Next Up

I march on in my Pulitzer run. Having just finished Lonesome Dove (1986), I turn to The Caine Mutiny (1952) by Herman Wouk. I’m familiar with the 1954 movie, starring Humphrey Bogart, but I haven’t seen but a few snippets, and never the entire thing.

So, it’s a trip to the library, and away we go.

I’ve learned something on the first page – Wouk seems capable at putting me there with his descriptions, but I’m not sold on it yet. I’ve seen writers try too hard. I doubt it with him – I mean, this is a Pulitzer Prize winner. And it’s quite interesting to read his short preface. In it, he tells us he was more inclined to writing comedy (his first two books), and wrote for the radio comedian, Fred Allen. He felt he had a war novel in him, but didn’t have the confidence.

And yet, here comes The Caine Mutiny. His first crack at a serious novel – and a novel about the war the world had just had enough of to boot – and it comes out and wins the Pulitzer. There’s something there for inspiration, I’m sure, and I should pay attention…not that I’m gonna crank out a Pulitzer myself any time soon.

I got working on writing here from something I saw on the first page (page 2). In describing the mother of a character he was introducing, Wouk gives us a picture to work with: “She was a large, wise, firm woman, as tall as her son, and well-endowed with brow and jaw. This morning she was wearing a fur-trimmed brown cloth coat instead of mink, to match the austerity of the event. Beneath her mannish brown hat her hair showed the dominant red strain that had reappeared in her only child. Otherwise, there was little resemblance between mother and son.”

Who thinks through this stuff, and then lays it out there in such detail? Well…Wouk, obviously. But does it work? I’ve seen enough of this to know it’s necessary, but I’ve also seen too much of it in a writer (I’m perhaps thinking about Donna Tartt in The Goldfinch – a book I absolutely loved, but which took a certain syncopation in its descriptive paragraphs that often had me thinking, “d-dah, d-dah, d-dah, d-dah” as I listened to them (I had the audiobook – very well read by David Pittu)).

So here I am, already stopping on the first page to get down some thoughts. Give me a few more pages and I’ll have enough for this blog for sure, with more to come. But for now, let’s get to work…

Now that I’m a bit over a hundred pages in, I get it. Wouk’s writing is dense and rich – he packs so much into it, and yet it isn’t cluttered. It moves well, and the descriptives flow with the rest of the story. He’s very efficient with his language, which is an odd praise coming from me, considering my appreciation for long, flowing sentences that most people seem to dislike. In any case, I find the book well-paced and easy to read. It has me wondering what his other works might have to offer. Unfortunately, he didn’t give us any more Pulitzers, so I would assume for the near future I won’t be reading his other books.

I should be done with this one soon enough. Taking suggestions for the next.