After drawing that diagram of the M*A*S*H hospital building tonight, I’ve taken it into my head to just post some of my archived content that I never get to use any more now that alt.tv.mash is dead.
on M*A*S*H novels
There are two kinds of novels in the collection of M*A*S*H novels.
Richard Hooker alone (or, I've occasionally read, with a ghost writer) wrote M*A*S*H, M*A*S*H Goes to Maine, and M*A*S*H Mania. These are episodic tales of madcap medical mayhem with quasi-technical surgery scenes. M*A*S*H is set in the Korean War, and was published in the sixties. The other two are set in Hooker's beloved rural Maine as Hawkeye, Duke, Trapper John, and Spearchucker practice surgery together from the 50s through the mid-70s; Maine and Mania were published at either end of the 70s respectively. Mania is told in first person by a character the other characters address as “Hook” who also was a 4077th alumnus.
Richard Hooker and William E. Butterworth (a pseudonym for W.E.B. Griffin, or vice versa) co-wrote approximately a dozen novels published and set in the mid-70s. Some readers question whether Hooker was really involved in them but at least the first one has a quasi-technical surgery scene. They're all titled M*A*S*H Goes To [some exotic location, often overseas], and are all non-episodic farces featuring mistaken identities, intercontinental airliner chases, and contemporary public figures - or satires of them - made to look foolish. Hawkeye and Trapper John appear in each of them, and all feature reunions with past personnel or patients of the 4077th. Hot Lips (now Reverend Mother Emeritus Margaret Houlihan Wauchauf Wilson, R.N., Lt. Col., USA Ret., of the God Is Love In All Forms Christian Church, Inc.) and Father Mulcahy (now an archbishop and the Pope's chess and beer buddy) appear in almost all the novels. The world’s greatest opera singer, an insufferable egotist who unfortunately is pretty much correct and who hangs out with a portly Arab prince, and a Cajun swampdweller who discovered oil on his land are former 4077th patients who appear in most or all the novels. Henry Blake is a general and C.O. of Walter Reed Army Hospital. Radar is CEO of his own fast-food empire and marries the world’s greatest opera singer’s opera singer sister. The Painless Pole is a henpecked fat old dentist in Michigan. Frank Burns is still a small doctor in a small town.
Hooker didn't like the tv series because it offended his conservatism. Both the Hooker/Butterworth novels and the last Hooker novel took occasional jabs at the tv series, especially for killing off Henry Blake. On almost the final page of his final novel, M*A*S*H Mania, Hooker has General Blake pay a visit to Crabapple Cove on the date of the airing of Abyssinia, Henry.
