Word: williwaws
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...mother was a histrionic alcoholic, so early on he retreated into the world of books and language. He attended the exclusive St. Albans prep school and served as first mate on a supply ship during World War II, after which, at age 20, he published his first novel, Williwaw...
...immediately dropped his isolationism. On July 30, 1943, he joined the Enlisted Reserve Corps of the U.S. Army and later landed in the Transportation Corps. He spent some months as a warrant officer aboard a freighter plying the seas around the Aleutians. Vidal used the empty hours to begin Williwaw, a Hemingwayesque tale of men at sea. By the time he was discharged in 1946, he had finished it and a second novel as well. When Williwaw was published that March, Vidal was heralded as a prodigy of American letters...
...nerve, style and combative instincts to make it in the great big American way that joins the oakleaf cluster of durable celebrity to money. Obviously one is Norman Mailer. The other, not usually thought of as having been a young war novelist, is Gore Vidal. At 20 he published Williwaw, a taut, widely praised tale of life aboard a World War II Army tanker in the North Pacific...
...williwaw. n. a violent commotion or agitation: STORM. TEMPEST. "kicking up a great williwaw of dust...
...swift Senate confirmation for Herter to correct any impression that there is "some division of opinion." Fulbright's point: the President's preoccupation with the illness of John Foster Dulles and his three-day delay in naming Herter (TIME, April 27) had blown up a world williwaw of speculation that the President was less than enthusiastic about Herter's appointment...