Aurora Dawn

by Herman Wouk

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

The publication of 'Aurora Dawn' in 1947 immediately established Herman Wouk as a novelist of exceptional literary and historical significance. Today, Aurora Dawn's themes have grown still more relevant and, in the manner of all great fiction, its characters and ironies have only been sharpened by the passage of time. Wouk's raucous satire of Manhattan's high-power elite recounts the adventures of one Andrew Reale as he struggles toward fame and fortune in the early days of radio. On the quest for wealth and prestige, ambitious young Andrew finds himself face-to-face with his own devil's bargain: forced to choose between soul and salary, true love and a strategic romance, Wouk's riotous, endearing hero learns a timeless lesson about the high cost of success in America's most extravagant metropolis.

Release date: June 27, 2009

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 288

Sample

IN THE DECADE since this novel was written, radio has given way to television.


Who would have dreamed, a mere ten years ago, that the money-crammed world of radio was a bubble about to burst?

Or who would dare to suggest today that commercial television—with its mammoth floods of cash, its huge studios, its racketing
parlor games, its jigging advertisements, its solemn potentates—may someday be pricked by an electrician who will devise a
more agreeable entertainment tool?


Meantime sponsors are still sponsors; glamor girls are glamor girls; cringing executives are cringing executives; and ulcers
apparently are ulcers. In the halls of Radio City, between rounds of the unchanging hot fight for place and money, boys still
chase girls. The little box that sold us things in our homes by giving us music, yarns, and jokes, gratis, has yielded to
a larger box that does the same job with pictures added. Miracles of engineering; trifles of amusement; at the heart of it
all, the peddler. Plus Ça change … !

Television, like radio before it, is a revival of an old form of entertainment, the free show or come-on. The purpose of the
come-on is only incidentally to please. The main idea is to catch attention, hold it, and then divert it to whatever the man
is selling. The instability inherent in this amalgam of sketchy amusement and hard-eyed selling causes most of the abuses
and follies pictured in Aurora Dawn. None of that has changed. Aurora Dawn is a more rampant goddess than ever.


The American people have accepted their broadcast entertainment in the ancient form of the free show. Who are novelists that
they should prescribe differently? To crusade against the come-on seems faintly ridiculous. But perhaps it may be useful to
raise a laugh against some of its abuses, which are not so much monstrous or evil as just plain silly, and unworthy of an
adult civilization.


H.W.

Fire Island,

August, 1956.

 

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

THE WRITINGof this story was begun to relieve the tedium of military service at sea in wartime, which, as sailors will tell you, is even
more monotonous than in peace, despite occasional interruptions of terror. AURORA DAWN was started aboard the U.S.S. Zane at Tulagi, Solomon Islands, in 1943. The first part was completed aboard the U.S.S. Southard at Okinawa in 1945; and the book
was finished at Northport, Long Island, in May,1946.

This chronology is introduced because of the recent publication of more than one novel intended to expose the inner workings
of the advertising industry, which this story may be said to resemble in setting and certain points of detail, though not,
surely, in matter or manner. The coincidence, such as it is, cannot injure the other books, and will not greatly distract
the readers of this one. Let me be forgiven, then, for publishing AURORA DAWN unaltered in those points of similarity.

“The artist’s revenge” is a familiar flaw in satire. In so far as a grudge dictates the writing of any portion of a book,
the work is marred; humor is one thing, lampoon another. The true distinction of humor is that it raises laughter against
folly, not against individual fools. All this is self-evident. Yet, to go on in the pertinent words of LeSage, “There are
some people in the world so mischievous as not to read a word without applying the vicious or ridiculous characters it may
happen to contain to eminent or popular individuals. I protest publicly against the pretended discovery of any such likenesses.
My purpose was to represent human life historically as it exists; God forbid I should hold myself out as a portrait painter.”

THE AUTHOR

Northport, Long Island,

July, 1946.

Introducing us to Andrew Reale

and the Beautiful Brahmin.

ONCE THERE was a bright and spirited young man named Andrew Reale, who came into the world in the second decade of the twentieth century
and grew up in the third and fourth, and was thus convinced that the road to happiness lay in becoming very rich very quickly.
To call this a conviction is not quite clear, because in the same way he was convinced that it was a good idea to breathe–that
is, he did not expect either conviction to be challenged and could hardly have argued very successfully in their support.
It was, rather, an axiom on which his life rested. This is enough of his background to explain most of his actions, at least
in the early stages of his history, and we may proceed forthwith to the first moment in his life which merits the attention
of the reader. He is on a train speeding south from New York, and is staring very hard at a strange young lady.


Walk through any express train on the Atlantic coast and you will probably chance upon a girl much like this one. Usually
one, occasionally two, and sometimes a group of them, can be seen lounging in the parlor car. They are as easy to pick out
as highcaste Brahmins, and can be recognized by the same tokens: their distinctive clothing, their pallid, abstracted air
of human beings devoted to a difficult ideal, their unique and uniform way of wearing their hair, and the paint marks on their
faces. They are known in journalists’ jargon as “glamour debs,” a sect of young females which adheres to its symbols with
a fanaticism rare in these lax times. The girl who sat in the parlor chair opposite our hero, intent on a copy of Harper’s Bazaar, was to the other members of her cult as the Dalai Lama is said to be to the monks of Tibet. Other girls painted their mouths
into a vicious pout, according to the fashion; she had achieved a glaring red masterpiece of a pout. Something in the arrangement
of her hair made the current mode, a rather disheveled, unsightly one to the detached view, suddenly seem as inevitable as
the outcome of a tragedy. Her sweater was a triumph. There was a mathematically exact carelessness in the way the sleeves
were pushed up above her elbows. There was an ineffable machine-tooled precision in the slovenly way it hung about her hips.
Girls with a less happy touch labored for hours, all in vain, to achieve this uncannily correct, cut-crystal sloppiness.


This charmer was as responsive to Andrew Reale’s presence as a compass needle is to the North Pole, but, unlike it (to the
confusion of behaviorists, who say that human beings are soulless bundles of responses to external stimuli), she would not
make the slightest movement in his direction. In fact, the magazine seemed increasingly to claim her attention until in her
absorption she resembled a nun conning her breviary. Andrew’s consciousness, on the other hand, was divided among three ideas
in the following order of importance: the beautiful young stranger, the secret mission on which he was traveling, and, receding
into the background, the sweet savor of his early-morning farewell to his sweetheart, Laura Beaton. This last, a photographer’s
model of extravagant attractiveness, had been renamed “Honey” by the agency which managed her fortunes, and it was by that
name that Andrew thought of her. He loved Honey with his whole soul; she loved him no less in return, and their marriage and
everlasting bliss awaited only what they both called “a good time for it.” From this, and from the fact that she was now third
in his thoughts while a strange female was first, the casual reader may instantly surmise that Andrew was a light and wicked
philanderer, ignoring the simple truth that a young man is less likely to focus his thoughts on a girl who loves him unreservedly
than on one whom he suspects of not loving him at all or of loving somebody else as much.




–Known in journalists’ jargon as “glamour debs”–

Admirable or no, our hero was becoming more and more contemplative of schemes having no more worthy goal than the opening
of conversation with the young lady. He continued his uneasy glances, and she her impassive reading, until she was betrayed;
for, like an animal with a will of its own, her hand crept softly up to her hair and bestowed an anxious, supervisory caress
over her entire coiffure. Poor Andrew watched the hand with an eager eye that did not miss the delicacy of its form or the
sweet grace of its little movements. It seemed to him that her fingers, as they curled around a roll of her hair, were like
a half-opened white rose. Honey’s hands were more beautiful; it cost an advertising agency a standard price of one hundred
dollars to associate the charm of her hands with a brand of lotion or nail polish; but Honey’s hands were in New York, and
this hand was, at the moment, within a few inches of Andrew’s nose. As the girl stirred her hair, a faint, delicious perfume
came to his nostrils, which flared enthusiastically.


At this moment, both became aware of a sound which broke disagreeably on their pleasant silent duel. Starting as a low, vague
rasp, it had risen in a few seconds to an assertive, slabbering, unmistakable human snore. Leaning back heavily in a chair
behind the young lady, a stout, gray, sparse-haired man, to whom half-opened white roses were evidently objects of little
concern, had given up the effort of maintaining his dignity as a human being on an early-morning train, and had subsided into
the character of a large, breathing mound of flesh. The sound rose in volume. The fair one caught Andrew’s eye, and she smiled.
Andrew burst out laughing.


“He’s happy,” he observed, with a nod at the sleeper, from whose limp, fat fingers a dead cigar was just dropping to the floor.

“But I’m not,” said the girl, putting her hands to her ears.

A colored steward in a very white coat came through the corridor announcing breakfast. Andrew was only twenty-five, but in
his work he had already learned to seize the passing chance. He invited her to breakfast with the pleasantest smile he could
muster, a smile implying that he was offering her, entirely impersonally, an escape from distress. Andrew smiled often, and
most often when he was trying to gain a point. He had extremely white, perfectly even and well-shaped teeth. The girl’s glance
seemed to flutter for a fraction of a second to the teeth and away from them: it happened so quickly no one could be sure.
In any case, with a slight, modest pause, she thanked him very much and accepted.


Let us leave them for a moment on their way to this breakfast, which is to be such a turning point in Andrew’s life, leading
him into an unexpected series of adventures, upsetting his career, and giving him an all-too-intimate knowledge of a lover’s
anguish, and let us consider the familiar irony of destiny as demonstrated anew at this instant by Andrew and his unknown
young beauty. All they know is that they are about to breakfast in pleasurable company. Andrew is a-tingle with elation, and
his beloved Honey, to whom he has never been unfaithful, is temporarily out of his mind. The difficult mission on which his
train is whisking him through the winter brownness of Maryland is out of his mind, too. Such is the effect of a bud of seventeen
on an ambitious young man, and so far is he from keeping in mind what long shadows such trivial events may throw across the
green paths of the future; even as a young shoot can cast a shadow across the entire breadth of a park in the slant light
of dawn.


And the young lady? Reader, I yield to the lady novelists, who insist that young ladies have minds and will describe their
workings at length. Like the Ptolemaic celestial hypothesis, this approach is productive of believable results, within the
limits of its first assumption. This historian is unable to report what the young lady was thinking and submits that perhaps
it does not matter. Few people are governed by what young ladies think–least of all the young ladies themselves. This deep,
but entirely wholesome truth, is one of the many that will be demonstrated in the course of this astonishing tale.




Telling a little more about the Beautiful Brahmin

and bringing Andrew farther along his way.

IT DOES NOT OCCUR to city dwellers that American railroads are capillaries of mechanized civilization threading through a wilderness, until
they come one day as Andrew Reale did to the end of the line, and must eke out the rest of a journey over roads as primitive
as any in such backward countries as Afghanistan or India. True, we usually climb aboard a bus instead of a yak or oxcart
to convey us the rest of the way, but if the superiority of our culture is to rest on a showdown between the yak and the country
bus, we had better take pause. The yak is slow, fractious, and not amenable to assembly on a conveyor belt; but does the bus
give milk, or answer to its name in the night, or bring out new models each spring by simple association with other busses?
It is a nice dispute, but it borders on political economy, and the reader will doubtless be pleased if it is left unresolved
in order that the narrative may gather speed.


Andrew clung to the dusty, cracked leather seat of the bus which jolted from Providence, West Virginia, to the township of
Smithville (distance forty-one miles), over an asphalt road sagging piteously here and there where a frugal contractor had
economized on asphalt and reaped the rewards of individual enterprise. He made an earnest effort to close his mind to the
beauty of the sunset over the darkening hills and to arrange his thoughts for the accomplishment of the task ahead. It was
the first major enterprise of its kind with which he had been entrusted; it called for daring, quick wit, ability to act singlehanded,
and an unwillingness to be daunted, all of which qualities he had displayed to such a degree in the last two years that at
last this mission had fallen into his hands. Pride and eagerness glowed within him when he thought of it. With the best will
in the world he set about imagining the obstacles he was likely to encounter, and the measures he must take to win the day;
but in whatever direction he set the current of his thoughts, it invariably meandered over an erratic, untraceable course
until at last it found sea level in a troubled contemplation of his hours at breakfast and thereafter with the Beautiful Brahmin.
A casual flirtation–the mere automatic response of a healthy young man–had led him into a startling experience.


There are many solid metaphysical arguments buttressing Bishop Berkeley’s great philosophical doctrine that no reality exists
outside the mind, but empirical evidence supporting it is thought to be rare; yet there is one phenomenon utterly Berkeleian
in its nature and effect, and that is a cup of coffee in the morning. It sheds so dulcet a radiance on a world which twenty
seconds before the ingestion of the brew usually seems stale and grisly, that we are forced to conclude the sudden change
is not in the world but in the mental tone of the observer. Now–follow this philosophical thread carefully–if you admit the
fact that the external world has actually remained unchanged while seeming to undergo a profound metamorphosis in the instance
of coffee in the morning, are you not forced to go the rest of the way and admit that at all times, even if less obviously,
the aspect of the world must depend on the mental state of the observer? And since aspect is all we can ever know (experience
being only perceivable through the window of the brain), are you not thrust into the arms of Berkeley and compelled to the
position that the world as we know it is a product of the mind? Leaving you to consider at leisure the staggering implications
of the thesis, we return to our tale.


The coffee our hero shared at breakfast with the Beautiful Brahmin had its customary effect both on the external world and
the internal Andrew. In its train of familiar miracles it brought the gift of tongues. Andrew commenced to talk with amazing
vivacity and speed and–as he was now recalling with acute spasms of embarrassment as the bus jounced along the hilly road–he
did not stop talking for hours.


The breakfast had begun awkwardly and silently enough. The girl kept her eyes either on the food, which she attacked with
great vigor, or out the window during the intervals between dishes–which were brief, for they were the only people in the
car and the steward, energized by a night’s sleep, hovered over them and sprang panther-like on empty plates and glasses.
Her persistent avoidance of his glance gave him the chance to scrutinize her. Aside from the very thick, very black hair and
the alert brown eyes it was hard to select her distinguishing features. She had clothed, coiffed, and painted herself with
such mannequin accuracy that she seemed an embodied fashion rather than a person: the Last Word made Flesh. Gradually, however,
beneath the gilding he discerned a satisfying lily. He first noticed how young she was: her skin was firm and clear under
the rouge and powder, and the curves in her cheeks had the roundness of true girlhood despite the shadows under her eyes which
betokened late hours rather than advanced years. Her mouth was a full eighth of an inch smaller all around than her carmine
artistry pretended, and in its natural state would have made a better match with her short and snub nose. Her hands continually
drew his eyes; all their movements were tense, and in every action they fell into naturally graceful lines, like cats. They
were too small and too thin to be really beautiful, he supposed. Her body was shaped according to the Providential design
for young ladies’ bodies, and was most pleasing to the view of Andrew whose eyes deviated little from the Providential design
for young men’s eyes.


He would probably have been surprised to know that all this while the girl was also giving him a thorough if less direct scrutiny,
that she had noted with approval the squareness of his shoulders, clearly a tribute to his bone structure and not to his tailor,
as well as his curly, sandy hair, his handsome if rather long features, and above all his well-cut mouth and the flashing
beauties it contained. He would surely have been astonished to know that she had given him a nickname within five minutes
of the moment she had first noticed him, and that she thought of him as “Teeth.”


Along came the coffee, and the silence was broken up, all too effectively for Andrew. It was bad enough that he told her the
story of his life, from his origin in a Colorado schoolmaster’s abode through his young manhood at Yale and his rapid rise
since then into his present position (described at length, with names of important people studding the account like raisins
in a bun); bad enough that he soared into a dithyramb on his plans for the future, omitting, as he now recalled with shame,
any reference to his beloved Honey; but, worst of all, in an incredible fit of weak-mindedness, he disclosed to her the whole
truth of his present enterprise. A tingle of remorse crawled up his spine as he recalled this. The girl had been a gratifying
audience. It is in the nature of young ladies, under certain circumstances, to rise to great heights of prolonged and artistic
listening. She fixed grave wide eyes on him when he was serious, sparkled with laughter at his least sally, filled his pauses
with quick questions that spurred him on to fresh bursts of monologue, and, in fine, subtly conveyed to him that he was rather
a wonderful fellow. This elevation of spirits lasted for several hours, as they moved back to the parlor car without a perceptible
break in Andrew’s epic narrative. Then, just when he was becoming a bit giddy with success (this was in the midst of spilling
the beans about his current adventure), he thought he noticed a tinge of quiet amusement in the girl’s expression at the wrong
times. It was impossible to define, much less to challenge, but, illusion or no, it made him uneasy, and his cataract of eloquence
suddenly lagged to a sluggish trickle, then vanished into the sands of silence.


The girl, after vainly roweling him with a few more questions, seemed satisfied that he was exhausted, and did a little talking
herself. Said she:


“Well, I’m certainly glad I ran into you. This train kills me. I die every time I have to take it. If you knew how I hate
to get up at three o’clock in the morning to catch a train–I don’t as a rule, I just stay up all night, that’s what I did
last night, I rhumba’d until two-thirty, then went home, took a shower and changed my clothes. I probably look it. I loathe
morning trains. I feel so filthy by ten o’clock I can’t bear to touch myself. My face is like a cobblestone street this minute–”
(it was like the blandest Bavarian cream, thought Andrew). “The only good thing about this train is that it gets me to Mother’s
six o’clock at night, so that all I do is eat dinner and fall into bed, and that’s one day out of two killed. I visit my mother
every now and then for a weekend–my parents are divorced. Mother isn’t bad, but her husband is the most horrible goon.”–(The
word “goon,” a main prop of young feminine conversation in that decade, meant a harmless, fumbling, shambling fellow. It was
loosely used to refer to all males except the current object of a young lady’s desire.)–“He writes books–novels and biographies
and things that nobody ever buys. He just wrote a book about Thomas Chatterton–what a pancake! Not that he has to worry, the
way Mother is fixed. He was her English instructor at Wellesley. Mother is a terrific aesthete, anyway. She had a sensational
crush on him at college–that’s nothing, I’m mad about my Fine Arts prof and I know he’s a goon, but I can’t help it, he’s
beautiful–but Mother never outgrew hers. Three and a half years after she married Dad she decided that old Literature A-4
was the big thing in her life, and she walked out on Dad, leaving me in the middle. I don’t mind it except when I have to
visit Mother and her husband is around. He’s so polite I could die, and I know he despises me. He always wants to talk about
school, and how my painting is coming, and–”


“Do you paint?” interrupted Andrew with some surprise.

“Yes. Oh, nothing good, yet–but I’ll be good some day. I’m going to spend a year in Mexico as soon as I can talk Dad into
it. He thinks I’ll be raped by bandits.”


The porter here put his head and one. . .