Herman Wouk came to the Library May 15 to do three things: donate the manuscripts of his five historical novels to the Library, participate in a symposium on the historical novel and celebrate his 80th birthday.
Mr. Wouk gave the manuscripts for _Winds of War, War and Remembrance, Inside Outside, The Hope_ and _The Glory_ to the Library along with diaries documenting his progress on each.
In thanking Mr. Wouk for the materials during a luncheon, the Librarian of Congress credited him with "reestablishing the historical novel as an important way to understand the world, the sweep of events and the interaction of people with them."
John Cole, director of the Center for the Book, which arranged the day's events, said Mr. Wouk's donation of "work journals documenting his progress on the novels gives us unique insight into the creative process. They will be a valuable resource for future researchers."
The theme of two of the novels, Winds of War and War and Remembrance is "global war and at the white hot center of the war, the destruction of the European Jews, of several million of my people. My grief was the driving force in the work that I did," said Mr. Wouk, who was accompanied by his wife and agent, Betty Sarah Wouk.
Mr. Wouk was born on May 27, 1915, in New York to Russian Jewish parents who emigrated from Minsk. He attended public schools in the Bronx and graduated from Columbia University, where he edited the undergraduate literary magazine. With Mark Twain as his idol, he "batted away" at jokes for radio comedian Fred Allen from 1936 to 1941. In June 1941, he moved to Washington, D.C., to write radio spots for the war bond sale. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the Navy and took part in eight Pacific invasions aboard a destroyer-minesweeper, earning several battle stars.
At sea he dreamed of writing a great book about the war. Afterward, he went back to New York and wrote City Boy and Marjorie Morningstar, "two books to make you laugh with truthful stories." But he hit his stride with The Caine Mutiny, he said. "I discovered narrative power and serious themes like the limit of authority versus the instinct of freedom that every American has," said Mr. Wouk.
He explained that as he neared his 50s, he had come "up against what Henrik Ibsen calls the 'life lie.' The thing that each man and woman has in his mind that a life will get organized and a good or great thing will be done which will justify one's self image."
"I knew there was no alternative but to study history," continued Mr. Wouk. He started with Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. "Nothing is more powerful than the conflict of states and nations if they are focused and made alive [with characters] and if the figures are delineated with sharpness."
He went on to read World War II books by Winston Churchill, and then turned to Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace for a model. "He made history live in such an enormous panorama by stretching the canvas of Napoleon's invasion of Russia on a romantic story," Mr. Wouk said.
In 1964, Mr. Wouk moved to Washington to be near the Library, where he was given an office. He traveled extensively, studying about the destruction of the European Jews. He concluded: "Either war is finished or we are," a theme he personified in Victor (Pug) Henry, the main character of War and Remembrance.
The book was made into a TV series aired by ABC in 1988-1989. During the symposium, a 12-minute clip was shown. It was three scenes leading up to the death of one of the main characters at Auschwitz. It showed how the Jews got off the train and were divided into two groups by a gestapo. He pointed with his thumb where they were to go: those on his right to a refugee camp, those on his left to be gassed in the "showers." The expressions on the actors' faces were wrenching, and after the screening, many people in the audience were crying.
David McCullough (Truman) was near tears himself as he began to speak. "What we've just seen has to do with grief, and grief is a story," said Mr. McCullough. Mr. McCullough and other speakers described how details, word choice and research are raw materials that combine to make a successful historical novel.
Details were mentioned by Jean Ashton, director of the Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library, to which Mr. Wouk has donated the manuscripts of his earlier books. "I have always been amazed by the resource that allows the writer to choose details that make it seem accurate," said Ms. Ashton. They draw from "letters, documents, ephemera that bear jottings from the midst of battle, or a moment of quiet. ... "
The Manuscript Division at the Library has many primary materials from the World War II era, including 25,000 items from Gen. George Patton and several hundred more from ordinary soldiers, said Alice Birney, the division's American literature specialist.
Details are worked into a historical novel by careful word choice, said Mary Lee Settle, author of Beulah Quintet and O Beulah Land. She read hundreds of pre-1774 manuscripts to learn the vocabulary appropriate for her mid-18th century characters. "Many were unedited, misspelled tracts, so thank God I could hear the language," she said.
The importance of accurate detail also was addressed by Christopher Collier, the state historian of Connecticut and a professor at the University of Connecticut. "There is nothing worse than somebody in the French and Indian War looking at his wristwatch," said Mr. Collier, who writes historical fiction for students ages 11-16.
The importance of thorough research was discussed by George Garrett, who spent 30 years writing three historical novels. He said he allowed himself to elaborate on events only after he confirmed there were no conflicting accounts.
Details, word choice and research were thus explained in a series of panels titled "Sources and Resources for Historical Fiction," "The Historical Novel in Literature and Society" and "History and the Novel."
In the fourth panel, "Historical Fiction in the Marketplace," the audience of 150 historians, writers and researchers got a definition of a historical novel from William D. Phillips, editor in chief of Little, Brown and Co. "A historical novel is one in which recounting history is the spine ... the structure on which it is built. It is a carefully researched history lesson. It is not a period setting as a backdrop to a story, nor a rickety stage for modern sensibilities and melodrama," he said.
Mr. Phillips and others on the marketing panel said historical novels are not currently popular. But Simon Michael Bessie, a publisher who has his own imprint, Bessie Books (and is chairman of the Library's Center for the Book), put the matter in perspective by saying: "When I first came into publishing, one of the things I was told in late 1946 was that historical novels don't sell. That's the year that Pantheon published a [historical novel by] Mary Renault, which was followed a little while later on that same small list by Dr. Zhivago."
The question everyone was waiting for was asked, and answered, by New York Times columnist William Safire. "Why is historical fiction so popular with readers and unpopular with scholars and critics? The scholars and critics are jealous. They don't have the freedom that the novelist ... has."
Librarian Emeritus Daniel J. Boorstin elaborated: "The historian must invite the willing suspension of belief to help the reader imagine that it could have been otherwise, while the novelist encounters the reader's disbelief and must invite his acquiescence that the novelist's account is a tale of what really happened."
Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's biographer, asked whether a novelist "could ever do anything but distort the past with spurious images and false impressions," but went on to praise Mr. Wouk, noting that in the forthcoming 15th volume of his Churchill biography, a conversation appears "of which [Mr. Wouk] could not have known, but somehow he did."
"He has followed the precept of Simon Dubenow, a Jewish historian who, before he was shot by a death squad in Riga, said 'shveybt und vershveybt,' write and record."
Praise for Herman Wouk's work came from Mr. Safire, who called him "this century's Dickens"; Mr. McCullough, who called him a "true patriot"; and from LBJ biographer Robert Caro, who said, "Likely more Americans have learned about the war through Mr. Wouk's account than from any other place."
Mr. Wouk, who spoke during a dessert of birthday cake after the symposium, said he was overwhelmed by the praise. "I don't know how far I succeeded, but I say before you and before God, 'I tried.'" He added that he is not done writing and plans to collaborate with songwriter Jimmy Buffett on a musical rendition of one of Mr. Wouk's early novels, Don't Stop the Carnival.
The Center for the Book plans to publish the proceedings, including full texts of the panelists' speeches. For information, contact the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20540-8200.
