Monday, May 20, 2019

GET ME REWRITE: Herman Wouk, author of many fat books, dies at 103


Source:  LINKcat

Herman Wouk, Best-Selling Novelist With a Realist’s Touch, Dies at 103.  (The New York Times, 5/17/2019)
A whipping boy for reviewers who at best grudgingly acknowledged his narrative skill, Mr. Wouk (pronounced woke) enthralled millions of readers in search of a good story, snappy dialogue and stirring events, rendered with a documentarian’s sense of authenticity and detail. 
The critics could be brutal. “He can compete with the worst of television because he is the worst of television, without the commercials,” Stanley Edgar Hyman wrote in 1966, describing Mr. Wouk’s readers as “yahoos who hate culture and the mind.”

 Wouk doesn't take up much library shelf space anymore.

Photos by Retiring Guy
(taken at Madison Central Library)


But then, neither do some of his fat-book contemporaries.

James Michener, for one.


Leon Uris, for another.


Related posts:
GET ME REWRITE: Dan Jenkins, author of nearly forgotten classic sports novel, dies at 90.  (3/10/2019)
Neal Thompson on parenting books.  (6/17/2018)
LINKcat libraries provide little shelf space for titles by 'rule-breaking cookbook author' Barbara Kafka.  (6/8/2018)
Weeding or historical sanitization at LINKcat libraries?  (6/2/2018)
The "spy' books by Aline Countess of Romanones haven't traveled well.  (12/17/2017)
Minimal shelf space devoted to Kit Reed's books in LINKcat public libraries.  (10/1/2017)
Carol J. Adams shares feminist classics from her personal library.  (9/8/2017)
The distant dirty dozen literary career of E. M. Nathanson.  (4/10/2016)
Gunter Grass (1927-2015).  (4/15/2015)
Thomas Berger  (1924-2014).  (7/23/2014)
Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014)  (4/8/2014)
Barbara Branden's shelf sitter.  (12/26/2013)

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