Herman Wouk, 1915–2019

Herman Wouk was happy to be known as America’s greatest “unfashionable” novelist. While contemporaries such as Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer received praise for works that questioned American traditions, it was Wouk who topped the best-seller list again and again with page-turners such as Marjorie Morningstar (1955) and the World War II epic The Winds of War (1971), later a hit TV miniseries. Wouk’s veneration of family, morality, and duty—an Orthodox Jew, he also wrote books on Judaism—earned him scorn from reviewers. “He can compete with the worst of television,” one fumed. Wouk was unperturbed by the criticism. “Maybe it’s because I don’t see why a man can’t write good books,” he said in 1965, “and be a sane man at the same time.”

Wouk (pronounced Woke) was born to Russian immigrant parents in New York City, said TheGuardian.com. After graduating from Columbia University, he “wrote jokes and sketches for the radio comedian Fred Allen.” Following Pearl Harbor, Wouk served in the Pacific aboard destroyer minesweepers, a life-changing experience. “The shallow conceit of a successful gag man faded away,” he said. “When I came back…I wanted to write novels.”

He had his first success with 1951’s Pulitzer Prize–winning The Caine Mutiny, “a crackling drama on the high seas,” said The New York Times. The novel sold more than 3 million copies in the U.S. and was made into an acclaimed 1954 movie with Humphrey Bogart. Wouk never stopped writing: After publishing his 15th novel, The Lawgiver, in 2012, he immediately began work on his next book. “What am I going to do?” the 97-year-old said. “Sit around and wait a year?”