[Deathwatch] Leon Uris, 'Exodus' author, 78

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

'Exodus' author Leon Uris dead at 78
Tuesday, June 24, 2003 Posted: 9:16 AM EDT (1316 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/06/24/obit.uris.ap/index.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- Author Leon Uris, an immigrant's determined son who
made it big with the million-selling "Exodus" and other greatly popular
novels, has died, his ex-wife said. He was 78. 

Uris died Saturday of natural causes at his home on New York's Shelter
Island, photographer Jill Uris said Tuesday from her home in Aspen,
Colorado. 

Published in 1958, the 600-page "Exodus" was a sensation as millions
read Uris' detailed, heroic chronicle of European Jewry from the turn
of the century to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The
novel was translated into dozens of languages and was even distributed
secretly in communist countries. 

" 'Exodus' has been the Bible of the Jewish dissident movement in
Russia," Uris told The Associated Press in a 1988 interview. "It's
referred to as 'The Book.' " 

Energetic and unafraid, the author was as much an adventurer as a
writer, traveling tirelessly and sometimes risking his life. In
researching "Exodus," he logged thousands of miles and ended up
reporting on the 1956 conflict in the Middle East. 

Uris also endured some of his own battles, feuding with directors Otto
Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock, and fighting lawsuits for both "Exodus"
and the thriller "Topaz." 

"I used to think of myself as a very sad little Jewish boy, isolated in
a Southern town, undersized, asthmatic," Uris told the AP. 

"When I read all my correspondence again, I realized I was a hustler,"
he said. "I was tough. I used everything to my advantage. I could be
very ruthless. I hurt a lot of people on the way up." 

'I was looking for a legacy'
Uris' other novels included "Trinity," an epic best seller about
Ireland; "QB VII," a courtroom drama based on his legal troubles with
"Exodus"; and "Mila 18," about the Jewish uprising in Warsaw during
World War II. "Mila 18" was also an unintentional influence on both
American publishing and American slang: Its title convinced a rival
publisher to change the name of an upcoming novel, by a then-unknown
Joseph Heller, from "Catch-18" to "Catch-22." 

Uris' most personal novel, "Mitla Pass," came out in 1988 and closely
follows the lives of the author and his family. The book begins in
Israel in 1956 during the time of the Suez Canal crisis and centers on
the experiences of Gideon Zadok, a writer covering the incident. 

The novel then traces Zadok's ancestry back to the 1880s, allowing
various relatives to tell their stories. 

"I was looking for a legacy to leave my new family and my
grandchildren," Uris told the AP. The author married three times and
had two children. 

"I wanted to leave them with a story of what their old man did and let
them know he was not infallible. ... You spend the second half of your
life getting over your first half," he said. 

Like Zadok, Uris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and spent several
years growing up in Norfolk, Virginia. His father, Wolf William, was a
paper hanger and storekeeper. 

"I think his personality was formed by the harsh realities of being a
Jew in Czarist Russia," Uris told the AP. "He was basically a failure.
He went from failure to failure. I think failure formed his character,
made him bitter. 

"I think I can say without hesitation that from earliest memory I was
determined not to be a failure." 

Uris failed English three times and never graduated from high school.
But he pushed on with his life. He served as a marine in World War II
and afterward began submitting articles to magazines. He finally had a
piece, "The All American Razzmatazz," published in the January 1951
issue of "Esquire." 

His first novel, "Battle Cry," a story about the Marines, was released
in 1953 and made into a film. Two years later, he came out with "The
Angry Hills," a spy novel, and in 1956, traveled to Israel to begin
research on "Exodus." 

'I simply had to tell a story'
Controversy helped "Exodus" sell when Uris was accused of libel for his
depictions of Dr. Wladislav Dering, whom the author identified as a war
criminal. In 1964, a London court ruled in favor of Dering, but awarded
him minimal damages and made him pay court costs. 

In 1960, "Exodus" was released as a feature film, starring Paul Newman.
Uris was originally involved with the screenplay, but was reportedly
dismissed after a dispute with director Preminger. Nine years later, he
was reportedly fired by Hitchcock from the adaptation of "Topaz." 

After "Exodus," Uris traveled throughout Eastern Europe interviewing
Holocaust survivors for "Mila 18." Critics didn't care for the novel
(they didn't care for most of his books) but Uris would call it his
proudest achievement, "the one thing I wrote not caring if it sold ten
copies or ten thousand. I simply had to tell a story." 

More controversy came with "Topaz," an espionage story involving the
French government. Uris' principal source was Phillipe Thyraud de
Vosjoli, an exiled French diplomat who gave the author information
about the French Intelligence Service. In 1968, a year after "Topaz"
came out, Vosjoli sued Uris for reneging on a profit-sharing agreement.


In the 1970s, Uris would enjoy great success with "Trinity," a
typically encyclopedic novel, this one about Ireland. For the story of
three Irish families from the mid-19th century to the Easter Uprising
of 1916, Uris was given the Irish Institute's John F. Kennedy Award in
1976. 

Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Pete Hamill criticized Uris
for the "excess baggage of exposition and information," but concluded
"None of that matters as you are swept along in the narrative. Uris is
certainly not as good a writer as [Thomas] Pynchon, [Donald] Barthelme
or [Vladimir] Nabokov; but he is a better storyteller."