Reviewed by Gerry Hogan

This is a cheap publishing trick, using the name of a once popular writer dead at least three decades to sell books to my graying boomer generation. So went my reaction when an editor from The Independent asked me to read and review a “new” novel by Herman Wouk. Like finding a manuscript in the attic or employing living writers to create sequels to Gone With the Wind or the Bond books, I supposed. But she insisted: “Herman is very much alive.” I was not convinced until that ultimate authority, Wikipedia, pronounced that Wouk, born in 1915, is still residing in Palm Springs.

Then I began to suspect that Wouk’s advanced age and arid location may explain his current fascination with Moses, the lawgiver of the title and the nominal subject of his new work; after all, Moses himself was pushing 120 and dwelling in the desert when searching for the Promised Land. But Wouk has written extensively about his Jewish faith and has been laboring away for many years to find a way to write a novel about Moses, who he considers the seminal figure in the Bible. Though instead of producing a fat, sprawling, conventionally told novel in the fashion of, say, The Winds of War or Marjorie Morningstar, Wouk has crafted a slim, structurally postmodern and gently comic epistolary tale concerning the making of a movie about the life and times of Moses, told through emails, transcripts of meetings and Skype conferences, and memos to self. For, indeed, Herman Wouk and his late wife are characters in The Lawgiver, as unwilling script consultants to a seemingly quixotic cinematic enterprise, envisioned and financed by an eccentric Australian-Jewish billionaire.

Wouk is no stranger to Hollywood, or, at least to the Hollywood of the 1950s through the 1970s, a period when his Pulitzer Prize-winning Caine Mutiny was a box office smash, and The Winds of War and War and Remembrance became television favorites. It is clear from his treatment of his fictional studio executives and the big money investors they serve that Wouk views them with a mixture of disdain, grudging admiration and bemusement. Producer Tim Warshaw, of WarshaWorks, Century City treats the Moses film as if it is a massive construction project, all about financing and moving pieces into place, without much regard for the artistic dimension. But Wouk is more favorable to directors and screenwriters, as is evidenced by his reverential treatment of his main character, Margo Solovei, an art-house director who is tapped to write and direct the project, with the help of a geriatric veteran of 50s epics named Arnold Granit. The explanation for this seemingly strange choice of directors is that 30-something Margo was raised by (and rebelled against) a Hassidic rabbi father and so has a unique feel for how to bring Moses to the screen for a contemporary audience. And wouldn’t you know it, the ardently secular Ms. Solovei comes to terms with her religious roots, and reunites with her father and the boyfriend of her youth, as she finishes the script for The Lawgiver movie.

I don’t feel bad about letting those cats out of the bag, as Wouk himself hangs large signposts throughout the novel. Just as the God of the Bible threw up the obligatory mountains and plagues before rewarding his people with The Promised Land, Mr. Wouk rolls out jittery investors and legal issues that threaten to undermine the film and Margo’s personal life. Nothing about the plot, especially the rekindling of romance between Margo and her erstwhile lawyer-boyfriend, is surprising or, unfortunately, all that compelling. I’m sad to report that I never felt emotionally engaged with anyone in this book, for they all remained characters rather than rounded people.

I say “sad to report,” because there is much that is very sweet about Mr. Wouk’s book. Despite the postmodern presentation, there was something quaint, almost 19th century or, at least, 1930s-ish, about the diction, and about the way his characters behave: these Hollywood people speak in complete and grammatical sentences, don’t curse, and even when disagreeing, are generally not mean-spirited. There is little mention of the sexual attraction between Margo and boyfriend Josh, as their connection is based on shared experience, intellectual compatibility and, dare I say it, a spiritual bond; their story echoes Wouk’s courtship with Betty Sarah, his beloved wife of 63 years, who died during the writing of this novel and whose life and love is described in a heartfelt Epilogue. Having just seen Anna Karenina, it occurred to me that The Lawgiver was nearly all Levin and Kitty, with no more than a smidgen of Anna and Vronsky. And while all that devotion, restraint and ethical behavior seems unrealistic and insufficiently dramatic for our jaded 21st century, it is, nevertheless, refreshing, even inspiring.

Gerry Hogan is a lawyer living in Columbia, Md.