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| (photo: Stephanie Diani) | |
Herman Wouk, "whose taut shipboard drama The Caine Mutiny lifted him to the top of the bestseller lists, where he remained for most of a career that extended past his 100th year," died May 17, the New York Times reported. He was 103. Amy Rennert, his literary agent, said he had been "working on another book when he died, although, as was his custom, he had declined to discuss its subject until it was finished."
Describing him as a "whipping boy for reviewers who at best grudgingly acknowledged his narrative skill," the Times noted that Wouk "enthralled millions of readers in search of a good story, snappy dialogue and stirring events, rendered with a documentarian's sense of authenticity and detail."
Wouk's first novel, Aurora Dawn, was published in 1947 and his memoir, Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-old Author, was released in 2016, the year he turned 100.
The Caine Mutiny, which sold more than three million copies in the U.S., won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1952 and was adapted into a movie in 1954 with Humphrey Bogart as Queeg. Wouk also adapted the courtroom sections of the novel into a hit Broadway play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, which opened the same year as the film and starred Lloyd Nolan.
Marjorie Morningstar was published in 1955 "with a fanfare that included Wouk on the cover of Time magazine" and went on to become "one of the first popular novels about Jewish life," the Los Angeles Times wrote, noting that the book was on bestseller lists "for so long that it became somewhat of a publishing phenomenon,"
His sweeping and epic novels The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978) were adapted into successful television mini-series in the 1980s. The L.A. Times reported that the first series "was watched by more viewers than any other program in television history at that time. Viewership of War and Remembrance was not as high, but still tens of millions of viewers watched all or parts of it."
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," according to the Associated Press. Wouk received the first ever Library of Congress Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Writing of Fiction in 2008. His longevity inspired Stephen King to title one story "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive."
Author Jon Meacham tweeted: " 'The beginning of the end of War lies in Remembrance.'--Herman Wouk. Hugely important novelist for me; he should be read forever."