Inside, Outside, page 73
The author was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Caine Mutiny and numerous academic honors, including a degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In January 2001, the University of California, San Diego established the Herman Wouk Chair of Modern Jewish Studies.
In 1995, Herman Wouk’s 80th birthday was celebrated by a symposium at the Library of Congress, attended by what the Washington Post described as “a high-powered tribe of historians, novelists, publishers, and critics,” who came to honor “the reclusive dean of American historical novelists.” The occasion was also marked by the author’s formal presentation to the Library of the papers and manuscripts of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. In 2008, he was given the first Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award for the Writing of Fiction.
The author is an unusually private person, living a disciplined, secluded existence in Palm Springs, California. Writing, scholarship (his avocation is Judaic studies), and the companionship of a close family and a few intimate friends make up the productive life pattern that has made him a world-famous writer. Mr. Wouk has two sons, Nathaniel and Joseph.
Full-length critical studies of the author’s work include Herman Wouk: The Novelist as Social Historian, by Professor Arnold C. Beichman (Transaction Press of Rutgers University, 1984) and Herman Wouk, by Laurence W. Mazzeno (Twayne Publishers, 1994). A recent publication of the Library of Congress is The Historical Novel: A Celebration of the Achievements of Herman Wouk (1999).
August 2014
Endnote
1 The Aramaic, for the curious: statutory idiot, “shayteh d’ooreissa”; common-law idiot, “shayteh d’rabonan.”
Herman Wouk, Inside, Outside
