Word: wouk
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...Wheels, Hailey (2 last week) 2. The Day of the Jackal, Forsyth (1) 3. Message from Malaga, Maclnnes (4) 4. The Exorcist, Blatty (3) 5. The Betsy, Robbins (6) 6. The Winds of War, Wouk (7) 7. Bear Island, MacLean (5) 8. Rabbit Redux, Updike 9. The Other, Tryon (9) 10. Our Gang, Roth...
...Winds of War, Wouk...
...Wouk's best inventions is a series of chapters excerpted from a book by Armin von Roon, an imaginary member of the German General Staff. By turns Gothic and grotesque, or possessed of flashing geopolitical insight, Von Roon provocatively fills in the military and strategic history (Poland, Norway, France, Russia) in ways well calculated to stir indignation or imagination in American readers, who have a provincial tendency to think the war was really won or lost in Western Europe. Von Roon is most handy, indeed, in helping Wouk surmount one of the great problems posed by a book...
Throughout, Wouk confronts great personages headon. His research has been massive; yet a sense of strain afflicts conversations with the likes of Hitler, Göring and Roosevelt. Did Wouk invent or acquire from some historical footnote that bit about the President's martinis? ("This is an excellent martini," Pug says to a beaming F.D.R. "It sort of tastes like it isn't there. Just a cold cloud.") Hitler's nervous little knee kick is familiar, but what about those "snatching, greedy fingers" as the Führer gobbles iced cakes at a reception? There...
...Wouk is now firmly settled in Washington. His sons are grown (and, he reports, scared of the notion of writing by their father's up-at-5:30-a.m. work schedule). Though he is a board member of the National Symphony and a trustee of his Orthodox congregation, he finds that Washington, unlike New York, is not so overloaded with things to do "that you just give up on everything." He hopes to finish the sequel to The Winds of War within three years, but will say little more about it than that. Readers, remembering that pregnant Jewish daughter...