Pulitzer 1952: The Caine Mutiny

I don’t think of myself as a lover of war stories, but this book was a humdinger. The Caine Mutiny supposedly grew out of Herman Wouk’s personal experiences on a minesweeper during WWII. For sure Wouk never experienced a mutiny (the US Navy has only had one mutiny, the USS Sommers in 1842), but the book has a vividness and feeling of authenticity in the details that I think comes from the characterization of the sailors, Navy life in general, and wartime experiences in particular.

Wouk expertly plots the story of Willie Keith, a shallow, affluent young man who applies for the Navy so he won’t get stuck in the Army. Willie is a mama’s boy, and his mama has money. He’s been working as a two-bit piano player and canoodling with a beautiful and sincere singer, May. Willie’s crazy for her, but at the same time, he’s too aware that she’s not of his same social class and thinks constantly about dumping her.

About a quarter to a third of the novel takes place in New York prior to Willie’s Navy enlistment. It’s crucial, because we the reader get a good grasp of who Willie is before he goes through his transformation aboard the Caine. Willie is spoiled and privileged, but he’s our protagonist and I found myself firmly interested in his well-being.

Once in the Navy, Willie forms some tight, manly friendships at boot camp, and then gets his orders to report to the rather decrepit Caine, a destroyer converted into a minesweeper. Willie’s a spoiled greenhorn who makes several outrageous (by Navy standards) mistakes. Still, his new captain, De Vriess, thinks privately that he’ll become a good officer one day. And he does, but not before Captain Queeg takes over the Caine. Queeg’s competency as a captain is questionable from the very beginning. This and his weird and random disciplinary quirks both confound and worry other officers and sailors. Willie ends up being witness to mutiny to Queeg’s leadership during a typhoon in the western Pacific. The court-martial section of the book which follows the mutiny is gripping.

Heavily plot driven books like this are a huge palate cleanser for me sometimes. There’s not much nuance in this tale–it’s an adventure story and one man’s arc of maturation through the course of these adventures. I can just zip along, following the adventure vicariously, without chewing much over themes or layers of meaning, because that’s not the point of a novel like this. I think it takes enormous skill to keep such a plot moving forward, to know exactly how much of Willie’s background must be constructed, how much sailing around the Pacific must be done,  how much contrast between “regular” Navy and off-beat Navy needed to be shown, how much Willie must mess up before he does right, all in order to drive the story to its climactic mutiny and court-martial. I think Wouk won the Pulitzer for damn good plotting and storytelling. Full stop.

In addition to checking one more book off my Pulitzer project, this also counts toward my 2018 TBR challenge hosted by Roof Beam Reader. I signed on to this at the beginning of the year, but am only now reading one from that list. Finally!

5/5
personal copy

19 Books of Summer + Middlemarch Round-Up

I did pretty well on the 20 books of summer challenge — better than I expected. Before September 3 rolled around I had finished 14 books. This number includes the last three books of Middlemarch and concludes it. Huzzah! That’s a pretty good run for me, especially considering how busy my summer was.

But September has proved to be busier yet. I’ve not even finished a single book this month. But in the spirit of finishing this up and moving on, I am going to mini-review the last three books I read as part of the challenge and say a few words about Middlemarch. And be done.

  The Marquise of O— by Heinrich von Kleist

In this strange novella, published in 1808, the virtuous,  respectable, and widowed Countess of O— finds herself unaccountably pregnant with her fourth child. Certainly the Marquise is aware of how babies are made, but she cannot recall the circumstances that have brought about her condition, and it puts her honor in serious question with her family. So she places an ad in the newspaper asking for the father of her child to present himself to her. The story is a bit more complicated that I am describing, but even a close reading left me puzzled. Most analyses infer rape by a Russian Count seeking her hand in marriage, but there is a strange scene with the Marquise sitting on her father’s lap kissing him deeply that was disturbing and suspect. It’s a short and interesting read, but I guarantee you will be going back to try to figure out what you missed. Let me know if you find it. 4/5

Double Happy New Year!

I celebrated the change of the new year twice–lucky me! Once in Tokyo, and then once somewhere over the Pacific. Japan is 17 hours ahead, so we left at 5pm on New Year’s day Tokyo, but arrived at 9am on New Year’s day in the US. It feels a luxuriously long–and sleepy–start to 2016.