Who is marjorie morningstar

War and Remembrance. The Caine Mutiny. This Is My God. Mar 24, Sheri rated it it was amazing Shelves: poverty-class-issues , wwii , race , coming-of-age , male-female-power-sex-attractivenes. So I have no idea where I saw this mentioned, but I put it on my to-read awhile back because I read a reference to it somewhere and had not heard of it. I am glad I did and glad I finally got around to picking it up.

It is a very well done snapshot of time from and takes the reader from Marjorie's 17th year through her wedding at The whole thing is a great picture of this beautiful if slightly frivolous time in between WWI and WWII when New York was glamour and glitz and women had So I have no idea where I saw this mentioned, but I put it on my to-read awhile back because I read a reference to it somewhere and had not heard of it.

The whole thing is a great picture of this beautiful if slightly frivolous time in between WWI and WWII when New York was glamour and glitz and women had some power and independance. While lots of it makes me cringe, such as: "All girls, including you, are too goddamn emancipated nowadays. You get the idea from all the silly magazines and movies you're bathed in from infancy, and then from all the talk in high school and college, that you've got to be somebody and do something.

Bloody nonsense. A woman should be some man's woman and do what women are born and built to do--sleep with some man, rear his kids, and keep him reasonably happy while he does his fragment of the world's work," it is also a product of its time. And even though Marjorie is "Shirley" and becomes the suburban "soccer mom" her struggles and choices are real for her and in her experience.

They are also not entirely obsolete. Marjorie is a "good girl" and almost loses her man in the end by not being a virgin. But at least she isn't a virgin.

The moral of the story is not that she should have saved herself, but that she needed to be true to herself throughout. So much of it is timeless, especially all the relationship details. I loved the description of Marjorie's parents attempting evaluate their daughter: "This kind of discussion went on all the time between the parents.

They could take either side with ease. It all depended on which one started to criticize the daughter. Noel is such a great character. Obviously manic depressive, he is a genius but incapable of pulling anything together. I think Rothmore's description was my favorite: "Maybe he's so afraid of being a failure he won't put his back into anything, so he can always tell himself that he's never really tried.

Recently I've been watching Cheers on Netflix and as much as I am bored and tired by Sam and Diane, Noel and Marjorie are the cookie cutters by which they were drawn. Unfortunately, though, Noel is brilliant about everything but himself. He clearly is the petulant teenager at the seder dinner and then runs off to Europe in a tantrum and again when Marjorie catches up with him in Paris he gives a great treatise about the immaturity and inability to Peter Pan as 22 forever, but then insists on taking her out and around to simply illustrate that he has not actually changed and never will.

Ultimately, we all change; we all grow up and our memories of ourselves and those we knew in the past warp with time. I think Wally's diary best expresses this change in memory: "I know now that she was an ordinary girl, that the image existed only in my own mind, that her radiance was the radiance of my own hungry young desired projected around her. Overall it is dense and at times boring, but quite compelling and left a beautiful picture in my mind of a long ago time in which women were both flowers to be trampled and goddesses to be worshiped.

Jul 09, Susan rated it liked it. Herman Wouk captures the period 's to 's quite well. It is a well-written, if overly long, story of a dreamy, gorgeous young, Jewish girl whose parents want the best for her wehich may mean marrying a doctor and living in the suburbs.

Marjorie is pursuing her dream of becoming an actress and meets the quintessential Peter Pan himself: Noel Airman, ne'er-do-well son of an important Judge Ehrman. Every man who meets Margie falls in love with her, but Margie is set on Airman - how the l Herman Wouk captures the period 's to 's quite well.

Every man who meets Margie falls in love with her, but Margie is set on Airman - how the love affair plays out, I won't spoil, but we watch as Marjorie grows up and meets Mark Eden on a ship crossing, handles her woebegone love Wally, throws over her first love, experiences Paris right before the war, and ends up with the right choice, afterall.

What was tedious was Wouk's philosophizing, his discussions of Freudian psychology and the meandering thoughts of both Airman and Eden. With the right editor the book could have been as powerful, perhaps more powerful, if there had been pages less. Most Jews of a certain age who read the book will feel a kinship with one or another of the characters - Margie's social climbing parents, her quirky friend Marsha, the besotted Wally, the high and mighty Airman, the South Wind summer experience, defiance of parental expectations and the final coming to terms with who we are -really.

Dec 30, Dana rated it it was amazing. I just realized that I never marked this as book I read That was not quite 50 years ago. I think hope I still have the book on my shelves somewhere! I don't remember everything about it, but I remember enough that I could still outline the plot for someone who might be curious. I also remember the last name of the man Marjorie ended up marrying in the I just realized that I never marked this as book I read I don't want to say the name or I would be spoiling the ending of the book.

Marjorie had big dreams, and those dreams included leaving behind her traditional, sheltered life as a young Jewish girl in NY in the late 's. Herman Wouk, who also wrote The Winds of War, and other great novels, wrote very readable novels. He was one of the contemporary greats of his time. I know I loved it. View all 10 comments. Aug 26, Nicola rated it it was ok. I couldn't help comparing these two feminine heroines cast in sweeping historical dramas, both loaded with character, initiative and, well, chutzpah, yet both seem oblivious to the obvious truths right in front of their faces.

It's painful when a book with a promising female character takes hundreds of pages to reveal that it is merely a story of a girl chasing a boy. As for Marjorie Morningstar, I still can quite believe such a depressing, misogynistic book came from the pen of Wouk, author of the thrilling and perceptive "The Caine Mutiny. Feb 17, Jeanette Ms. I tried hard, but I just can't stick it with this one.

I guess I just can't read Wouk. I've tried a couple of his others. He knows how to write, but he's too long-winded for me. If you're going to like Marjorie Morningstar, you have to be familiar with or at least care about all the s class distinctions in Manhattan and NYC in general. The characters obsess endlessly about who lives east or west of certain streets or landmarks, and what it means about their social standing. May 17, Sherril rated it it was amazing. It was published in , when I was just 4 years old.

He also helped popularize themes that writers like Philip Roth later tackled. In all, Wouk wrote 24 books. In my meandering, I learned that Wouk, before beginning to write novels had for five years starting in , written jokes and sketches for the popular radio host Fred Allen. He began writing books after Pearl Harbor when the year-old enlisted in the Navy and served in the Pacific. In his off hours, Wouk began to write. Those of us, of a certain age will remember the tv miniseries of The Winds Of War and War and Remembrance, the first in and the second in Although they were made several years apart, both were directed by Dan Curtis and both starred Robert Mitchum as Captain Victor "Pug" Henry, the main character.

I would venture to say that many more people saw the miniseries than read the books. But, despite the length, I remember the books were well worth the reading.

He was sometimes criticized by the New York Times and others as basically being lightweight in his writings of these wartime sagas, but others said, he was profound but in an accessible way.

This is an example from one section of War and Remembrance where he reflects on the Holocaust: "The accounts I have heard of what the Germans are doing in camps like [Auschwitz] exceed all human experience.

Words break down as a means of describing them. The Thucydides who will tell this story so that the world can picture, believe, and remember may not be born for centuries.

Or if he lives now, I am not he. He died in his sleep Friday at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. Jun 30, Michael Canoeist rated it did not like it. Yes, Herman Wouk's death prompted me to read this one. So first, Goodreads stars -- I went to the bottom of the scale to figure out where this experience should rate. Only the 1-star is negative; three of the star ratings are positive and the 2-star is a wishy-washy it was o-kaaayy. So 1 star it is, this is not a good book.

Novels that date are novels that aren't about real people; that is why they've dated. They are about something else, passing fads, authors' personal conceptions often miscon Yes, Herman Wouk's death prompted me to read this one. They are about something else, passing fads, authors' personal conceptions often misconceptions , ideologies, what have you. Marjorie Morningstar is dated. Yet its copyright is only , 60 years ago, when John Cheever and Isaac Bashevis Singer were writing; unlike the lively experiences of reading them, the feeling here is strictly museumish.

I persisted with this, despite its dullness, but after pages, halfway through, I found the characters too uninteresting to spend further time with. I skipped to the last chapter and got the resolution of the interminable story line.

There are many false notes, where I felt the character had not done or said what I was reading, but author Wouk had imposed it for his own purposes. And there are good scenes that are spoiled when the author adds a sentence or paragraph to underline the point of what we had just understood from the action and dialogue. As a kid, I had read Wouk's Youngblood Hawke , and enjoyed it; it led me to the real writer, Thomas Wolfe, and I enjoyed reading him for a while. But, alas, I am not a kid anymore and this book did not work for me as an adult.

Aug 09, Anna rated it liked it Recommends it for: struggling actors, fans of the theater, anyone in love with a jerk. This is like the s version of Reality Bites --good girl dabbles in a bohemian lifestyle, and finds herself torn between the artistic jackass she loves and the nice Jewish boys that bore her.

While I was repeatedly stunned by how much Wouk gets it right, even for a book set in the s sexual politics between men and women, class politics in a melting pot nation, backstage politics of the theater , I was frustrated by the lack of a clear story arc. There are definitely parts of the novel tha This is like the s version of Reality Bites --good girl dabbles in a bohemian lifestyle, and finds herself torn between the artistic jackass she loves and the nice Jewish boys that bore her.

There are definitely parts of the novel that drag, and those parts should have been heavily edited. I'm definitely torn by the ending, however. While it's probably the most realistic option, it's also the biggest letdown. To sum it up, the book has the feel of a newspaper serial turned into a novel. It's separated into several parts, and I think it could have made several fine novels if separated, but rather disjointed when put together.

Apr 22, Elizabeth rated it really liked it. Read this over one weekend when I was about 12 or I wanted to be Marjorie Morningstar. I need to re-read this at age I'm smiling just thinking about how much I loved and how I devoured this book.

Wonder what my end of 9th grade daughter would thnk about this book We'll see Oct 23, Carol rated it really liked it. I was very surprised at this book. Primarily a woman's book, although it may open the doors to some men's understanding and sympathy. Morrison traces the shifting shapes of suffering and mythic accommodations, through the shell of psychosis to the core of a Set in post-Civil War Ohio, this is the story of how former slaves, psychically crippled by years of outrage to their bodies and their humanity, attempt to "beat back the past," while the ghosts and wounds of that past ravage the present.

The Ohio house where Sethe and her second daughter, year-old Denver, live in is "spiteful. Full of a [dead] baby's venom. It was she who nursed Sethe, the runaway—near death with a newborn—and gave her a brief spell of contentment when Sethe was reunited with her two boys and first baby daughter. But the boys have by now run off, scared, and the murdered first daughter "has palsied the house" with rage.

Then to the possessed house comes Paul D. But was there much difference between them? Sethe will honor Paul D. But the one story she does not tell him will later drive him away—as it drove away her boys, and as it drove away the neighbors. Before he leaves, Paul D. Finally, the ex-slave community, rebuilding on ashes, will intervene, and Beloved's tortured vision of a mother's love—refracted through a short nightmare life—will end with her death.

Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters. Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.

D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. What would remain the same?

Many themes in Marjorie Morningstar are considered timeless—the clash of generations, traditional values versus assimilation into American society, classism and upward mobility. Which values, assumptions and descriptions in the book do you find dated? Which have withstood the test of time? The uncle—Samson-Aaron—is initially shown as a buffoon, an embarrassing figure with a thick Yiddish accent. On the ship, she meets an engaging man whom she finds to be an intellectual equal.

It is also the first time that Hitler, Nazism, even antisemitism is noted in any detail. What do you think about her reactions toward reading the news, particularly articles about Nazi Germany? The conflict between Jewish values, rooted in family and tradition, and modern attitudes is a running theme throughout the novel.