Herman Raucher

Herman Raucher was an American screenwriter and novelist best known for stories that combined comedy, romance, memory, and the unease of postwar life. There Should Have Been Castles, published in 1978, follows writer Ben Webber through love, career frustration, and recollections of military service, using elements drawn from Raucher’s own early experiences. The novel’s romantic-comedy surface is complicated by disappointment and by the gap between the grand narratives people imagine and the lives they actually manage to build. Raucher also wrote the screenplay and novelization of Summer of ’42, whose success established him widely, and his other books include A Glimpse of Tiger and Maynard’s House. His screen credits span film and television, but prose gave him room for a more discursive, autobiographical voice. There Should Have Been Castles shows that voice at work, moving between wit and regret while examining how a writer turns private history into material without fully escaping it.