Excerpt from Associated Press interview: The son of Russian Jews, he was born in New York in 1915. The household was religious - his mother was a rabbi's daughter - and also devoted to books. His father read to him from the works of Sholem Aleichem, the great Yiddish writer. The works of Mark Twain entered his life thanks to a traveling book salesman who sold them to his mother. A lifetime later, Twain remains his favorite writer, despite Twain's irreverence when it comes to matters of faith. ``I found it all very stimulating,'' Wouk says. ``His work is impregnated with references to the Bible. He may be scathing about it, but they're there. He's making jokes about religion, but the Jews are always making jokes about it.'' Full text of the article: At Last, Herman Wouk Speaks .c The Associated Press By HILLEL ITALIE PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) - At the gate of Herman Wouk's house you'll see a sign that warns of guard dogs. It might well read ``MEDIA BEWARE.'' For the author of ``The Caine Mutiny,'' ``The Winds of War'' and other million sellers rarely bothers with the press, a luxury of writing books that speak so well for themselves. But a generation has passed since his last blockbuster, ``War and Remembrance.'' It's unlikely young readers of Stephen King or John Grisham know his name, or know much about his books. His recent fiction spent relatively little time on bestseller lists and a few of his novels are out of print. Wouk has never operated like a ``commercial'' author; his works follow no proven formula. But his current publication, ``The Will to Live On,'' would be a hard sell for any writer. Neither fiction nor memoir, it's a text about preserving Judaism that resides quietly in religion sections of bookstores around the country. So Wouk, concerned the book itself won't be preserved, has invited a reporter inside his home. ``It's going to take time to get out there and it may never get out there,'' he says. ''`The Will to Live On' is about the survival of the Jewish people, and how to harness that power for the centuries to come. It's not something to pick up at an airport.'' The setting here makes it hard to worry about anything. Wouk's home is the very picture of Paradise: palm trees and watered lawns; swimming pool and tennis court; a spacious, ranch-style house with hand-carved doors and floors of Mexican tile. It's a typically dry desert day, a beautiful day, the heat tempered by a near invisible coating of clouds. Wouk writes whenever possible, but right now he cuts a nice figure as a man of leisure: khakis and soft white hat, a can of Dr. Pepper in hand, his legs stretched across the verandah that hangs in the shade to the side of his house. ``I have no complaints,'' comments the author, speaking a few days before his 85th birthday. He lives well and knows it. He has prosperity, long-term companionship (his wife of 55 years, Sarah, who also serves as his agent), many friends and the blessing of good health. Wouk doesn't look his age, or even close. He stands straight and trim and walks with just the slightest hitch. His face is rugged, yet thoughtful, warmed but not burned by the desert sun. And he can converse for hours, his expressions ranging from unblinking concentration to - reminders of his days as a gag man for Fred Allen - a boyish smirk. He may no longer be famous among general readers, but he's a giant in the Jewish community. His friends and acquaintances include Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Sen. Joseph Lieberman. He's given many speeches on Jewish issues and has received several prizes, including a lifetime achievement award from the Jewish Book Council. He attends synagogue both in Palm Springs (where he occasionally gives sermons) and in Washington, D.C., where he first lived in the 1960s and still maintains a home. ``I was a bit in awe when I first met him,'' says Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat. ``When I first came to Washington and settled in Georgetown and began to go to the synagogue there it was described by more than one person as `Herman Wouk's Synagogue.''' ``He doesn't think success should change your values. He doesn't make any compromises when it comes to religion,'' says another Washington friend, Daniel Schorr, senior news analyst for National Public Radio and a somewhat less religious man. ``I remember when he went to my son's Bar Mitzvah. It was on a Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath). He would not drive there. He walked, about 8-9 miles. And after the service broke up he started to leave. I said, `Aren't you going to stay for lunch? It's kosher.' And he said, `Yes, but not kosher enough.''' Wouk appears an odd fit both in Palm Springs - better known for golf than for synagogues - and in the literary world. From Ernest Hemingway to James Joyce, major authors of the 20th century were considered either anti-religious or at least highly skeptical. But Wouk is part of a smaller group that includes C.S. Lewis, Graham Greene and Flannery O'Connor, those who openly maintained a traditional faith. Wouk is an Orthodox Jew whose books virtually all include some kind of religious theme. ``Marjorie Morningstar,'' published in 1955, was one of the first bestselling novels about Jewish life; two recent novels, ``The Hope'' and ``The Glory,'' are set in Israel. He's also written two nonfiction books about religion, ``The Will to Live On'' and ``This Is My God,'' a widely read publication released 40 years ago. ''`This Is My God' was a much revered text in my home growing up,'' Lieberman says. ``It was a work of someone who was proud to be Jewish, and was using his gift of communication to explain why it had such meaning. I was growing up an observant Jew in Connecticut and it was encouraging to me that a man who had achieved such success also held on to his faith.'' Beyond his religious views, Wouk has an uncertain status as a writer. Although some of his manuscripts are now stored with the Library of Congress, few critics see him as a canonical figure. Like his old friend, the late James Michener, he's been placed above writers like Michael Crichton but below literary figures such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Wouk is a deeply read author of serious subjects who has rarely received serious acclaim. ``As a writer, he doesn't seem to me very gifted, although I wouldn't say he's inept,'' says the award-winning critic Leslie Fiedler, author of ``Love & Death in the American Novel'' and many other books. ``He reflects the milieu he came from, radio comedy. He has that certain level of skill, but he can't get to that next level.'' ``I think he's taken as dignified, important, but not avant-garde enough, not cutting edge enough,'' adds Ruth Wisse, a professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard University. Wouk himself has presented modest assessments of his craft. Back in the 1950s he told one reporter he was not a ``high stylist.'' In ``War and Remembrance,'' a writer notes in his journal: ``I could contribute nothing new; but writing as I do with a light hand, I might charm a few readers into pausing, in their heedless hurry after pleasure and money, for a look at the things that matter.'' Few authors have so well met their own standards, and so enjoyed themselves along the way. Wouk has had a classic 20th-century life, from childhood among immigrants in New York City to his years at sea during World War II to this resort for celebrities where he now spends much of his time. The son of Russian Jews, he was born in New York in 1915. The household was religious - his mother was a rabbi's daughter - and also devoted to books. His father read to him from the works of Sholem Aleichem, the great Yiddish writer. The works of Mark Twain entered his life thanks to a traveling book salesman who sold them to his mother. A lifetime later, Twain remains his favorite writer, despite Twain's irreverence when it comes to matters of faith. ``I found it all very stimulating,'' Wouk says. ``His work is impregnated with references to the Bible. He may be scathing about it, but they're there. He's making jokes about religion, but the Jews are always making jokes about it.'' A star student in high school, Wouk majored in comparative literature and philosophy at Columbia University and edited the college's humor magazine. After graduation, Wouk followed the path of so many bright, clever New Yorkers in the 1930s: He headed to California, where he worked five years on Allen's radio show. ``Fred was very individualistic. It was his style - a hard-bitten, New England satirical buzz-saw kind of wit,'' says Wouk, who recalled a piece he wrote for Allen. ``It happens in the zoo and Fred's a new guy coming to work with the animals. A zoo manager takes him over to the hippopotamus and says, `This hippopotamus has a problem. There's something in the back of his mouth and you need to reach your arm in and get it out.' ``And Fred says, `I'm not going to put my arm in the back of his mouth. The keeper says, `You don't have to worry about that. He's a vegetarian.' Fred says, `Well, he can taste it and spit it out, can't he?''' If not for the war Wouk might have stuck to comedy sketches. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Navy and served as an officer in the Pacific. There, he received a writer's most precious gift - free time. He read and read, from the Bible to Victorian fiction, and wrote what became his first published novel, the radio satire ``Aurora Dawn.'' ``I was just having fun. It had never occurred to me write a novel,'' he says. By the time ``Aurora Dawn'' came out, in 1947, Wouk was married and living in New York. He was also studying the Talmud, and would soon release the novel ``City Boy,'' a coming-of-age story highly influenced by Twain. Next, he wrote about the Navy. In 1951, Wouk published the novel for which he's most remembered: ``The Caine Mutiny.'' The now classic story of the unstable Captain Queeg and his unhappy crew sold slowly at first but eventually topped bestseller lists and won the Pulitzer Prize. It was made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart and has been performed as a play everywhere from China to the White House. ``I first read `The Caine Mutiny' when I was in high school. I was on the subway in Manhattan and I was so caught up in it I found myself in Brooklyn,'' says author Robert Caro, whose books include ``The Power Broker,'' his acclaimed biography of Robert Moses. ``Nearly 50 years later, the book remains fresh in my mind.'' For a time, Wouk was compared to other World War II novelists: Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, James Jones. But his next book looked into more domestic matters - a young Jewish girl who dreams of acting and ends up in the suburbs. Her real name was Marjorie Morgenstern. Her stage name provides the novel's title, ``Marjorie Morningstar.'' ``My agent was absolutely appalled,'' Wouk recalls. ``He submitted it to the editor of a women's magazine and the editor said, `Herman Wouk has destroyed himself. He's a man who writes big, sweeping dramas about men in action. Then he writes about this girl and nothing happens. He should burn this book and forget it.''' But like ``The Caine Mutiny,'' the novel sold millions and was made into a movie, starring Natalie Wood. Wouk was famous enough to appear on the cover of Time magazine, even as some Jews complained his book perpetuated stereotypes, and critics like Fiedler complained he was too old-fashioned. ``Wouk and Bellow came at the moment when Jewish-American literature was moving from the periphery to the center, but appealing to two completely different audiences,'' Fiedler says. ``Bellow, like most writers critics take seriously, attacked the basic values of middle-class Americans: easy piety, marriage, life in the suburbs. Wouk challenges nothing.'' Over the years, Wouk has responded two ways: He doesn't judge the characters in his stories, but tries to tell the truth; and whether he really ``challenges nothing'' depends on what you think needs challenging. (Bellow, meanwhile, is an admirer of Wouk.) Wouk believes that among writers, anti-conformity is a kind of conformity. ``It seems curious,'' he wrote in ``Aurora Dawn,'' ``that life `as it really is,' according to modern inspiration, contains a surprising amount of 'fornication, violence, vulgarity, unpleasant individuals, blasphemy, hatred, and ladies' underclothes.''' He knows others don't share his views and he doesn't necessarily expect them to change. For example, both ``This Is My God'' and ``The Will to Live On'' take a similar approach to ``Mere Christianity'' and other works by C.S. Lewis. They preach not to the converted, but to the curious. They anticipate arguments about religion and try their best to answer them. ``There is no use in talking about religion with anybody who is sure that God does not exist,'' Wouk wrote in the introduction to ``This Is My God.'' ``My book will irritate such a person and give him no light. Wouk challenges himself above all. He recalls when he began work on ``The Winds of War,'' his epic World War II novel. It was the 1960s, he was living in Washington and adjusting to middle age and had never written historical fiction. ``It had always been there - first of all as a dream - this book about the whole war. Ibsen said somewhere that sooner or later every man comes against his `life lie,' that he thinks he's going to do a certain thing and then he realizes that he's never going to do it,'' Wouk says. ``And when I was getting toward my 50s I thought, `This is your life lie, this book about World War II.' And I had no confidence I could do it, but I thought, `OK, if you've got a story to tell you go and tell it.'' His ambition these days is still greater. As stated in ``The Will to Live On,'' Wouk is exploring how the Jewish people can continue. He worries about assimilation, the Melting Pot. ``Dying is a terror, an agony, a strangling finish,'' he writes in his current book. ``Melting is a mere diffusion.'' After reviewing Jewish history, Wouk concludes the answer is education: scripture, history, culture. Even today, he participates in the process. This interview began midmorning, after his daily reading of the Talmud. It will end midafternoon, so he can prepare to lead a Talmud class that night. ``The only break I've had in my study was when I was at sea, because I couldn't bring a Talmud,'' Wouk said. ``But I went through the Hebrew Bible completely and every day I would put on tefillin (small black boxes containing biblical passages that are tied around the arms and above the forehead). It was taken for granted by everyone else. ``Once the ship was wrecked in a typhoon in 1945, off Okinawa. There were 125 ships driven on to the beach, and with some loss of life. We were hung on a reef all night, but had no loss of life. ``And I noticed among the crew a new sort of respect and affection. I was the executive officer, always Mr. Bad Guy. But here were the sailors, saying, `Hello, Mr. Wouk,' `Good morning, Mr. Wouk.' I asked someone what this was all about and he said the guys were convinced they were saved by Lt. Wouk's black boxes.'' AP-NY-05-31-00 1227EDT Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press. Announcement: America Online has added Reuters newswires to News Profiles. To add Reuters articles to your daily news delivery, go to KW: <A HREF="aol://5862:146">News Profiles</A> and click on "Modify Your News Profiles." Then click "Edit" and add Reuters from the list on the left. To edit your profile, go to keyword <A HREF="aol://1722:NewsProfiles">NewsProf iles</A>. For all of today's news, go to keyword <A HREF="aol://1722:News">News</A>.