ABSTRACT
Before it became a novel, Aurora Dawn was a play. Perhaps because it seemed to Wouk that playwriting was easy and novel writing supremely difficult he opted for the stage. After all, at Columbia College he had in 1933 coauthored a varsity show, “Home, James,” and in 1934, on his own, “Laugh it Off.” Dialogue came naturally to someone who had spent six successful and profitable years writing radio vaudeville comedy. He had worked on a play titled “Meadow Sweet with Hay,” based on the poetic idyl by John Greenleaf Whittier. As he thought of it, writing a play was nothing more than five Fred Allen sketches. The illusion was finally dispelled after an inauspicious beginning.
