MASH (novel)

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Cover of the 1969 paperback first edition.

MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors -- the original novel that inspired the film M*A*S*H and TV series M*A*S*H and AfterMASH -- was written by Richard Hooker (the pen name for former military surgeon Dr. H. Richard Hornberger and writer W. C. Heinz). Based on Hornberger's personal recollections, it was about a fictional U.S. Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea during the Korean War. It was originally published in 1968.

Hooker followed the novel with several sequels, most of them ghostwritten.

Changes in other media

As the novel was adapted into other media, first in the 1970 film directed by Robert Altman and then later in the long-running television series, many changes were made to the characters and general tone of the story.

For example, Hawkeye went from being a conservative to a liberal, as well as gradually losing his zany sense of humor as played by Alan Alda in the television series. The character was also changed from being married with children to a single man. Similarly, characters such as Hot Lips and Radar lost the edge they had in the novel, film and earlier episodes of the television series. Radar, in particular, suffered tremendously from Flanderization, going from a slightly naive, yet worldly character (one who played poker, drank Blake's whisky on the sly and smoked cigars) and into one who was little more than a sympathetic manchild (who blanched at the thought of smoking and drank only Grape Nehi), as well as losing the psychic powers (including telepathy, demonstrated in an early episode) which gave him his nickname.

Other changes by the time the television series became the most well-known version included writing Duke Forrest out of the story entirely, and replacing such characters as Trapper John and Henry Blake with newly created characters.

Sequels

Hooker wrote the first sequel, M*A*S*H Goes to Maine, in 1972, covering the lives of the surgeons after they returned home from the war.

After the success of the M*A*S*H TV series, novels credited to Hooker and William E. Butterworth appeared, beginning with M*A*S*H Goes to Paris in 1974. Although credited to Hooker and Butterworth, they were ghostwritten entirely by Butterworth.

At this point, the novels largely left the original characters behind to focus on extraneous characters, mostly caricatures of public figures from the 1970s: for instance, operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti is parodied in the form of a singer named "Korsky-Rimsakov", and news anchor Dan Rather becomes the egotistical "Don Rhotten". The tone of the Butterworth novels is also markedly different from Hooker's original books, being much more comical and less realistic.

After the conclusion of the "Butterworth" series with 1977's M*A*S*H Goes to Montreal, Hooker wrote a final M*A*S*H" novel, M*A*S*H Mania, which jettisoned the plots of the intervening novels and picked up where M*A*S*H Goes to Maine left off.

Series

by Richard Hooker

1. MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors (1968)
2. M*A*S*H Goes to Maine (1972)
3. M*A*S*H Mania (1977)

by Richard Hooker and William E. Butterworth

1. M*A*S*H Goes to Paris (1974}
2. M*A*S*H Goes to New Orleans (1975)
3. M*A*S*H Goes to London (1975)
4. M*A*S*H Goes to Vienna (1976)
5. M*A*S*H Goes to San Francisco (1976)
6. M*A*S*H Goes to Morocco (1976)
7. M*A*S*H Goes to Miami (1976)
8. M*A*S*H Goes to Las Vegas (1976)
9. M*A*S*H Goes to Hollywood (1976)
10. M*A*S*H Goes to Texas (1977)
11. M*A*S*H Goes to Moscow (1977)
12. M*A*S*H Goes to Montreal (1977)

Tropes used in MASH (novel) include:

• Iconic Logo: The "Peace sign with woman's legs" from the film eventually migrated back to the later releases of the novel, and remained the logo for all its sequels, usually with variations specific to the individual books.
• Write Who You Know plus Composite Character: Many if not most of the characters in the novel were based on one or more real people. Hawkeye was Hornberger himself, and Radar was based on a clerk named Don Shaffer who served with him in Pyongyang, just to name two.