The Long and Winding Road

Back on October 25^th, I finally finished the book that has taken me longer to read than any other. I planned on posting this as a review on Goodreads but got so busy I haven’t gotten back around to it so I’m posting it here first. Many years ago, I’m thinking in ’94 although it could have been earlier, I was at my Grandma’s trailer down at Rocky Fork. I forget if it was raining or what exactly was going on, but I was stuck at the trailer all day with nothing to do. Grandma and Grandpa always had a lot of books sitting around so I figured I’d read something to bide my time. I saw this thick, ponderous, door stop of a book collecting dust on a shelf. I picked it up and read the title: “Youngblood Hawke.” The name caught my interest immediately. I figured that with a title like that, there’s no way it couldn’t at least be interesting. I then saw it was written by Herman Wouk. I love “The Caine Mutiny” so that just added to my assurance that this would be a masterpiece. I know I started reading it and, years after the fact, I could remember some of the events and characters, but at some point, I gave up on it. For the longest time I couldn’t remember why; I just knew that I eventually forfeited on the book and gave it back to my grandmother.

A couple years ago I found a first edition at the thrift store for 50 cents. I decided to pick it up and vowed to finally get through it. I took it home, read a few pages, quickly remembered why I never finished it the first time and shoved it under the bed. A few months ago, I was doing some cleaning, dug it back out and decided I’d do whatever it took to get through it and promised myself to not read anything else until I was done. The same oppressiveness that hit me the other times soon settled in and I kept getting sidetracked so that I ultimately started and finished another half dozen books fulfilling that vow. Return to it I did, though, and I soldiered through what was left of its dreary 783 pages.

When I first picked it up nearly a quarter century ago, that title, “Youngblood Hawke,” grabbed my imagination and, before reading a single page, filled me with visions of an impetuous young man embarking on all manner of 1940s era adventures. I quickly found out that the titular Arthur Youngblood Hawke was actually a young author with delusions of grandeur. Scratch that. Delusions of grandeur are things like a farm boy from some virtually unknown planet in the Outer Rims believing he can someday be a Jedi Knight. Youngblood Hawke never would have stooped to something so trivial. He was out to alter history by way of his writing the “American Comedy,” a work so vast in its nature that all other works of literature before or since would pale in comparison. He’s pretentious beyond belief and is just the first of many problems with the book.

I slogged through about half of it back then, figuring it had to get good at some point. It really doesn’t. Hawke is a self-important, improbably dense clod who just happens to be the greatest author of his or any other generation. The book meanders through his misadventures as he writes one great novel after another yet makes shockingly poor, absolutely stupid personal and business decisions that ultimately wreck his finances and his life. Despite some light hints of foreshadowing, his ultimate fate really comes out of the blue and is enough to make M. Night Shyamalan roll his eyes (long story short: he dies).

I’ve never read any of Wouk’s other books and while I’d like to give “The Caine Mutiny” a shot at some point (the movie is an absolute classic), if it’s anything like “Youngblood Hawke” I likely won’t finish it. The pace is slow, almost agonizing at times, and the story really suffers from the improbably moronic decisions of some of the characters and liberal doses of deus ex machina.

I’ve always felt that an author’s character is reflected in his writing. With Herman Wouk, I really hope that’s not the case. The bulk of the characters in the book are wretched, ugly, miserable beings in one manner or another. In his characterization, Wouk’s voice strikes me as coming from an absolute misanthrope. At first, I thought he just hated women (and fat people), but he comes across as not being too fond of anyone, really (especially fat people). The black characters really aren’t even characters, just incidental stereotypes (at best) filling menial roles and making most of what you’d see from 1930s Hollywood look downright progressive. The other various ethnic groups are also broad stereotypes speaking in horribly written accents. And, by God, does he ever hate fat people! His physical descriptions of anyone even slightly overweight ooze with contempt and derision, and Hawke’s brother-in-law is so horribly described that it staggers belief. He’s essentially a grossly obese, anthropomorphic frog with the world’s worst toupee. He also seems to hate children, or at least the notion of parenthood, and pretty much every parent in the novel except for Hawke’s mother shares that view to the point that anyone who behaved as these characters do in real life would undoubtedly be reported to the authorities.

Thankfully, it’s no “Tomorrowland,” but it’s awfully close. It wasn’t so bad that I chucked it across the room when I was done, which is my typical reaction to truly awful books, so I guess you’d call that a saving grace. Unless you’re an insomniac, I really couldn’t recommend this to anyone.