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
An Original Publication of ibooks, inc.
Copyright © 1964 by the Rowena Company, Inc.,
Copyright © 1999 by The Estate of Irving Wallace
Introduction © 1999 by James Earl Jones
Afterword © 1999 by David Wallechinsky
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Original ISBN 0 671-03894-7
eISBN 1 588-24011-8
First ibooks, inc. Printing December 1999
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(1964) The Man Page 100
