Talk:Leon Uris

Uris' last two books

Note: Many of Uris's fans are of the opinion that his last two books, A God in Ruins and O'Hara's Choice, were so poorly written and so different in style from any previous work that they must have been written or heavily edited by someone else.

Actually, my opinion is just the opposite. I think Uris was a great story teller, and excellent researcher, but it might be possible that he was an atrocious writer who was improved by good editing. And that in the last two novels, there was no editing, which was why they stunk so badly. I can't prove this; it's just a theory. I've noticed the same pattern with another of my one-time favorite authors -- Frederick Forsyth. The Dogfather 16:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I just looked at his obituary, and it says that O'Hara's Choice was coming out in October, and he died in June. So when he died, it was already in the can and at the printer's, right? So there would be no time for a ghostwriter to come in. I agree with the above opinion: it was Uris' only book for HarperCollins, which is notorious for having weak editing. So your assumption is probably correct, they just ran it with almost no editing. Sad, really. --K72ndst 21:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Edit I put in a word about the extreme Zionist slant in his writings on the Isreal-palestine conflict, I like his writing but I felt it needed said. I haven't read his last two but your assesment has the ring of truth to it.

Actually, Exodus is not so tendentiously Zionist that the Palestinian Arab characters are not rendered human and believable. But The Haj is utterly revolting; I think that I was unable to finish even a first reading, Uris's racism made it utterly devoid of realistic foils for his Israeli characters. 66.108.4.183 05:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC) Allen Roth

Comment: The fact that Uris writes from a perspective that is not recognized as being politically correct, i.e. a Zionist perspective, is not justification for labeling his works as "racist" or "revolting". A reader may not agree with his viewpoint, but these are works of fiction, and make no claim to being scholarly works of historical research. The fact is though, that Uris was a meticulous researcher, and based events in his work on actual documented history.

Of course these books have an "extreme Zionist" slant. They're novels of the Zionist movement! --Bsinger427 05:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I would say that the constant references to "stinking" or "filthy" Arabs or statements like "the stinkholes of Cairo, Damascus and Beirut" from which were recruited "the dregs of humanity" - all done in the author's voice, not a character's - I'd say that this alone renders him racist (and revolting), without anything else being needed. As for the meticulous research, it's not present in Exodus (that or he ignored it.)Steve3742 (talk) 00:58, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Most of his works are a full of "extreme Zionist" slant. He wrote kind of propaganda literature. You can feel this while reading him if you are not a Jew or American or British. Although, I might say propaganda literature of the highest quality.

zs32

I think the article should mention his extreme stereotyping of "Jew" as wise and good, "Palestinian" and "Arab" as vicious and evil, and everyone else as shallow fools. Perhaps his writing isn't racist--but I think you should read the The Haj before you try to defend that point of view. I actually managed to finish it, but I would be really hard pressed to name a more pernicious book, and I've read thousands of books over the years, including five by Uris. (Perhaps more. My list only goes back to 1971 or so.) Me? I think it's just as possible to be racist in a positive sense as in a negative sense. Shanen (talk) 01:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

• We are not here to write a review of his works or make the case that Uris was or was not a racist. This is his biography and the man wrote historical fiction not history. To make a case that he was a racist you would need references that state that about him, and you would need to make the case that it was a notable bit of his character. If you are talking only about the book, The Haj (novel) and you can find reliable and notable reviewers that claim the book is racist, then go for it. Stellarkid (talk) 02:05, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

For posterity-- proof that Leon Uris was indeed a virulent racist as far as Palestinians, "the Arabs" in general went:

"Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, Norman G. Finkelstein, 2008, p2-3, quote: "Putting aside its apologetics for Zionism, the sheer racism of Uris's blockbuster bears recalling. The Arabs, their villages, their homes—to the last, they're "stinking" or engulfed in "overwhelming stench" and "vile odors." Arab men just "lay around" all day "listless"—that is, when they're not hatching "some typical double-dealing scheme which seemed perfectly legitimate to the Arab," or resorting to "the unscrupulous ethics of the Arab ... the fantastic reasoning that condoned every crime short of murder," or "becom[ing] hysterical at the slightest provocation." As for Palestine itself before the Jews worked wonders, it was "worthless desert in the south end and eroded in the middle and swamp up north"; "a land of festering, stagnated swamps and eroded hills and rock-filled fields and unfertile earth caused by a thousand years of Arab and Turkish neglect. ... There was little song or laughter or joy in Arab life. ... In this atmosphere, cunning, treachery, murder, feuds and jealousies became a way of life. The cruel realities that had gone into forming the Arab character puzzled outsiders. Cruelty from brother to brother was common." Truth be told, not much has changed in official Zionist propaganda"

That really ought to settle the issue. Uris: a racist of the worst order as far as this goes. 70.27.162.84 (talk) 00:14, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

political use of Uris' novels

Here (see page 3) we see The Haj quoted as genuine commentary on the nature of Arabs. The writer is a well-known ideologue of the Israeli extreme right. Not sure whether or how this type of thing belongs in the article. Zero^talk 11:10, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a little known essay by Paul Eidelberg. Mr Eidelberg is a respected academic and is entitled to his opinions. Stellarkid (talk) 04:46, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

LOL I just saw this commentary. If you consider a Palestinian-hating fanatic an "academic" worthy of respect, I suppose. It's clear that virulent hatred of Palestinians and indeed all non-Jews in the Middle East doesn't bother you at all. Sad! 70.27.162.84 (talk) 22:50, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Since I am firmly opposed to censorship, I believe that even extremist fanatics are entitled to their opinions. Zero^talk 08:40, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Re: The motivation for Battle Cry

The paragraph reads:

"In 1950, Esquire magazine bought an article from him and this encouraged him to work on a novel. The resulting best-seller, Battle Cry, graphically showing the toughness and courage of U.S. Marines in the Pacific and The Angry Hills, a novel set in war-time Greece."

This implies that Battle Cry was an intellectual exercise written because he sold an article to a magazine. While this may have contributed something motivation for writing, (as well as putting food on the table), we really have to make it clear that it was his experience as a Marine at wartime that informs these books. The NY Times article given as a reference says of him:

The impulse to write hit Leon early in life -- according to Current Biography, Leon Uris authored an operetta in 1930, at age six, inspired by the death of his pet dog.

So I am going to try to change that section to flesh him out some and if anyone objects please let me know. Stellarkid (talk) 05:12, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

He saw combat in New Zealand?

Just fiddled with it a little to change this. He wouldn't have seen combat on New Zealand, there was no fighting on there in WW2. He was stationed in New Zealand and fought on Guadalcanal and Tarawa. Little thing I know, but it was bugging me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.236.191.124 (talk) 09:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

ANI discussion re: npov, etc.

An ANI discussion has been opened and comments can be added there. --Light show (talk) 03:16, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Per the ANI POV link above, there are a number of blatant violations of guidelines in the article. The off-topic text below was appended to the end of the "Life and career" section of his bio:

Author and editor Robert Fisk wrote in 2014 that Exodus was "a racist, fictional account of the birth of Israel in which Arabs are rarely mentioned without the adjectives “dirty” and “stinking” [and] was one of the best pieces of Socialist-Zionist propaganda that Israel could have sought". Jeremy Salt wrote that "The Haj is a profoundly racist work not just because it reduces Arabs once again to a series of ugly stereotypes, but because it appears to be a conscious attempt to show that the culture of an entire people is rotten to the core."

Among the problems:

• This is a brief bio which has no reviews of his books or screenplays;
• The text is appended after a listing of some of his books and thereby lacks any context;
• All of the appended text is framed as an attack to undermine the bio by using cherry-picked POV quotes from numerous sources.
• This violates undue;
• Per Not a battleground, "Wikipedia is not a place to hold grudges, import personal conflicts, carry on ideological battles, or nurture prejudice, hatred, or fear;"
• The tone of the selected text is obviously not impartial, and intended to corrupt the bio with a smear clipped from some POV comments about his novels.

Among the numerous pretexts for keeping the text in have been the following:

• [1], User:Huldra saying that excluding it would be a "white-wash";
• [2], User:Zero0000, saying that there's "No reason that negative comments can't be included to balance all the praise." However, the article has little so-called "praise";
• [3], User:Trinacrialucente, using the pretext that a "book review does not need to be neutral," when the neutrality or POV of any particular book review has never been an issue; They make it clear that pointing out the "criticism of anti-arab bias" noted in one of the novels is the purpose of pushing the POV text;
• All of those three editors pushing the text—essentially their only edits—onto the bio have acknowledged that the material is already being used in the article about a specific novel in its review section, yet persist in keeping it here.

Note that at least four editors have tried to remove the POV text. User:Zero0000 even restored [4] it after another editor removed it, claiming that removing it based on another's clearly-stated rationales was "not" a good enough reason.

If there is a persistence in keeping the text, it would have to be incorporated into a separate section of critical reviews for many of his other books. --Light show (talk) 21:58, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Light show: please don´t forum-shop: you opened a case about this on Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard, where it is being discussed. If you are not satisfied with the way the discussion is going there, then that is not a reason to open up "more battle-fronts", so to speak, Huldra (talk) 23:11, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

@Light show: You keep talking about "numerous clear stated reasons" but you need to provide reasons that are based on wikipedia policies and guidelines. So far you did not. Attributed opinions are expected to be POV are not a violation of WP:NPOV, so repeatedly complaining about such material as not being impartial won't help you. NPOV applies to text written in the voice of Wikipedia and to the overall weight given to different opinions. If you think the article gives excessive weight to negative opinion then you should present your objection that way, but you might have trouble getting support as only a few sentences are involved. (As before I am discussing only Leon Uris.) You could also add an attributed opinion that refutes the criticism. A properly sourced assessment of Uris' books influence on the Western perception of Israel would improve the article, imo, and feel free to use someone who views the influence as positive. Zero^talk 01:31, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

@Zero0000:, I listed undue above and in edit rationales, as did others who removed the text. I also stated a number of times that the POV, positive or negative, of any particular quote is not an issue. --Light show (talk) 03:41, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

It's not "four editors". The 190. and 200. IPs will be socks of banned and blocked racist ethno-nationalist extremist Special:Contributions/AndresHerutJaim. When Other Legends Are Forgotten is certainly a sockpuppet of a topic banned user, probably NoCal100. The 2. IP is a typically partisan editor making disruptively foolish edits and they do not have the required editing history to allow them to touch this ARBPIA related content. Trinacrialucente may also be a sock or not meet the requirements to touch this ARBPIA related content. Sean.hoyland - talk 03:58, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

@Sean.hoyland: Hello Sean, do you have any proof that the user you just named is a "topic banned" user? He has been etremely active and belligerent to a number of users, myself included. He opened up an ANI against me (not substantiated and subsequently dismissed) but it was successful in creating a stalemate. Topic here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Racial_segregation#Israel_doubtful.2C_some_cases_only From his behavior and language I seriously don't know why he's still allowed to post on these topics.Trinacrialucente (talk) 05:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

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Introductory Sentence

The first sentence of this article is odd: why does it suggest that Leon Uris wrote only two best-selling novels? Publishers Weekly includes at least six other Uris titles among the top ten sellers of their respective years: Battle Cry (1953), Mila 18 (1961), Armageddon (1964), Topaz (1967), QBVII (1970), and Mitla Pass (1988). True, Exodus and Trinity are among his best-known works, but why make it seem he accomplished less than he did? Untold Millions (talk) 18:25, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Visit to the Soviet Union

I don't have 500 edits but I was researching somebody else and found something to add to this page:

In 1989, Uris visited Russia. Alexander Smukler, a refusenik who distributed literature in underground samizdat networks, presented Uris with a handmade copy of Uris' novel Exodus in Russian. [source: https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/exodus] One witness at the meeting said that Smukler's gift brought Uris close to tears. [source: https://www.bnaibrith.org/digital-exclusives/letters-to-the-editor3] JournalismResearch (talk) 15:50, 22 July 2020 (UTC)