Warlock (New York Review Books Classics)

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Oakley Hall's legendary Warlock revisits and reworks the traditional conventions of the Western to present a raw, funny, hypnotic, ultimately devastating picture of American unreality. First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction.

"Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880's is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the confrontation at the OK Corral takes on some of the dry purity of the Arthurian joust. Oakley Hall, in his very fine novel Warlock has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity. Wyatt Earp is transmogrified into a gunfighter named Blaisdell who . . . is summoned to the embattled town of Warlock by a committee of nervous citizens expressly to be a hero, but finds that he cannot, at last, live up to his image; that there is a flaw not only in him, but also, we feel, in the entire set of assumptions that have allowed the image to exist. . . . Before the agonized epic of Warlock is over with—the rebellion of the proto-Wobblies working in the mines, the struggling for political control of the area, the gunfighting, mob violence, the personal crises of those in power—the collective awareness that is 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. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall." —Thomas Pynchon

Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

thoughts from a convert July 28, 2001
26 out of 27 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars Thanks Thomas Pynchon For Suggesting This Great Book   January 13, 2006
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

I was googling for info on the interesting and enigmatic Thomas Pynchon recently, when I came to find out that this book I had never heard of: "Warlock" by Oakley Hall was one of his all-time favorites. As luck would have it, I found an e-bay auction about to expire with a first edition hardcover copy of the title and snapped it up as quickly as I could. The surprises which come from a sense of adventure in book choices are one of the great pleasures of my life. I have now read this book and can say in all honesty that it was one of the most powerfully told, beautifully rendered, exquisitely crafted books to land on my lap in my recent reading life. The fact that it's a "Western" put me off before I started, but that feeling flew out the saloon doors instantly upon meeting the book's intriguing cast of characters, people who are forced to face their fondest hopes and most terrifying fears in their struggle for justice and a peaceful future for the town of Warlock. My highest recommendation.

4 out of 5 stars A quirky, oddly intriguing novel, to be long remembered   April 13, 1999
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

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.

4 out of 5 stars A subtly surreal Western.   June 1, 1999
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

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?).

5 out of 5 stars maize September 16, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Page 408 of Warlock contains the following:

"Men are like corn growing. The sun burns them up and the rain washes them out and the winter freezes them, and the cavalry tramps them down, but somehow they keep growing. And none of it matters a damn so long as the whisky holds out."

I don't usually read books that talk about whisky and cavalry, but this one was really good. Although a lot of the writing is like the quote above, the plot is a fairly sophisticated examination of the practical complexities of human morality. At first glance, the two main characters seem to be from the wild west boilerplate, one good guy and one bad guy. But the good and the bad are close friends, and they actually identify with each other qutie a bit. There's also an ugly guy who turns out to be the closest thing the book has to a hero. In contrast to the standard cowboy-movie theme, the characters struggle with the difficulties of figuring out what it would even mean to be good, bad, or ugly in a place that has no real laws and exists permanently on the brink of extinction. Apparently the book was made into a movie, but I would bet that it didn't translate well.

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