Wouk himself was an officer on the type of ship the Caine was, and he drew his description of Queeg from cast studies, not real life. His two skippers were both decorated for valor.
Wouk's "Tom Keefer" is pretty much himself. The typhoon really happened, and sank three or four elderly destroyers, taking among them a tin can with a Queeg-like skipper. It's in "Down to the Sea," by John Wukovitz, and "Halsey's Typhoon." Halsey blundered by ignoring serious advice to avoid sailing near the storm.
Thank you for sharing this and thank you for reading. Those books both sound as though they’re worth a look. That Keefer is Wouk I think is a brilliant aspect of the novel, and seems lost on the novel's/Wouk's critics.
Yes…Wouk, like Keefer — those scenes are not in the movies, but in the book — probably realized that command is an extremely difficult job, and ridiculing the CO doesn’t make it better.
Read “The Arnheiter Affair,” if you can find a copy, about a truly nuts CO off Vietnam in 1965. His(Arnheiter’s) reckoning came from his superiors, when they found out he was doing crazy things from reports submitted to them, including a fake request for a Silver Star from Arnheiter’s subordinates. Attached was a note saying, “This request is a fake, ordered by Arnheiter.”
The top brass fired Arnheiter after 99 days in command of his tin can.
Never would I have assumed to enjoy reading a defense of a book I had never heard of before. So, now I have to go read The Caine Mutiny and hope to find more discussion pop up on here that touch on these well-written points.
When the critics of The Caine Mutiny were writing, being against establishment institutions was left-coded. Today, the institutions that are under attack are the ones that the left successfully captured during the long march through the institutions after 1968. The universities and the government bureaucracies and the legacy media are now under attack from the populist right. They would like to be able to insist on loyalty and deference. But the Boomer-hippie era mockery of institutions lives on, notably among people who have run those institutions for decades, which is an inconsistent absurdity we have accepted as normal. A new Wouk might give us a novel about that tension. And this makes me want to read The Caine Mutiny. Great post.
Certainly Mailer. Possibly the others, but he never discussed with me. Now that you mention it, I have a childhood memory of one of his friends enthusing about Wouk. He ended up involved with Aspen and teaching philosophy, Aristotle mostly, and so when we talked about books, it was usually indisputably Great Ones.
I find it fascinating how you connect Wouk not only to the question of institutions but also to the whole conformity v. individualism theme of the first two postwar decades ("squares" versus "rebels," so to speak). The sociology of that period - Whyte, Vance Packard, Paul Goodman - is still quite interesting. And of course it has its literary counterparts in writers like Yates, Salinger and Sloan Wilson.
I’d say it is ambiguous in the novel, which I suppose is how it would be most of the time in real life (and as @kiwiwriter47 noted in another comment, Wouk would’ve known as much from his time in service which included several typhoons). If you end up reading it let me know what you think.
Wouk himself was an officer on the type of ship the Caine was, and he drew his description of Queeg from cast studies, not real life. His two skippers were both decorated for valor.
Wouk's "Tom Keefer" is pretty much himself. The typhoon really happened, and sank three or four elderly destroyers, taking among them a tin can with a Queeg-like skipper. It's in "Down to the Sea," by John Wukovitz, and "Halsey's Typhoon." Halsey blundered by ignoring serious advice to avoid sailing near the storm.
Thank you for sharing this and thank you for reading. Those books both sound as though they’re worth a look. That Keefer is Wouk I think is a brilliant aspect of the novel, and seems lost on the novel's/Wouk's critics.
Yes…Wouk, like Keefer — those scenes are not in the movies, but in the book — probably realized that command is an extremely difficult job, and ridiculing the CO doesn’t make it better.
Read “The Arnheiter Affair,” if you can find a copy, about a truly nuts CO off Vietnam in 1965. His(Arnheiter’s) reckoning came from his superiors, when they found out he was doing crazy things from reports submitted to them, including a fake request for a Silver Star from Arnheiter’s subordinates. Attached was a note saying, “This request is a fake, ordered by Arnheiter.”
The top brass fired Arnheiter after 99 days in command of his tin can.
I will write about that soon.
Never would I have assumed to enjoy reading a defense of a book I had never heard of before. So, now I have to go read The Caine Mutiny and hope to find more discussion pop up on here that touch on these well-written points.
When the critics of The Caine Mutiny were writing, being against establishment institutions was left-coded. Today, the institutions that are under attack are the ones that the left successfully captured during the long march through the institutions after 1968. The universities and the government bureaucracies and the legacy media are now under attack from the populist right. They would like to be able to insist on loyalty and deference. But the Boomer-hippie era mockery of institutions lives on, notably among people who have run those institutions for decades, which is an inconsistent absurdity we have accepted as normal. A new Wouk might give us a novel about that tension. And this makes me want to read The Caine Mutiny. Great post.
This is very good indeed. Thank you. Will share with my father, USMA '63.
Thank you for reading and for saying so. Go Army. Do you recall your father reading Mailer or Wouk or Jones?
Certainly Mailer. Possibly the others, but he never discussed with me. Now that you mention it, I have a childhood memory of one of his friends enthusing about Wouk. He ended up involved with Aspen and teaching philosophy, Aristotle mostly, and so when we talked about books, it was usually indisputably Great Ones.
Great essay!
Glad you think so. Thank you for reading it.
I find it fascinating how you connect Wouk not only to the question of institutions but also to the whole conformity v. individualism theme of the first two postwar decades ("squares" versus "rebels," so to speak). The sociology of that period - Whyte, Vance Packard, Paul Goodman - is still quite interesting. And of course it has its literary counterparts in writers like Yates, Salinger and Sloan Wilson.
Great summary of a literary episode with which I was previously entirely unaware. Thanks.
Is the novel ambiguous about whether the mutiny saved the ship? From this summary I am uncertain on that point.
I’d say it is ambiguous in the novel, which I suppose is how it would be most of the time in real life (and as @kiwiwriter47 noted in another comment, Wouk would’ve known as much from his time in service which included several typhoons). If you end up reading it let me know what you think.