COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES February 10, 2002 Herman Wouk, CC 1934, celebrated the 50th anniversary of his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, The Caine Mutiny, with a reading on February 7, 2002 at Columbia University. Accompanying the reading was a small exhibition of manuscripts and screenplays of The Caine Mutiny as well as editions of the book in more than eight languages at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Columbia's Butler Library.

Many of Mr. Wouk's papers, which number more than 30,000 items, are at Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. They include working notes, memorabilia, manuscripts of published works, and some of his correspondance. Included are the manuscripts of his novels and plays, Aurora Dawn, Caine Mutiny, Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, The City Boy, Don't Stop the Carnival, Slattery's Hurricane, This Is My God, The Traitor, and The Will to Live On. There are 100 letters from Wouk to his lifelong friend from Collumbia College days Ira Thompson (B.A., 1937), co-editor of the Jester. Interestingly, included in the collection is an American flag from the USS Zane aboard which Mr. Wouk served in World War II.

Originally published in 1951, The Caine Mutiny has sold millions of copies and become a classic novel of World War II. It tells the story of the USS Caine under the command of Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, a neurotic captain who loses control of his ship during a typhoon. The ensuing court martial of mutineer Lieutenant Steve Maryk raises questions of loyalty, patriotism and adherence to military code. Upon publication, The Caine Mutiny captured the imagination of a country recovering from a devastating war. "The Caine Mutiny" starring Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg was filmed in 1954, the same year that "The Caine Mutiny Court- Martial," Wouk's two-act play based on the novel, was produced on Broadway.

Wouk himself served aboard two destroyer-minesweepers, the USS Zane and the USS Southhard, from 1942 to 1946. His other works of fiction chronicling the global drama of World War II, The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978), have also become a vital part of our literary history and have been made into television movies.

Herman Wouk's other works include Marjorie Morningstar (1955), Don't Stop the Carnival (1965), and The Hope (1994) and The Glory (1994), his historical novels of the creation and early development of the modern state of Israel.

The Friends of the Columbia Libraries, the Stephen Whitney Phoenix Society of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia, Columbia College and Little, Brown & Company, sponsored the 50th anniversary celebration. Little Brown's paperback edition of The Caine Mutiny (Back Bay Books/Little Brown) is the only version of the novel currently in print.

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library, located on the 6th floor of the Columbia University Butler Library, at 535 West 114th Street, New York, is home to over 600,000 rare books, 28 million manuscripts, 75,000 photographs, and 40,000 prints and watercolors. In addition to printed and manuscript resources, the library contains cuneiform tablets, papyri, maps, works of art, posters, sound recordings and other interesting objects and materials. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/rbml/index.html

For more information:

Jennifer Lee
Rare Books and Manuscript Library
(212) 854-4058

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Last edited: 04/05/02
Posted on: 04/08/02