resnais’s short film Night and Fog.
12
@DD
Add "In the Garden of the Beasts" by Eric Larson (2011)
Personal history of William Dodd (and family) in 1933 while he served as the first US Ambassador to Hitler's Germany.
8
I am hopelessly middle brow, and I loved both Winds of War and War and Remembrance. The passage describing the death of Warren Henry, Pug’s oldest son, which comes near the first part of the second book, is one of the most moving I have ever read.
12
reading Mr Wouk's 2 books on WWII as a young teen in the late 70's along with those of Leon Uris and James Michener helped shape my understanding of the world we lived in and why it was arranged as it was. His books are eminently readable and informed me on so many levels, as Adelle Waldman has pointed out in this review. I recently read "The Caine Mutiny" and can recommend that too. I would hope young readers today are finding these books and gaining the knowledge they will need to navigate their way through what seems to be history repeating itself today in many unthinkable ways. RIP Mr Wouk and thank you
25
Loved both WoW & WaR and the thorough portrait that it gave of the monumental event that we know as World War II. Through the eyes of the Henry family we had a very personal view of many of the major events that took place during the war. Wouk’s narrative was extraordinary for its ability to accurately portray so many diverse viewpoints of the many characters in the books. That he was able to present an accurate point of view of his Nazi characters was extraordinary considering the abhorrent nature of those views. Professor Jastrow’s slow and inexorable slide into the inferno of the German concentration camp was an unforgettable part of the book. We will miss Herman Wouk and his classic novels.
11
Thank you, Ms. Waldman, for an insightful examination of novelist Herman Wouk. You inspired me to reread The Winds of War.
11
Our ability to use our complex brains to justify actions stemming from our basest motives reminds me of a saying of J. P. Morgan "A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason."
12
There is an on-going debate between scholars and philosophers whether there is a connection between morality and literature: Judge Richard Posner believes that people read novels, and watch plays for pleasure only. Martha Nussbaum believes that literature is intimately connected with morality. People watch tv series like Downton Abbey for pleasure only. When I read The Caine Mutiny many years ago, I enjoyed it very much. It was "a good read." But it also raised important moral issues, whether one should obey the chain of command during wartime--or violate it when the captain didn't seem aware of what he was doing.
12
Diogenes is of course correct in noting that there is such a debate. Yet I find such a debate self-stultifying, for the simple reason that there is no way to tell, at least to any degree of statistical or other assured significance, what readers take from novels and plays. The issue occupies one of the many vacuous corners of literary criticism.
3
I was saddened to read of the death on one of my favorite American writers, Herman Wouk. In order of reading, The City Boy and Marjorie Morningstar helped me understand the dynamics of human beings, their gifts and foibles, and then of romantic relationships. I wish the NYT would also include a recent assessment of their value.
One reason I knew categorically what would result from a Trump Presidency was having read The Winds of War and War and Remembrance--Wouk was a master of getting the facts right, but also telling a story with fully dimensional and true human beings. It was so obvious to me what would ensue that I was actually stymied by the fact that, in the beginning, I was somewhat alone in my "predictions." If all Americans had read these two books, perhaps they would have been unable to vote for Trump.
I thoroughly appreciate this assessment of these books.
I read one of Wouk's last books, The Lawgiver, which he wrote when he was nearing 100 years of age. It was wonderful and fresh and modern. I wanted to write him a fan letter, but didn't go to the trouble of locating him to do so. I regret it. His writing formed me quite a bit, as a Jew, and as a person.
RIP, Herman Wouk. Critics may not rank you as highly as I do, but you did your part in raising me right.
48
I have always thought that "The Winds of War" (WoW) and "War and Remembrance" (WaR) were the best mini-series ever produced for television. After I heard about the passing of the author, I re-watched both of them (a 48-hour experience). As great as those shows are, they are also imperfect. Three of Wouk's characters (Victor Henry, Byron Henry and Leslie Slote) are just too good to be true. However, one possibly trivial thing always bothered me about the series. In WoW, Natalie Henry, in her effort to escape being trapped in Italy, makes it as far as Zurich but is told by a United States official (Bunky Thurston) that the only way to get from there to Lisbon the USA is via a Lufthansa flight from Zurich to Lisbon. She is scared of that for obvious reasons (since she is Jewish) and returns to Italy, with disastrous consequences. This is all well and good except that in WaR, another Jewish character, Selma Asher, is sent by her father from Zurich to the United States and Mr. Wouk never tells us how she made the trip! This always bothered me, perhaps much more than it should. I still do not know how hard it was to travel from Switzerland to the United States during World Was II.
1
In the novel The Winds of War, the only airline offering service to Portugal, where Natalie had to go in order to catch the Pan American Clipper to the United States, was Lufthansa. When Natalie began to fill out the security questionnaire, she became alarmed at the question about the religion of the passenger. She left the Lufthansa counter, went to Swissair, and booked a flight back to Rome. She and her uncle were booked on a flight to Lisbon on 15 December, 1941, but Nazi Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December, trapping her and Aaron in Europe.
The Ascher family wisely got themselves and their fortune out of Germany right after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. In War and Remembrance , Jacob Ascher is close friends with a British diplomat who has a background in intelligence. This man helped the Aschers get passage to the UK and then to the US. A Swissair flight could have easily flown the Aschers to neutral Sweden, where a Swedish liner or aircraft would have transported them to Lisbon for either a clipper flight or cruise ship voyage to America.
2
I am living in a country where a fascist lover has been elected president. His words are awful. The consequences of his acts can harm people for years to come. Yet, I see the same reasoning described in Wouk books coming from supposedly educated people, who are fed up with politics in general. Who can blame their ire against the political class? On the political class, I suppose. However, the reaction is to elect another politician with the same demagogue and populist ethos that we can find in the 1920s and 1930s. And shameless deny it. Will history repeat itself?
15
@Ademario
Funny, I'm living in that same kind of country.
10
I've read WoW, WaR and the Caine Mutiny and enjoyed them all a great deal, but I've got to give a nod to Marjorie Morningstar. I read it more than once as as a teenager and again as an adult and still can't decide if it's a satiric comedy about cultural assimilation or a tragedy about a young woman who is forced to give up her dreams. Maybe that's why I love it. I'll take the eye rolls from "serious" fiction readers and feminists alike (by the way, two groups to which I proudly belong) if it means I can revisit Marjorie from time to time.
21
@KWH I've noticed that "serious" fiction readers often dismiss enlightened, accomplished and (ahem) very successful novelists. In my Modern American Fiction class in college we were assigned An American Tragedy but warning preemptively that Dreiser wrote bad prose. I disagree, and among the many lauded male writers we read in that class, he was among the few (was perhaps the only one, in fact) who treated his female characters as human beings worthy of equal consideration to the male characters.
11
Dreiser, like Wouk, adhered to the most basic rule of a novelist: tell me a story
6
THE CAINE MUTINY: I was
a child, perhaps it was at a drive-in,
what I vaguely recall is the performance of Humphrey Bogart, and I will google to a website or Wikipedia to see the winners.
Before 1955 I was 10 or 11. Much later I recall
Robert Mitchum in the Winds of War, and
the tv critics were negative. I read adult books, such as Peyton Place, but nothing by
Wouk. No Time For Sergeants is a favorite.
I regret not reading Wouk, d it.
4
Herman Wouk's second novel, The City Boy, is a tender, humorous, poignant look at childhood and adolescence; the book and Wouk's deftly drawn characters embody the innocence, simple pleasures and cruelty of youth. It's a witty yet plangent tale of scheming, yearning and striving to belong and be loved.
6
I first read these books as a teenager in the 70's. When I went to live in (West) Germany later in the decade I was startled to hear these same rationalizations still echoing around, voiced by those who had lived through the war on either side. A veteran of the armed SS that I knew insisted that Germany was just bringing western civilization to Eastern Europe, and was angry that anyone would object to that. This moral subjectivity was new to me as a young person, and shocking. It was also proof that Herman Wouk was accurate in his representations of contemporaneous views of the time, and the human ability to be in the center of the whirlwind, and still not be able to see the storm.
20
I love "The Caine Mutiny". I find it one of the best books available on leadership and have used it as a 'text book' in a course on leadership that I taught for many years. Wouk's character studies affirm one of the major points on leadership: Who you are as a leader is largely who you are as a person. The main character, Willie Kieth, grows from a privileged recent Ivy League grad (and mommy's boy) - certified a navel officer by a 6 week course - to a clam, confident, competent officer through observation of those around him and learning from his mistakes. Those around him are leaders of some degree of success limited by their personalities and ability to understand and grow.
The other leadership lesson Wouk teaches is that in an effective organization leadership is a team variable rather than an individual one. It's not about great individual leaders, but about a group of leaders who work together, building on each others' strengths and accommodating each others limitations to build a successful organization.
I often wondered if Wouk intended or realized what an effective study of leadership he had provided.
9
@Ron
The movie, “The Caine Mutiny”, was shown in leadership classes at the Navy’s Officer Candidate School in the late 1970s.
The Princeton grad was almost hiding under his desk while we watched it
8
Not all of Wouk's novels were necessarily historical or about war - one of the first "adult" novels I ever read, at the age of 11 or so was Wouk's Don't Stop the Carneval about the wild misadventures of a 1950s NY ad-man who makes the fateful decision to chuck it all and run a beachfront bar somewhere down in the Caribbean. loved it and have had a soft spot for Wouk ever since.
He was a greatly readable author who told unforgettable stories populated by unforgettable people. He will be missed.
11
@Andy Don't Stop the Carnival is one of Wouk's less serious books but I found it great fun when I stayed at the Hotel on the Cay, the inspiration for Wouk's book. It's on Protestant Cay a few hundred yards and a few minutes shuttle ride from Christiansted, St. Croix.
1
My high school history teacher used the account of the battle of Midway as a teaching tool. He felt that it covered that aspect of the Pacific war better than any non fiction book. Middlebrow? Pffft.
14
@runaway
It's my understanding that brows can usually found
on the keel bottom of that big ole language barge.
How now brow cow?
3
"Trump has not authorized genocide" as said in comment. Noam Chomsky stated on "Democracy Now" that Trump was potentially the greatest mass murderer in history by ignoring climate change and potentially destroying the earth.
8
@Opinionator
The next time I see Chomsky flying to a university conference I'll remind him of his contribution too.
Just for your information, companies and researchers are working on carbon capture technologies despite Trump.
2
Loved his books; even the films were good. He left a legacy. True literature is immortal because, unfortunately, human beings have not changed. So what was true then, is true now. Looking the other way, blaming the victims; it's very old and eternal. Shame on us.
6
Herman Wouk was a master storyteller which is reflected in not only The Winds of War, but also his splendid sequel, War and Remembrance. When you read one, you cannot help but read the other as well as his masterpiece, The Caine Mutiny. As a young draftee in Vietnam, I was captivated by his portrayal of the European political climate in 1939 and the characters he created to fit the mood of a world on the brink. Before I was sent to Vietnam, I had a discussion with my mentor whether fascism could ever find a home in the United States. I mentioned I thought it was highly unlikely. He responded that it could happen here and I, as a young graduate student, was too naive. I believe that Herman Wouk would have thought so too. Before his death, he probably asked himself, where is our Pug Henry today when we need him the most? Every American everywhere should take the time to read his seminal works that highlighted the golden age of American democracy. Will any other writer raise to similar heights? Honestly I don't know.
29
I think Huey Long said it best;
“If fascism ever comes to the United States, it will be because the people voted it in”
12
@Chris Tharrington
The people vote correctly. It's that stupid Electoral College that screws everything up.
6
I was surprised to discover Mr. Wouk's obituary in the NY Times. He was one of those immensely popular authors who was instantly recognizable with a surname that was all powerful. As with Hitchcock for movies, Wouk, Michener, Ferber and O'Hara were instantly recognizable as commodities , superseding the literary value of their works. Their novels and stories were so popular that the highbrows probably favored chagrin over any favorable mention in their often snarky book reviews.
I was surprised to see this obit as I thought Mr. Wouk had passed years ago. And here he was, still writing, not for the critics, maybe not for readers, but because it was his life's blood to do so. One blockbuster, verifiable winner emerged as bestseller and laudatory winner, The Caine Mutiny. Yet the man kept writing. Maybe the books were pulpy , not "literary" but titles such as Marjorie Morningstar and Youngblood Hawk seeped into public consciousness, with corresponding movies whose posters advertised the potboiler aspects of his work as only Hollywood knows how to do.
This article and the obituary honor an extraordinary life, man, and yes ,writer.
12
Although itis impossible to ignore the holocaust today it wasn't nearly as well known when I was in 5th grade over 55 years ago. My 5th grade teacher in Middletown Ohio, was the granddaughter of a Virginia slave owner (who actually sent his freed slaves to Liberia after his death - one would call him a liberal of sorts) who spoke to the class one day, about the time, Judgment at Nurenburg, had been released., and never mentioned the plight of the Jews. The movie barely mentioned it.
Not until the following summer visiting my mother's sister in Long Island, that I saw a reference to the gas chambers and crematories of the concentration camps. I saw a program on TV that examined the caps. We were not that well informed about the world.
My father is a WWII veteran and never came into contact with the concentration camps. He only saw action in France. He didn't know much about them either. He spoke about the thousands of refugees he could see along the roads of France and Germany. There are estimates as high as 80 million people who may have died during the war and the camps really weren't the most significant aspect of the war to the average man or women then.
There is little mention today in this paper, or any other paper I see, of the thousands of Gazans who have protested every Frdiay for over a year, and are being shot by the hundreds for the right to escape illegal internment and the right of return.
Can we call that induced media ignorance?
5
@gluebottle
I was just thinking this--at what point, and by what means, did the Holocaust become a discrete historical event such that it exists independently of pretty much the rest of the "war" (I use scare quotes because for Americans, the military events of this time period are all part of a single war but then you go to China and people tend to reference the War of Japanese Aggression and WWII, meaning Europe, as if they were disconnected, which they were and they weren't. It is interesting to read the quote of the German military officer character because I had never before thought that any German at this time considered Jewish people to be enemy combatants. It is interesting to suddenly be made aware of such a perspective and then to read your comment on the Palestinians of Gaza.
I don't know if it's media-induced ignorance. Reality, especially largescale events that take place over years and across continents, is not always so parsible. Americans of this period were familiar with the notion of the "vanishing Indian", but seemed to be unable to see that something more than "civilization" was behind their disappearance. And then the long-simmering anti-semitism of Europe married modern-day notions of nationhood and scientific expediency (or whatever) and hatred suddenly took on new and strange forms that at first no one who hadn't seen them with their own eyes could even believe. Maybe the strangeness of the Holocaust is why we don't see its echoes in Gaza?
3
Read his take on the parable of Job in the 2nd book through the character of Beryl Jastrow. One of the most insightful takes on a biblical story I’ve ever read. Worth reading both books just for that passage
17
@Randy
Without being petty, it was Berel's cousin Aaron Jastrow who spoke about Job at Terezin. Having said that, I absolutely agree with you, and, in fact, it's probably the finest treatment of the Holocaust in literature. I first encountered it about 40 years ago, and I still reread it every 5 years or so.
13
Replace the word “Fascism” with “Trumpism” and one sees that the difference is minimal in the sense that people rationalize and allow a new normal to exist that justifies unjustifiable human behaviors, be they groping or molesting women, mocking a handicapped person’s disability or deconstructing the US Constituion. The slope is icy slick.
58
@mutineer
If you are comparing the challenges we face today with the challenges faced by Wouk’s brave characters, my guess is you have never deployed overseas. Give me a break.
5
@James well James I spent some time in southeast asia before there were green zones and such. I personally believe ole captain bone spurs is a threat to american democracy. The last time we had this sort of threat we were spared by an assassins bullet when Huey Long was killed. I would say that you have never read the history of your fore fathers. My father was part of the army that liberated Dachau. We face very similar challenges
19
@James I am afraid we are subject to the same brand of denial suffered by Wouk's characters. This, I think, is the point of this article.
10
Not to mention Wouk's stupendous The Caine Mutiny!
12
Yes. The two novels covering the sweep of World War II convey as well or better than any standard history the horrors of battle, the moral ambiguity in choices forced upon leaders, and the emotional incompleteness of victory in the pursuit of a task requiring murder of other human beings. Wouk’s descriptions of the Battle of Midway and the descent into Auschwitz gas chambers can be read again and again without any diminution in the power to move the reader. He was a genius to craft such fiction as reminders of our capacity both for courage and deprivation.
25
I love Wouk's book " Inside, Outside". It is a tale of four generations of Russian Jews who come to America. The narrator is a minor administrator in the Nixon administration, who relates details of Yom Kippur war.
11
This discussion reminds me of Hannah Arendt's "The Banality of Evil." She wanted the Eichmann trial to study what motivated him. He argued that he was simply a government worker doing his job well. He could not be faulted for simply following orders, he claimed. The same argument would be used to justify the execution of the My Lai Massacre. What is needed is critical reasoning, a questioning of whether the orders given are morally sound, and a willingness to disobey them when they are not.
19
A wonderful and insightful review of Wouk and his work
and, thus, of humanity.
"Wouk is getting at something deeper: a tendency of supposedly sophisticated people to dismiss the possibility of cataclysm. At play is a sort of intellectual vanity that seeks to distance itself from anything that could be seen as hysterical or rube-like."
The Intellectual Elite did not see Trump coming.
They still can't believe he is President.
They insist that he be Impeached and Convicted.
They are sure their candidate(s) will defeat Trump in 2020.
What they will not do is support Sanders, or someone who
actually represents the "basketful of deplorables"
Perhaps Trump will be removed from office or defeated
at the polls, but perhaps he will surprise them again and win.
After all, for all their intellectual vanity, they failed to understand
that Trump is the Canary in the Mine of American Politics.
34
Wouk was not the equal of Philip Roth or Saul Bellow.
But they were not equals of him.
15
@A. Stanton What does that mean? They were better in one or more properties--and he in others?
3
@Diogenes That's how I read it.
I remember reading these books and loving them. Coincidentally, today I heard the remembrance of a woman, Annemarie Yellin, who is a survivor of the Holocaust. She vividly described her remembrance of Kristallnacht as 10 year old child and her experience as a hidden child. She still has one of the stars with a J that she was forced to wear. We also heard from Luigi Toscan, an Italian who grew up in Germany, who has created the project Lest We Forget. He has taken photographs of over 300 survivors and 69 of them are displayed in the Civic Center in San Francisco. He also has an installation in Vienna and has been in NY and Washington, D.C., among other places, in public spaces. It is sobering to see. https://jewishfed.org/news/events/lest-we-forget. I plan on rereading these books. Never forget.
10
Considering the seriousness of his later topics, it's ironic that Mr. Wouk began his writing career writing gags for Fred Allen's radio show
8
@Steve
I see what you mean, but it might be important to recall that the Caine Mutiny makes good use of the rise up from frivolity and shallowness in the main character.
3
I have read and re-read the Winds of War and War and Remembrance. They are magnificent. I have also read (once) Marjorie Morningstar and Youngblood Hawke.
But my favorite will always be The Caine Mutiny, perhaps because my father served as a junior officer in the WWII Navy, just as Wouk did. A great writer of great books.
9
As a teenager, I was mesmerized by The Caine Mutiny. However, historical novels, dealing with fictitious characters and woven around actual facts leave me cold. I never picked up another Wouk novel.
2
@Barry Borella
Your loss.
6
I had to read The Caine Mutiny in high school and was not particularly taken with it. Possibly because I was distracted by being in high school.
When I moved to Palm Springs 33 years ago I made the acquaintance of his son with whom I had many great talks with.
I never met the author but I did get motivated to read his books and I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed them with the experience age brings and the bonus of learning something about my neighbor.
9
Beautifully written, perceptive review, makes me want to re-read Wouk and also read Ms. Waldman's own novel.
13
Thank you for reminding us of these great war novels. Reading them in my 30s enabled me to better understand not only the historical events, but also my Holocaust-survivor parents, and to discuss their experiences in greater depth. Wouk was a gifted and insightful writer.
10
I re-read both Winds of War and War and Remembrance about every five years. These are beautifully written, deeply moving, and incredibly exciting novels. Wouk's account of the Battle of Midway and the Battle of Leyte Gulf should be required reading in our middle schools.
15
If you love to read and good story telling you must read these two novels. They are bliss. I first read them on my own during high school. Later I was surprised to see them on a 300 level history course at my university. These books are fine literature, not “middlebrow “ at all.
18
I am left with one impression after reading this essay. Wouk seems to have been a master of the obvious. Having never read any of his works, I can't judge them definitively, but this essay does not inspire me to do so.
1
@andy b: You could say the same about Shakespeare.
Read "King Lear" and then scroll through the various advice columns on financial matters and you're bound to find someone questioning what to do now that they have deeded their home to their son or daughter (usually as a precaution before surgery or after a bad diagnosis) and now that they are well again they are stuck; to their surprise, said ungrateful child won't give it back.
Think of "Othello" and then read the newspaper. I imaging you'll discover a story titled "Jealous Husband Slays Wife", subheading being "Thought She Was Sleeping With His Best Friend".
I could go on, but I believe I've made my point.
1
“This defense of the indefensible, coming from an individual with a veneer of civilization, is as disturbing as anything I’ve ever encountered in a novel.
In America of 2019 we could be saying this about how a major political party headed by a man with authoritarian instincts can be issuing policies towards people escaping violence such as family separations and calling the media” enemies,of the people” for reporting about it.
Sure, Trump has not authorized genocide but there is an element of systematic racism and this seems to be getting worse with practically the entire Republican Party willing to go along.
Wouk’s novels are more relevant now than 30 years ago
40
I've never read the "Winds of War" and "War and Rememberance" but ABC made two rather good miniseries of the novels back in 1983 and 1988.
I will never forget Aaron Jastrow (played by John Gielgud) as he foolishly decides to stay in Italy at the cusp or war and how he, and his niece Natalie, played by Jane Seymour, also unable to escape, both wind up in Theresienstadt, and ultimately Auchwitz. The memory of those scenes have haunted me for years.
As we look at today's America under Trump and ask how we got here, it's important to remember that history repeats itself.
21
The first, but not the last time, I read Winds of War was while manning my post at Hotel Three inside the Ton San Nhut air base complex during the Vietnam War. I purchased the book at the PX and I could not put it down. Mainly because Wouk not only dramatized the climate of the pre-war and early war years, but more important, the prevailing public opinions of the age like no other novelist of his time. He will be sorely missed.
9
A valuable and deeply troubling essay.
Could it be calling us to our senses and helping us to see what we must do in our present circumstances?
11
Thoughtful and incisive review that makes me want to reread Wouk’s works which are newly relevant because of Trump & his enablers. I have found quality historical fiction is a good way to revisit history and its lessons. Wouk has a lot to teach us.
8
Mr. Wouk’s WWII books were my teenage introduction to the Holocaust. The familiar humanity of his characters gave rich depth and color to events which had been for me just two-dimensional and B&W. Wouk’s writing gave me a varied cast of characters in whose shoes I could walk - an invaluable experience at that age. He’ll always be one of my favorite American novelists.
8
Thank you so much for the perspicacity to include such a piece about Wouk in the NYT.
As the writer correctly states, Wouk's books, especially the Winds of War and War and Remembrance, haven't aged at all -- and yet are still novels we read avidly from one page to another, one section to another.
These two novel made the most splendid of network special miniseries too, in that golden age of network specials in the 1980's. When netflix still was dvd I was able to get them all. And now, not only are there no dvds, but the books themselves have been culled from the library shelves and they haven't been made available on the ebook apps either.
It's so sad, because, like the author of the article describes so well, they truly show how atrocities are allowed to happen -- because, we, the people, in all our variety and diversity, and ultimately, denial, allow them to happen.
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@Foxxix Comte
As you indicate the best books get culled from the library shelves.
BTW - Had fun with the word "miniseries" in several of the comments - reading "mi-niseries" - (are they ghosts, I wondered)? Then of course clicked "mini-series"!!
After all "ministry" is not a "mini-stry". English is in constant flux!
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I am so grateful to have found the books of Herman Wouk and will remain a devoted fan forever. I just wish there had been more. Winds of War and War and Remembrance changed my life and I always identified with Marjorie Morningstar. Thank you Herman Wouk. Baruch Dayan Emess.
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I read “The Caine Mutiny” at age 13 or 14 and became a lifelong fan. I reread it 40 years later. In a subtle way, Willie Keith is as compelling a character as any in American literature - especially to a young boy. As extraordinary as “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” are, “The Hope” and “The Glory” are every bit as good. I am going to order “This is my God” today. Wouk is incomparable.
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I devoured Winds of War and War and Remembrance as a young woman in the 1970s and they have remained with me ever since. I can still picture myself on an airplane finishing the last page of Winds of War — and the extraordinary conversation which then began with my seat-mate, who was Jewish. Thank you for honoring Wouk’s literary achievement — as relevant now as it was when published.
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For the first time I am tempted to read Wouk’s novels. I’ve long wondered how the US could have allowed Hitler to invade most of Western Europe before Pearl Harbor left no alternative to enter the war. Aside from the lack of current technological advances and the understandable preoccupation with recovery from the depression, Wouk seems to have exposed human frailties such as denial and narcissism as well as political choices which
contributed to the delay.
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Most Americans were isolationists. And far too many were antisemitic. FDR had his hands full with Lend-Lease opposition, let alone making a fuss about Jews disappearing.
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@julia I would encourage you to do so. I've read the WWII novels twice and anticipate a third.
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Do it! Best author ever!
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I've never picked up one of Wouk's novels. Now I think I might. What fascinating depiction of characters.
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@AJ
Read the Caine Mutiny, one of the best character developments in a novel ever. You live with these young men as they confront moral difficulties and survival in the wartime navy.
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@jim smith
Thank you Jim. I will take you up on that suggestion.
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What would Wouk make of our current global tensions, and the leadership of a failed real estate developer appointed through technicality, to guide the free world through its present and future challenges?
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@moses Not to forget: a failed real estate developer that was elected after a gigantic real estate driven financial crisis - when will we the people learn...
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I wonder what Wouk would write about Syria today?
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Thanks for this reminder of Wouk's work. Unfortunately, it is still so relevant. All the described characters could easily be updated to today's scene.
I read Wouk as a teenager in the 1960's and I remember feeling pulled in that past with horror. I remember thinking "thank goodness we don't have to worry about things like that anymore." Boy, was I wrong....
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@sfdphd Please go see the Lest We Forget installation in the Civic Center Plaza in SF. The artist is Luigi Toscano.
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Thanks, Herman. Two of the finest novels I've ever read. A double-decker masterpiece.
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An insightful review. I read "Winds of War" and "War & Remembrance" as a teenager, and they caused me to become interested in international law.
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The obituaries for Herman Wouk I've read today all mention that his work was often held in low esteem among literary critics. I've long found this view to be peculiarly narrow-minded.
We humans have told each other stories in one form or another as long as we've been around. From grunts and gestures, to paintings on the walls of caves, to spoken words, (tales around the fire) to the written word and beyond.
Some stories are factual, (history) some are fantastical, (ghost stories) and most are in between.
I've read Churchill's "The Second World War," and was enveloped by the minutiae of day-to-day life he recounted. It is a glorious example of human history told with passion.
I've also read "The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance," and immersed myself in a look at how we humans find so many ways to deceive ourselves, yet manage to be heroic in spite of that.
Mr. Wouk had a lot to say. What you can gain from him is result of how hard you listen.
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Read the Winds of War as a 14 year old, while visiting my grandma in an Indian village, on her recommendation. she has earlier introduced me to Ann Frank. To date I think it was the best possible introduction to the historical novel and World War 2. The book not only made the events come alive but made complex ideas accessible. Its a book I would still recommend in my forties.
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What a beautifully written article. I hadn't thought about Herman Wouk's writing in quite some time but I now want to read these novels. Thank you.
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Herman Wouk was an orthodox Jew and his moral stance was formed by his religious beliefs. He even wrote a book on his faith called "This is my God."
Hi-brow critics complain that he did not challenge conventional values and practices. You will not find anyone who is homosexual in his novels or who has any doubts about his sexuality. Other than anti-Semitism, there is no discussion of prejudice against blacks or the evils of the color line.
What you will find are conventional characters whose beliefs about "doing the right thing" are tested: whether one should challenge the uncertain leadership of Captain Queeg on the U.S.S. Caine; or remain loyal and obey the chain of command, which is essential in war time.
I agree that Wouk's novels will last, because, unlike Uris's novels, they deal with moral problems. In Uris's work, everything is black or white. Wouk's perspective was narrow, but deep.
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Well, some things are bigger than race and gender.
The problems that should unite us do not discriminate, and that is what we must remember going forward to the 2020 presidential election.
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