"I have been writing for 50 years and readers still read my first book from when I was in the Marine Corps"
About this Quote
Uris is quietly bragging, but the brag has teeth: time, not hype, is his credential. By stressing “50 years,” he invokes a career long enough to outlast trends, publishers, and literary feuds. The twist is where he locates his origin story: not in an MFA seminar or a bohemian garret, but “when I was in the Marine Corps.” That detail isn’t incidental; it’s a brand signature. Uris built his readership on muscular, event-driven historical fiction (Battle Cry, Exodus) that treats institutions - armies, nations, insurgencies - as engines of character. The Marine Corps becomes a shorthand for discipline, grit, and a certain blunt moral clarity, implying his writing was forged under pressure rather than cultivated in comfort.
The subtext is a claim about legitimacy and endurance. “Readers still read my first book” frames the audience as the real jury. Not critics, not prizes, not the literary establishment. It’s an almost populist assertion: the market of attention has kept a decades-old text alive, and that survival is presented as proof of craft and relevance.
There’s also a nostalgic, slightly defensive undertone. Uris’s style was often dismissed as commercial or didactic; this line preempts that critique by arguing that what lasts, wins. If a book written by a young serviceman can still pull readers half a century later, then the work has crossed the hard boundary between “of its moment” and “part of the shelf.” The Marine Corps detail turns that boundary into myth: the writer as veteran, the novel as campaign, the readership as enduring ally.
The subtext is a claim about legitimacy and endurance. “Readers still read my first book” frames the audience as the real jury. Not critics, not prizes, not the literary establishment. It’s an almost populist assertion: the market of attention has kept a decades-old text alive, and that survival is presented as proof of craft and relevance.
There’s also a nostalgic, slightly defensive undertone. Uris’s style was often dismissed as commercial or didactic; this line preempts that critique by arguing that what lasts, wins. If a book written by a young serviceman can still pull readers half a century later, then the work has crossed the hard boundary between “of its moment” and “part of the shelf.” The Marine Corps detail turns that boundary into myth: the writer as veteran, the novel as campaign, the readership as enduring ally.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|
More Quotes by Leon
Add to List
