32 - Friday; 9, 1 485- 4 - THE DETilbiT.\- jEthlif.11 .NitViiel Advertising in The Jewish NeWs Gets Results Place Your Ad Today. Call 354-6060 GRAND OPENING Sweat for less. 5 classes only $10 • Exercise and aerobics. • Babysitting on premises. • Showers and changing rooms for men and women. :=3WEEOHOP Drake Summit Shopping Center 5526 Drake Road West 6 Blic oimf5 ielc i 4M l 91 4 48033 Offer expires 6/V85 How to get the sofa you want... in the style you want .. . BOOKS Wouk Offers Jaded View Of Literary Establishment BY JOSEPH COHEN Special to The Jewish News Thirty years ago, on Sept. 5, 1955, Herman Wouk's picture ap- peared on the cover ofTime maga- zine. His Marjorie Morningstar was a unanimous choice for the Book of the Month Club, and his publishers had printed a first run of 100,000 copies. Marjorie Mor- ningstar soon became a runaway bestseller, following hard on the heels of The Caine Mutiny (1951) which had won a Pulitzer Prize and was still grossing millions of dollars as a book, a play and a movie. Herman Wouk was sitting on top of the world. Now, five novels later, includ- ing the enormously successful Winds of War and War and Re- membrance, Herman Wouk is still sitting on top of the world. His new novel Inside, Outside (Little Brown and Co.), is again a Book of the Month Club selection with a gigantic printing and the cer- tainty of grossing millions more. Since Inside, Outside is a memoir of sorts, it is a good time to reflect on this book's relationship to Wouk's whole career. In fact, it might be thought of as a case- kY - 111 Herman Wouk in the fabric you want ors, . • • - at the price you wan ... in about 30 days You don't believe us. You're used to the typical way of buying living room furniture. You shop several stores and hope they have something you like. 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Though it was Saul Bellow's Dangling Man published in 1944 that heralded the true beginning of the American Jewish .literary renaissance, it was Marjorie Mor- ningstar that got the credit for that auspicious start. It also crys- tallized the emerging character and symbol of the Jewish Ameri- can Princess. Marjorie Mor- ningstar was no great shakes as a literary achievement, but because of its timing it had tremendous sociological and critical signifi- cance and so it is well remem- bered today-whereas Dangling Man is practically an academic museum piece. Nonetheless, it is Saul Bellow who is required read- ing in the universities where Wouk is hardly ever given a nod. Wouk is now 70 years old, an age when eminent people write their memoirs. Not content to do an autobiography, Wouk has taken whole globs of his life and cast it into fiction, albeit mighty thinly veneered, and added some new inventions which make for some highly entertaining read- ing, full of rewarding insights into Joseph Cohen is director of the Jewish Studies Program at Tulane University in New Orleans. what Wouk's priorities in subject-matter are, but which leave the reader wondering where the facts end and the fiction be- gins. Still, the bottom line is that there is a lot of hilarity here coupled with bittersweet nostal- gia and a surprisingly bitchy at- tack on several prominent Ameri- can Jewish novelists whose char- acteristics are combined to form a "Inside, Outside" by Herman Wouk. Little Brown and Co. composite of a thoroughly rep- rehensible writer. The reprehensible writer is named Peter Quat. What kind of books does Quat write? Their ti- tles make it pretty clear: Deflow- ering Sarah, The Smelly Melamed and Onan's Way. Wouk's pro- tagonist, I. David Goodkind, a top-notch tax attorney, has to spend a lot of time in court defend- ing Quat. Who are the likeliest candi- dates for the composite? One guess is Norman Mailer, Philip Roth and Joseph Heller, not necessarily in that order. Why the vendetta? Ah, that's for Wouk to answer. A plausible conjecture is that a nagging envy may underlie the characterization: they're re- garded as significant writers, he's merely a popular one. Maybe so, maybe not. In any case, the best way of-ap- proaching Inside, Outside is to recognize that it is neither fiction nor autobiography but an elabo- rate indulgence, a kind of homecoming Wouk is allowing himself, an award for years of faithful if mixed service, giving us a glimpse of a medium-sized Ulys- ses resting on his laurels, regaling his listeners with tales, jokes and gibes, reminding us that the foundations of his literary edifice were laid on his early successes as a collegiate musical revue writer and as a radio gag-man for Fred Allen and other famous come- dians. After some sobering experi- ences at war and some maturing, and with a willingness to do some proper research, Wouk found that he could spin an absorbing and compelling multi-peopled tale with the best of them. The proof of this accomplishment is in his war books where he allows himself only minor distractions. In the other novels, the gag- man has always taken over and dominated the action. Distrac- tions run rampant in Inside,Out- side with "witty devil-may-care whimsey and shocking looseness all over the place" to pinch a line from Marjorie Morningstar. Here the distractions compromise reality morning, noon and night. But it doesn't matter, because the old man is loaded, the party's on him, and, pray God, we should all have a good time, remembering that old gag-men never die, they