Literary Birthday – 27 May – Herman Wouk

Herman Wouk was born on 27 May 1915 and died on 17 May 2019.

Herman Wouk Quotes

1. In terms of narrative, my boy, there’s nothing but the Bible for sheer storytelling.
2. When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
3. I regard the writing of humour as a supreme artistic challenge.
4. Write a page a day. It will add up.
5. The films of The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar always seemed to me mere thin skims of the story lines, and I never did see a meagre Hollywood caper called Youngblood Hawke, vaguely based on my 800-page novel. So it was that I opted for television, with its much broader time limits, for The Winds of War.
6. Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
7. This life is slow suicide, unless you read.
8. I try to write a certain amount each day, five days a week. A rule sometimes broken is better than no rule.
9. I used to say that computers are useless for the creative mind – it was brain and paper, no other way. That was a rap. I found it actually does go a lot faster than scribbling.
10. I felt there’s a wealth in Jewish tradition, a great inheritance. I’d be a jerk not to take advantage of it.

Herman Wouk was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author best known for his epic war stories. He published 15 novels. His historical fiction included titles such as The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance. The Caine Mutiny won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1952. His works championed traditional Jewish values and American patriotism. He was awarded the inaugural Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award for the Writing of Fiction in 2008. He wrote the memoir, Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year Old Author in 2015.

Source for Image: Théodore Brauner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herman_Wouk_(cropped).jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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