Raising Caine

Herman Wouk, CC '34, spoke and read at the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life Thursday evening to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Caine Mutiny. The event, held in conjunction with the Columbia Rare Books and Manuscript Library, honored the author, whose career has reached tremendous literary heights from a beginning as a staff member of the Spectator and editor of the Jester.

In his introductory remarks, Dean Austin Quigley pointed out that Wouk, the child of Russian immigrants from Minsk, entered Columbia at the age of 16 and graduated at 20. He went on to serve as a naval officer in the Pacific during World War II, an experience that offered firsthand insight into the world he would investigate in The Caine Mutiny and later books such as Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

The Caine Mutiny, Wouk's first novel, initially appeared in 1951. It recounts the saga of the USS Caine under the unstable leadership of Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg. When a typhoon strikes the tenuously run minesweeper, Captain Queeg loses control and Lieutenant Steve Maryk leads a mutiny against the ship's neurotic commander. The remainder of the novel depicts the subsequent court martial of Maryk and his fellow mutineers.

Wouk read three selections from The Caine Mutiny. The first was of the narrator, Willie Keith, waxing about his comical misadventures as a navy cadet living in Furnald Hall. Wouk followed this with a reading of the climactic confrontation between Queeg and Maryk upon the bridge of the Caine while a typhoon threatens the ship. Finally, Wouk read the closing speech of Greenwald, the lawyer who wins an acquittal for Maryk.

Wouk briefly addressed the audience, reflecting on the unexpected and tremendous success of his novels and likening himself to a wealthy philanthropic friend of his who, after being honored by an institution he had made a donation to, wondered aloud, "How many truly great men are there?" The response from the philanthropist's wife was "One less than you think." Wouk reminisced briefly about his early writing efforts from his Columbia days, many of which can now be viewed in the Rare Book and Manuscript section of Butler on the sixth floor. Wouk claimed that his education at Columbia had prepared him particularly well for his later life, saying that his time here was, borrowing the title of his professor Irwin Edman's book, a philosopher's holiday: it combined all the seriousness of Kant in the classroom with the excitement of Ethel Merman on 42nd Street.

Wouk concluded the evening with a brief question-and-answer session. Asked what he thought of the numerous film adaptations of his works, the casts of which feature Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly, and Natalie Wood, Wouk responded, with his quick literary wit, "Well, I wrote the scripts for Winds of War and War and Remembrance, so I like them. All the others I have reservations about."