Also, on the subject of historical fiction, Herman Wouk is one of my favorites. The Winds of War and War and Remembrance were the best for me. Perhaps more than any other character, I fell into the shoes of Victor Henry and could see me being him.
And when they made it into a TV mini series, I enjoyed it, but not as much as the books. However, as is true for me, I have come to embrace the mini series with great joy each time I watch it.
The WWII era was a deadly and tragic time, but the time period was special in the history of mankind. W.E.B. Griffin wrote many of his books in that time period, and perhaps that is why I love his work so, for he does make it quite the adventure.
@jafo2010 Did you know---Before his own World War II service and career as a novelist, Herman Wouk was a comedy writer . . . for radio legend Fred Allen. (Allen was actually his own writer, one of the very few comedians of the old-time radio era who did so, but he engaged writers like Wouk to provide him gags as well; my knowledge of his work is that Allen and his one or two writers would work on a script and then Allen would edit the final product to be used on the air.)
Wouk, of course, never returned to comedy writing, but he and Allen remained friends for the rest of Allen's life. Several of their letters to each other were republished in
fred allen's letters in 1965 (the lower case title was deliberate; Allen himself often wrote that way in his correspondence); in fact, Wouk wrote the brief foreword at the behest of Allen's wife, Portland Hoffa.
When Allen suffered his fatal heart attack in 1956, Wouk wrote this which was published in
The New York Times (and republished as the final entry in
fred allen's letters):
The death of Fred Allen, America's greatest satiric wit in our time, brings to mind Hazlitt's elegaic paragraph on the Restoration actors:
Authors after their deaths live in their works; players only in their epitaphs and the breath of common traditions. They die and leave the world no copy . . . In a few years nothing is known of them but that they were.
Fred Allen was an eminent comic actor. But without a doubt his great contribution to life in America came in the marvelous eighteen year run of weekly satiric invention which was the Fred Allen show on radio. His was the glory of being an original personality, creating new forms of intelligent entertainment. He was without a peer and without a successful imitator.
His knife-life coment on the passing show of the thirties and the forties came from sources no other comedian had access to. He was a self-educated man of wide reading; he was a tremendously talented writer; and he had the deep reticent love of life and of people which is the source of every true satirist's energy. Fred's wit lashed and stung. He could not suffer fools. In this he was like Swift and Twain. But his generosity to the needy, his extraordinary loyalty to his associates (in a field not noted for long loyalties) showed the warmth of heart that made his satire sound and important.
Because his work was a unique kind of comic journalism the written residue might have suffered the usual fate of journalism. Fred fortunately preserved a fraction of it in that fine volume of Americana, his recent book Treadmill to Oblivion. When he died, he was working on his autobiography; the portion he completed will be published.
But the few writings he left will give future generations a dim notion at best of what sort of man he was. In Fred Allen, the voice of sanity spoke out for all Americans to hear, during a trying period of our history, in the classic and penetrating tones of comic satire. Because he lived and wrote and acted here, this land will always be a saner place to live in. That fact is his true monument.
Wouk worked for Allen from 1936 until Pearl Harbour, when Allen's show was known as
Town Hall Tonight (1935-39),
The Fred Allen Show (1939-40), and
Texaco Star Theater with Fred Allen (1940-44). (Yes, those are links to the surviving show broadcasts; 163 total shows. Considering the valedictory which provided
Treadmill to Oblivion's title, Allen would have been stunned to discover that his shows are collected and heard today!)
I have copies of
Treadmill to Oblivion and the memoir to which Wouk referred,
Much Ado About Me, in addition to
fred allen's letters. (Eight letters from Allen to Wouk close
fred allen's letters, before Wouk's elegy, beginning with one in which Allen praised
The Caine Mutiny in 1951.) They remain marvelous reading.
