Author Herman Wouk Publishing Memoir for His 100th Birthday

Posted on May 22, 2015

Pulitzer Prize winning author Herman Wouk is turing 100 on May 27th, but he isn't slowing down his writing pace. To celebrate his publisher of nearly 70 years -- Simon and Schuster -- announced that the title of Wouk's next book is Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author.

Wouk's memoir will be published in December. The memoir will be a lighthearted look at his life, the role being Jewish has played in it and his writings. Wouk said in a statement, "I've lived to a great age, and for that I thank Providence. To the readers who've stayed with me for the long pull, my warm affection, and I hope you'll enjoy the light-hearted memoir about my writings."

The memoir will include details about his time in the Navy during World War II. His experiences led to his 1951 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Caine Mutiny, which was turned into a blockbuster feature film starring _Humphrey Bogart. Wouk's books have all been bestsellers and many were turned into feature films or miniseries. He has written fiction, such as Marjorie Morningstar, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, and nonfiction, such as This is My God and The Will to Live On.

Wouk is an avid diarist and has kept a personal diary since 1937. In 2012 the Library of Congress convinced him to turn over his diaries so they could be kept for future generations of writers. At the ceremony he was honored with the first Library of Congress Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Writing of Fiction. The Library scanned the entire set of diaries for Wouk, as he uses them to fact check dates and names in his writing.

The Atlantic has a very interesting article by David Frum in which Frum argues that Wouk has not received the critical acclaim that he deserves and that he "has a fair claim to stand among the greatest American war novelists of them all."