ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Herman Wouk has written a lot of beloved novels - "The Winds Of War," "War And Remembrance." "The Caine Mutiny" won a Pulitzer Prize. His latest achievement is another milestone that few of us will achieve. Herman Wouk is a hundred years old. NPR's Lynn Neary reports the author is marking the occasion with the release of a new memoir.
LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: Many years ago, a well-known biographer approached Herman Wouk about writing his life story. Wouk gave her access to his journals, but after reading them...
HERMAN WOUK: She said, your literary career would be wonderful material and I'd love to do it, but there is a spiritual journey running through your volumes which only you can do.
NEARY: Now Wouk has written that story. He calls it "Sailor And Fiddler," the sailor representing his life as a writer, the fiddler, his spiritual side.
Growing up in the Bronx, Wouk knew he wanted to be a writer, but his Jewish faith was always important to him as well. He loved Mark Twain and Alexandre Dumas. He also fondly remembers listening to his father read the stories of Sholem Aleichem on Friday nights. As a teenager, he argued with his father about studying the Talmud, telling him it was outdated.
WOUK: He said to me, I understand everything you say about the Talmud. It's your right. But, if I were on my deathbed and had breath enough to tell you one thing, I would say, study the Talmud. That stayed in my soul, and I did learn the Talmud.
NEARY: Wouk's first love as a writer was humor. He wanted to be what he called a funnyman. And just out of college, he got a job writing gags for radio shows.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "TEXACO STAR THEATRE WITH FRED ALLEN")
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: It's Texaco time with Fred Allen.
NEARY: Wouk spent five years writing for Fred Allen, one of the biggest names in radio in the years before World War II. But the war changed everything. Wouk joined the Navy and was assigned to a minesweeper in the Pacific.
WOUK: I would spend many of the nights looking out at sea and being stirred with thoughts. And I began to think that there was a book to be written that would be like "War And Peace." At that time, I didn't think at all that it would be something for me to write. But, nevertheless, I got the feeling that there was, you know, a whole other kind of writing to do.
NEARY: It would be years before Wouk began the novel he first envisioned on that minesweeper, but he plunged into writing he returned to civilian life. He quickly became a best-selling author with such novels as "Marjorie Morningstar" and the Pulitzer prize-winning "The Caine Mutiny," which was made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart as the unforgettable Captain Queeg.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR")
HUMPHREY BOGART: (As Queeg) I know exactly what he'll you - lies. He's no different from any other officer in the wardroom. They were all disloyal. I tried to run the ship properly, by the book, but they fought me at every turn.
NEARY: Eventually, Wouk began working on the World War II epic which he called the main task of his life. Jonathan Karp, Wouk's current publisher and editor, says it was an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking.
JONATHAN KARP: He believes that God put him on earth to tell the story of the Holocaust through the frame of World War II.
NEARY: After seven years of research and writing, Wouk had a draft of 1,000 pages which he presented to his wife, who worked closely with him on all his books.
WOUK: Sarah, my wife, said, you can't publish this. The story is just beginning. And I said, but it's impossible to do it all, and I'll have to put another seven years to tell that story and the novel would have to be published with wheels on it it would be so massive.
NEARY: And so one book became two best-sellers, "The Winds Of War" and "War And Remembrance." Both were adapted as a TV miniseries. In this scene from "The Winds Of War," an American Jew fleeing Poland after the Nazi invasion is questioned by an SS officer.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE WINDS OF WAR")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As SS officer) And what were your parents?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As man fleeing) Americans.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As SS officer) Jews?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As man fleeing) No, Americans.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As friend) Mr. Hartley has been to church with me every Sunday in Warsaw. He's a Methodist, the same as me.
NEARY: Despite all his success, Herman Wouk did not always get the respect he deserved from the literary establishment, says Jonathan Karp.
KARP: The books have a lot of serious ideas in them and the characters are rich and colorful, and there's absolutely no reason he shouldn't be taken seriously.
NEARY: Looking back on his life from the vantage point of a centenarian, Herman Wouk doesn't seem to care what others thought about him.
WOUK: I was very pleased when a book worked. And to some extent, they've all worked to my satisfaction. In that, I'm a very happy gent of a hundred.
NEARY: "Sailor And Fiddler" is a slim volume for a man who has lived such a long and full life, but Wouk says he thought hard about what to put in his memoir because he says it sums up what it means to be a writer. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.