Fortunately, the reader response to The Man was overwhelmingly positive. The book spent 32 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and 39 weeks on the Time magazine list. It was released in paperback in September 1965, reached number one on the New York Times paperback bestseller list, and eventually sold more than two million copies. My father had achieved his goal of using his storytelling skills to educate millions of readers about a vital social problem.
In 1972 ABC-TV produced a movie version of The Man. Rod Serling wrote the script and James Earl Jones played Douglass Dilman. ABC was pleasantly surprised by the finished product. Although they had intended it to be shown on television, they released it in the theaters instead. Unfortunately, it suffered from its small screen production values, as well as from unnecessary plot changes. A serious cinematic version of The Man remains to be made.
After The Man, my father wrote thirteen more novels including three that dealt directly with the U.S. presidency (The Plot [1967], The Second Lady [1980] and The Guest of Honor [1988]), as well as one about an FBI plot to take over the U.S. government (The R Document [1976]). He also wrote or edited twelve more books of non-fiction. Almost all of these books were international bestsellers. In the 65-year history of the New York Times bestseller list, my father is one of only six authors to reach number one on both the fiction and non-fiction lists. The others are Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, William Styron, Jimmy Buffet and my father’s old army buddy, Dr. Seuss.
My father died in Los Angeles on June 29, 1990. He would have loved his obituaries. They praised his storytelling abilities and the honesty with which he presented difficult and controversial issues to the public.
After the funeral, we received hundreds of condolence letters. I thought I knew my father’s friends and acquaintances pretty well, but some of these letters were from people whose names I didn’t recognize. Many of them were readers, but most were from writers and would-be writers with whom my father had corresponded. My father loved writing so much that, no matter how busy he was, he always set aside time to answer anyone who wrote to him asking advice about how to be a writer.
My father respected the people who read his books. Writing in the London Independent, Rod MacLeish said of my father, “He understood his public because he was a member of it. Irving Wallace will probably be remembered as a writer who made a vast amount of money. It should be acknowledged that, in return, he gave his readers their money’s worth. He was an honourable entertainer.”
My father was also an optimist-a realistic optimist, but an optimist nonetheless. He believed in the good part of each person he met and he believed in the ability of the human race to solve its problems. Above all, he loved the honor of being alive. When I think of my father’s legacy, I think of a quotation from the final page of The Prize, the last line of which appears on his grave marker:
“All man’s honors are small beside the greatest prize to which he may and must aspire-the finding of his soul, his spirit, his divine strength and worth-the knowledge that he can and must live in freedom and dignity-the final realization that life is not a daily dying, not a pointless end, not ashes-to-ashes and dust-to-dust, but a soaring and blinding gift snatched from eternity.”
David Wallechinsky
Maussane-les-Alpilles
2 June 1999
