At Columbia, Wouk began his writing career. He edited the college humor magazine,
Columbia Jester, and wrote two popular varsity shows.
In 1935 Wouk accepted a job as a radio comedy writer but was disillusioned to find that his "first literary task was copying old jokes out of tattered comic magazines on to file cards." Between 1936 and 1941, however, Wouk took on more responsibilities and began assisting Fred Alien with his weekly radio scripts. In June 1941 he began to write and produce radio shows promoting war bonds for the United States Treasury. He kept this job until 1942, when he enlisted in the navy and served as a deck officer on the destroyer/ minesweeper USS Zane in the Pacific for three years.
In 1943, during this tour of duty aboard the Zane, Wouk began his first novel, a humorous attack on radio and advertising, in order "to relieve the tedium of military service at sea in wartime." He did not complete the first part of the novel, Aurora Dawn (1947), until he became an executive officer on the USS Southard at Okinawa in 1945, and he did not finish the book until May 1946 while he was in Northport, Long Island.
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