Status Update, some words on Herman Wouk

Hey,

Well, a happy new year to the twenty eight people who read this thing.

The original plan was for me to do Wouk next -- I've changed my mind, though. I had a mini-epiphany where I suddenly realized that Life Was Short and It Was A Long Cold Night Out There and that I Didn't Want to Spend It With Wouk.

So, first of all a sketch on how it's really gonna go - then a minute or two saying what I want to say on Wouk. The next big "literary" writer will definitely be John O'Hara, and I'm not just saying that this time -- I finished APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA over the holidays. We're also going to be looking at A RAGE TO LIVE, BUTTERFIELD 8, TEN NORTH FREDERICK, FROM THE TERRACE and some kind of collection of his short stories.

The problem here is that most of these will be massive to read -- I just got A RAGE TO LIVE today and it's squatting on my pile of books malevolently, like a toad you find in a Mexican cave. So I'm probably going to space things out with an author or two from the popular side of the spectrum, just because I want to be sure to keep the updates here reasonably regular. I'm actually going out to a used bookstore tomorrow, we'll see. Two ideas that occur to me are Charlotte Armstrong, absolutely forgotten today but in her day a well known writer of suspense novels, and Henry Morton Robinson's THE CARDINAL, which I know nothing about except that it was, apparently, pretty damn popular in 1950 and that it's about, uh, a Cardinal.

(If you're curious what I'm reading right now, well, it's Doc Savage in THE GOLDEN PERIL/DEATH IN SILVER, which is pretty kickin' because Doc Savage is pretty kickin', truthfully. I also got G.K. Chesterton's THE EVERLASTING MAN -- I like Chesterton, particularly his nonfiction apologetics like ORTHODOXY. Neither really would fit into this blog, though.)

Wouk does, and let's finish up this brief post with my thoughts on Wouk. I couldn't face trying to read THE WINDS OF WAR/WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, as I was a kid when Robert Mitchum starred in the TV miniseries -- which I also didn't watch, actually, but reminds me of what I would now call a Forrest Gump type tale, where our heroes meet influential people and are in important places of their particular historical period. I absolutely loathe Forrest Gump type historical novels, a subject to which I'll no doubt return in another post sometime. There was DON'T STOP THE CARNIVAL, which is supposed to be funny but then again this is Wouk we're talking about , Earnest is his middle name. So I have my doubts. Although Jimmy Buffet either did or tried to put on a musical version, and that really is funny.

I do like YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE, which is one of those "young writer with a dream" type of books, probably because I'm just a sucker for "young writer with a dream" type of books. It is, as I remember, a pretty good picture of publishing in the Forties and Fifties, and worth reading if you're an aspiring author, or just interested in literary culture of the time. Wouk was always good at getting the details right. It suffers from the rather banal fact that writer books are usually spiritual books about the life of the mind, if they're about anything at all, and Wouk isn't really comfortable about that so he shoehorns in some bullshit soap opera plot just to keep all the interesting reportage moving. I also seem to remember a lot of labored symbolism -- the pen that fails, anybody? Still, if you like this sort of thing, "writer makes good", this will be the sort of thing you'll like, trust me.

I remember glancing at parts of MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR. Again, a lot of good reportage, this time of small time theater in the Thirties and Forties. This time I remember the soap opera stuff is rather better focused -- although it amuses me/depresses me that a lot of women seem to gravitate to this book for Marjorie's freedom, only to come crashing down when Wouk decides that the only thing Marjorie really needed was a good husband and a place in the suburbs. Wouk is a good example of how ideology can kill storytelling -- in Wouk often you can literally feel him stomping on the brake in the narrative and wrenching the damn thing to where he thinks it should go. It's that dislocating.

(And note, I say this as somebody who would generally put himself in Wouk's camp philosophically. You can't just criticize ideologically based fiction when it's ideology you don't like. Well, you can, but you'll end up looking like a hack. This is a common fault among conservative critics, who ably see the motes in their neighbor's eyes and ignore the beams in their own. Wouk deserved alot more grief than he generally got for this stamping on the brake, for one of the virtues of stories is their independent nature, their creation of a world seperate even from the intentions of the author. It's one of the miracles of life, actually, and Wouk seemed never to be able to accept it.)

Which leaves THE CAINE MUTINY, which I've actually read twice and don't really feel a pressing need to ever read again. And again, we have excellent reportage, this time of service on a nowhere boat during the early stages of the war. (Wouk really took that "write what you know" stuff to heart.) And this time we have an effective thriller plot, which is probably why this is the best remembered of Wouk's books. And again, we have that stomp/swerve feeling in the narrative, where the story Wouk wants to tell (service in a war requires self-abnegation to a higher cause, no matter how inconvenient) is at odds with the story he's actually telling ('bad guys" in war can lie under your own banner). I wonder if post-Modernists interested in looking at how narratives undercut themselves ever check out Wouk, 'cause he's pretty much the poster boy of it.

Do you need to read Wouk? No. Putting aside YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE, which is more a personal pecadillo thing than anything else, the only novel even of interest is CAINE MUTINY, and this is a case where the movie's as good or better. After all, you get Bogart as Queeg there, and it's no small thing to watch him move those damn red balls around in hand? Remember? That whole click/click thing? Awesome stuff.


Wouk is the rich man's Leon Uris, with all that entails. His strength is reportage, and it's very good reportage, very comprehensive and interesting details about whatever. It's no accident that the first half of his books are generally better, that's where the scene setting stuff really shines. Wouk was a better writer than Uris, but his problem actually is pretty much the same -- he's kind of clunky with the story aspects of things. Which, you know, is why we're here and all that.