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Title: Warlock (Western Literature Series) by Oakley M. Hall ISBN: 0874172683 Publisher: Univ of Nevada Pr Pub. Date: August, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33
Rating: 5
Summary: thoughts from a convert
Comment: Warlock was an enormous genre-stretch for me, someone who doesn't usually go in for Westerns at all, generally sticking to horror and science fiction on the popular end of the literature scale; and with ummm... modernist and po-mo novels and poetry on the non-popular end. In fact, it was my favorite author, Thomas Pynchon, mentioning "Warlock" as an influence and college favorite in his preface to Richard Farina's "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me," who led me to read it. That said, I have to add this is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding books I've read in a long time. In particular, I thought the plotting and pacing were superb; after finishing a section one is surprised by how many pages have gone by in description of--so it seems--such basic action, but the pages turn easily and quickly with no sense of padding. The writing itself is confident and understated, believably pitched, seemingly unmannered; and for me the dialogue had just the right balance between plain English and "dadburned" Westernisms, going lightly on the latter. The characters appear in sharp focus and maintain appropriate perspective. (Though an important subtext throughout concerns the pressures between real men and their deeds, and their images as heroes and characters of legends and fiction.) Underneath it you have the existential Western bass line a reviewer above mentions, a handful of pessimistic figures having to do with the nature of justice and human relationships, above which are rung 450+ pages of changes. The stark, hot, dusty, minimalist, claustrophobic setting almost reminds me of Beckett; and there's more than a bit of that author's permutational exhaustion at work here, as a handful of (static or only slowly evolving) characters interact like the rolls of dice from a gambler's hand.
Pynchon, in a tiny essay on the book, says that Warlock "...must face its own inescapable Horror: that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated back into the desert as easily as a corpse can."
Highly recommended.
Rating: 4
Summary: A subtly surreal Western.
Comment: Every reader of _Little Big Man_ should also read Oakley Hall's masterpiece of Western literature. Like the Berger novel, you don't have to be a fan of the Western genre to enjoy this book. In just under 500 words, Hall manages to establish, embellish, and then utterly demolish every essential cliche' of the Old West.
The movie is a travesty, barely touching upon the vast themes of the novel. I'd love to see this one redone by a more thoughtful director (Sayles? Altman?).
Rating: 4
Summary: A quirky, oddly intriguing novel, to be long remembered
Comment: Although you won't hear much talk about this book today, it was well thought of in its day, and they even made a movie of it with Henry Fonda. The movie is good, but this book is better. This is pretty much an existential western, our hero a man confronted with living up to a code which even he knows is phony and impossible to sustain, and those who love him trying to make it possible for someone, anyone, to live their life truly. Unfortunately, when the hero knows this is happening, conflict ensues. Well, it's a great book, a better western than The Ox-Bow Incident, with more action and a more provocative theme.
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Title: Monte Walsh by Jack Warner Schaefer ISBN: 0803291213 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout ISBN: 0425164195 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Blood Meridian, Or, the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy ISBN: 0679728759 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: May, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Bad Lands by Oakley M. Hall ISBN: 0449239667 Publisher: Fawcett Books Pub. Date: May, 1979 List Price(USD): $2.25 |
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Title: Apaches: A Novel by Oakley M. Hall ISBN: 0671506439 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: July, 1986 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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