HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. WOUK – AT 8:31 A.M. ET:  Today is the 100th birthday of Herman Wouk, one of the best of the quality popular novelists of post-World War II America.   He is still with us, and will soon publish a memoir. 

When I was growing up, Herman Wouk was a literary giant.  His novel, "The Caine Mutiny," won the Pulitzer Prize.  Its main character, an eccentric Navy destroyer-minesweeper captain, was played on film by Humphrey Bogart, in one of his last performances.  "Caine Mutiny" introduced the term "paranoid schizophrenia" into the popular vocabulary, and remains one of the best novels of World War II. 

"Marjorie Morningstar" became the great American love story of the 1950s.  Although based on the coming-of-age of a Jewish girl in New York in the thirties, its themes were universal, and it was read and loved throughout the country.  Some colleges use it in literature classes.  Marjorie was immortalized on screen by Natalie Wood. 

In 1983 we were treated to a wonderful miniseries, "The Winds of War," from another of Wouk's World War II novels.  It starred Robert Mitchum in one of his few television roles.     

Wouk has always been a patriot, a man who believes in America and in defending the nation he believes in.  He also believes in tradition and religion, and understands their importance in the life of a nation and a family.  For these beliefs, of course, he has been somewhat marginalized by the literary "sophisticates" of the last 30 years or so.   But they cannot take away Herman Wouk's contribution.  From Lieutenant Commander Philip Queeg's rolling of steel marbles in his nervous hands in "Caine Mutiny," to Marjorie Morningstar's pursuit of, and abandonment of, her dreams, we remember the images that Herman Wouk created to make the great American story. 

May 27, 2015