{"id":936,"date":"2013-03-15T12:57:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-15T16:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/?p=936"},"modified":"2013-03-19T15:45:26","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T19:45:26","slug":"what-i-am-reading-the-lawgiver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/?p=936","title":{"rendered":"What I am Reading – The Lawgiver"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

“I felt there\u2019s a wealth in Jewish tradition, a great inheritance. I\u2019d be a jerk not take advantage of it.\u201d Herman Wouk<\/i><\/p>\n

I should begin this review with a confession. I don\u2019t like novels set in the Old Testament. I\u2019m not completely sure why but I suspect it\u2019s based on having been a Catholic schoolgirl in the days when the Bible was definitely off limits as literature.<\/p>\n

When I learned that Herman Wouk had a new book coming out last year, I was intrigued because The Winds of War<\/b> and War and Remembrance<\/b> are two of my favorite novels. I was disappointed when I learned The Lawgiver<\/b> was about Moses. I planned on giving it a pass. Then, I happened to hear Mr. Wouk interviewed on NPR by Scott Simon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Remember, Herman Wouk will be ninety-eight years old in May.\u00a0 It crossed my mind on learning he had a new book that it might have been written by someone else. The NPR interview dispelled that theory pretty quickly. Listening to Wouk from the perspective of an aging \u201cnew\u201d writer, he was an inspiration. Wouk made me feel that I had all the time in the world to become a successful writer. I decided, subject matter aside, I would read The Lawgiver.<\/b><\/p>\n

The Lawgiver<\/b> is an entertaining story about a group of Hollywood types: director, producer, movie stars, and scriptwriter coming together to make a movie about Moses. The heroine, Margolit Solovei, is assigned the task of writing the movie script under the watchful eyes of Herman Wouk. In this role, he goes to some lengths to point out that the Moses movie has already been done. \u00a0Wouk casts himself in the role of a non-fictional character \u00a0in The Lawgiver<\/strong> in the same way he did so effectively with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and others in The\u00a0<\/strong>Winds of War<\/b> and War and Remembrance<\/b>.<\/p>\n

The Lawgiver<\/b> unfolds almost entirely using letters, emails, memos and Skype transcripts flying back and forth between the characters. While the format severely limits exposition, the reader comes away with a wonderfully complete picture of both the characters and the plot. This has been done before with success. What makes this effort so stunning is that a nonagenarian is employing this device. Herman Wouk is the author of seventeen prior novels demonstrating he is a master of prose. I couldn\u2019t help feeling he was really enjoying himself proving “the old guy” was still capable of learning some new tricks.<\/p>\n

Herman\u00a0Wouk was married for sixty-six years to Betty Sarah Wouk who served as his agent and first reader. She died suddenly in 2011 during the writing of The Lawgiver<\/b>. She is also a non-fictional character in the story. If for no other reason, Wouk\u2019s depiction of her makes this book worth reading. The Lawgiver<\/b> is not my typical book, but the power of the writer\u2019s personality compelled me to read it. I was not disappointed.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>
Herman Wouk’s latest\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  “I felt there\u2019s a wealth in Jewish tradition, a great inheritance. I\u2019d be a jerk not take advantage of it.\u201d Herman Wouk I should begin this review with a confession. I don\u2019t like novels set in the Old Testament. I\u2019m not completely sure why but I suspect it\u2019s based on having been a Catholic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=936"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":951,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions\/951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}