For most of my life, I’ve been judging Herman Wouk’s authorial Kung Fu on the basis of his 1952 novel, The Caine Mutiny.  That always seemed like a pretty good yardstick to me.  It was the only one of his books to win the Pulitzer Prize, so it must (logically) be the high water mark of his writing.

I was so confident in this assumption that I never bothered to read anything else written by the man.  Instead, I contented myself with re-reading The Caine Mutiny every ten years or so—reliving the tribulations of the spoiled and callow young naval officer, Willie Keith, and the spectacularly-flawed Captain Philip Francis Queeg.

If you’ve never read the book, you should.  It takes a hard look at the complexities of military politics and the pressures of wartime leadership, then goes on to examine the razor-thin boundaries that separate privilege-of-rank from abuse-of-power, personal interpretation from simple deception, and reasonable caution from outright cowardice.  It also happens to be a rollicking good sea story, with enough saltwater action and human drama to keep an old Sailor like me flipping pages long into the night.  (The movie is great, by the way.  Humphrey Bogart gives a masterful performance as Queeg, and Fred MacMurray is wonderfully despicable as Lieutenant Keefer.  But—as fine as it is—the film is no substitute for the book.)

I’ve always regarded The Caine Mutiny as one of the best novels ever written about the U.S. Navy, so I spent something like three and a half decades avoiding Mr. Wouk’s later work.  I knew instinctively that his other books would only disappoint me.  He couldn’t possibly equal the power, tension, and insight of that one book.  No writer is that much of a badass.

Do you know what’s worse than being stupidly and stubbornly wrong?  Taking thirty-something years to figure out that you’ve been stupidly and stubbornly wrong.  Because it turns out that Herman Wouk really is that much of a badass.  His authorial Kung Fu is far greater than I ever imagined.  After ignoring his subsequent books since the Carter Administration, I recently decided to take a chance on The Winds of War.

That book is not just good; it’s fucking brilliant.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s better than The Caine Mutiny.  Don’t ask me how such a thing is possible, because I don’t know.  What I do know is that War and Remembrance is next in my reading stack.

Maybe it’ll be as good as The Winds of War.  Maybe not.  At this point, I don’t even care.  Mr. Wouk—who celebrates his 100th birthday this month—has given us two astoundingly good novels about the United States Navy.  It’s probably too much to hope that he managed to make lightning strike a third time, but I’m damned well not waiting thirty years to find out.

Happy Birthday, Mr. W.  You sir, are a Mark-1 Mod-0 Badass.  I bow three times in the direction of your writing desk.