Oakley HallRecensioni

The Western includes 4 novels well know to older readers who remember reading these novels. Each represent the old western stories the writers had heard from older participants whether they were true or not. The truth didn't really matter, it was the storytelling that made it interesting to read. 3 of the stories were later made into films such as John Wayne's "The Searchers." Those who love entertaining tales of the old west will enjoy these.

Warlock is a microcosmic tale of man's obsession and struggle for power. The small, fictional South-Western town is the fulcrum on which the righteous and wicked vie to rule, the town's inhabitants perpetually caught in the crossfire.

Since Warlock is not deemed substantial enough to deserve its own county seat, and the nearest court being a day's ride away in Bright's City - the law of the land is somewhat hamstrung, amounting to a single jail in a ramshackle hut where the lengthening deputies' names scratched into the wall show the monotonous loss of life and cost of the power struggle.

In an attempt to take matters into their own hands, the inhabitants create a citizen's committee which decides to hire a cultish, golden gunned warden by the name of Clay Blaisedell, in order to gain their own standing in Warlock and kick back at the outlander band of troublemakers and their notorious leader, Abe McGowan.

The path of Oakley Hall's story is far from simple. Truth, morality and honour become convoluted and circumspect in the melting pot of power, righteousness a pinball ricocheting against the countless variables: wonts, desires and limitations of his dustbowl denizens.

“Is not the history of the world no more than a record of violence and death cut in stone? It is a terrible, lonely, loveless thing to know it, and see—as I realize now the doctor saw before me—that the only justification is in the attempt, not in the achievement, for there is no achievement; to know that each day may dawn fair or fairer than the last, and end as horribly wretched or more. Can those things that drive men to their ends be ever stilled, or will they only thrive and grow and yet more hideously clash one against the other so long as man himself is not stilled? Can I look out at these cold stars in this black sky and believe in my heart of hearts that it was this sky that hung over Bethlehem, and that a star such as these stars glittered there to raise men’s hearts to false hopes forever?”

Hall pens the complexity of life expertly and the reader, like his characters, become embroiled in and sullied by his prose. Warlock is a highly crafted and memorable tale that is well worth a read.

In his introduction, [author:Oakley Hall|44545] said that "The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.' Although Warlock is a fictional story about a fictional town in a fictional state, it offers up more truth and insight into the events that happened in Tombstone, Arizona, than did any of the hundreds of so-called Factual accounts of those historical events.

What we know about the fictional town of Warlock is that it is a silver mining town situated near the border with Mexico. Outside of town live what are called cowboys by friends and rustlers by just about everyone else. The distinction appears to be that some don’t consider crossing the border to round up cattle belonging to Mexican rancheros as rustling, illegal, or even disreputable. Problems arise when these high-spirited cowboys go into town, get a snoot full, and start to act up (i.e.: shoot the barber for giving a bad cut, or the piano player for missing a note). As Warlock is unincorporated, there is no official court or law enforcement, so the town’s businessmen take it upon themselves to form a Citizens’ Committee which proceeds to hire a Marshal (aka skilled gunman) to restore order. Add to this a mine with its usual mix of nasty mine manager and unhappy miners and you pretty much get the picture.

What separates Warlock from other westerns with similar plots is that Hall uses it to carefully examine the subject of justice in general, and frontier justice in particular. There are few black hats in this story and no white hats at all. The so-called good guys all have their demons and the bad guys, for the most part, have their softer sides, if you probe long enough.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Thomas Pynchon, in his review, wrote that It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock, I think, one of our best American novels.

Society, then and now, is a fragile thing. Per Pynchon, "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."

Not an awful book, but hate to see so much potential squandered. Choosing to pluck Ambrose Bierce, the famous American satirist, from the pages of history and present him with a mystery centered around the suffragette movement - the topic of many a satirical attack back in the day - would seem an inspired choice if you're setting out to write something clever and witty, but this delivers neither.

For one thing, the story isn't even narrated by Bierce, but by a fellow journalist, a character lacking in both perception and wit. He spends about a third of the novel narrating interactions that involve Bierce, which are the most entertaining parts of the book, but then he spends another third of the book engaged in investigations that have less to do with following clues than serendipity, and the final third courting his pretty Free Love suffragette cousin, which I think is intended as light-hearted fun but merely comes off as predatory and a bit icky.

Appreciated the authentic period detail, but the murder mystery plotline was sloppy and improbable, and I remain disappointed how little of Bierce's cleverness is on display here. Each chapter opens with an excerpt from Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, but I don't think the author stopped to consider the extent to which this might draw unwelcome attention to how much more ingenious the real Bierce was vs. the fictionalized version presented here.

Fiction seemingly based on Tombstone story and the Lincoln County war. The characters are all philosophers, and there is an unreal quality. Has atmosphere of 1958 McCarthy allegory, but I can't really find it in there. Has some sentences like: "But we will have him, or you, and rather him; and you [italicized:] will have him for you will not have law and order." Pulitzer prize finalist. Praised as hyperreal, magical, but not, as far as I can find, deconstructionist. Brief review by Thomas Pynchon at
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_gift.html. What I like about Westerns isn't here.

Westerns perhaps the central myth in U.S. culture, my acquaintance with the genre primarily from film (and to a lesser extent, television). I'm curious chiefly about what elements the written tale brings to the genre, how it compares to genre cousins crime and adventure tales.

SHANE - Jack Schaefer | read 2022-06

Shane as hero is both recognisably (post-war) idealist, and also seems to nod to the hardboiled noir cynicism of the loner shamus. It's as though Hammett's Continental Op had an epiphany and rejected his prior life on the streets, and rode out of town. Into town, then, rides Shane. Halfway through the story, it's implied he did horrible things in the past and isn't proud. But also, he isn't the drifter of Sergio Leone's Man With No Name, he's "purer" than that, even as he is shunned by some of the people he meets.

And those people who shun him are key: they are not the leading lights of society, they are the frontier equivalent of Chandler's or Hammett's mean street hoodlums.

The plot here is much more direct than the typical crime novel, the confrontation less strategic and telegraphed for both reader and characters, and distilled to physical skills: strength, speed, facility with a pistol. Shane's choices appear very limited: avoid confrontation, or confront openly. There is some attempt to skirt the final showdown, pressuring the gang individually, but even Shane doesn't seem to have confidence this will work. The shamus of crime novels undertakes a good deal more manoeuvering before any confrontation, and sets his adversaries against one another.

Marian's emasculation of her husband, Joe (with his ready consent and agreement!), seems a bit over the top, even for Schaefer's doe-eyed heroine. It works symbolically, but turns her and Joe into caricature. [287, 309]

Prompted a dip into several essays in The Western Reader.

//

To be read:
OX-BOW INCIDENT - Walter Van Tilburg Clark
SEARCHERS - Alan Le May
WARLOCK - Oakley Hall

This is the second Oakley Hall novel I've read (after Warlock), and I find that his books are so different from other historical novels that I can hardly review this one without comparing it with that one. As in Warlock, there is that uncanny sense of rightness to every word the characters speak. The slang is often unfamiliar but somehow seems perfect to the period—I can't understand every word, but then if I were dropped into the 1880s, I wouldn't be able to, either, would I? Once in a while I do understand something, and it's always convincing and period-appropriate. One character exclaims "I'd rather ride through Hell in a celluloid suit," which makes sense when you reflect that before gasoline was a everyday substance, celluloid was about the most flammable thing anybody ever heard of. And it's not just the slang and the idioms. The dialogue, sometimes together with a briefly described physical gesture, has a quietly skillful way of telling you exactly what a character is feeling without the narrator having to spell it out. All the characters, even the minor ones, are extremely vivid.

Unlike Warlock, this isn't an epic, despite its eccentric division into five "books," none of which is long enough or complete enough to qualify as a "book"—my only complaint about the novel. Instead, it's a tragedy in the Greek mode, with all the characters coming together at the end in a life-or-death struggle in which some beautiful things are lost forever. As Warlock's story was based approximately on the gunfight at the OK Corral, The Bad Lands retells the story of the Johnson County War, moving it from Wyoming in 1892 to the Dakotas in 1884. The "War" was a violent conflict between big cattlemen accustomed to unfenced access to a huge range, and farmers and smaller ranchers seeking their own fresh starts on shared federal lands. The novel's hero shares the early life experiences of Theodore Roosevelt, although he's unlike Roosevelt in other respects. The antihero is similarly based on the Marquis de Morès, a French aristocrat turned rancher, although again, his personality is different in many respects, and he's Scottish instead of French.

There is action enough to keep anybody interested, and it's a hell of a story. My own awareness that things would not end well—which is more or less announced in a two-page prologue from the point of view of the hero in old age—led me to a sense of dread as I neared the end, but I was overly sensitive. It's just that the tone of the book, amidst the sweat and the gunfights and the colorful figures, is similar to the bleak films of the 1970s (The Last Detail, The Conversation) just as Warlock, with its subtext of labor unrest and law versus vigilanteism, mirrored the common concerns of the 1950s. (The two books were written in those eras.) This book should and will satisfy anybody who's looking for a Western that's also great literature.

Slow building, but fantastic deep dive into "dysfunctional" relationship between Jack Ward and "V" (Vassilia) in 40s California. Told with different perspectives (a little frustrating as we don't see the end story for some interesting characters - Ben, among others) the story builds as a tale of pained lust, obsession, perverse jealousy of 2 characters that just can't seem to get away from each other (but probably should). I love how it raked over the coals of this jealous pain so carefully - a full picture.

Not really finished. only read 100 pages, but I am currently reading 5 books at the same time and something had to give. I will pick up again - but later.

It is 1891 in San Francisco. The Examiner is in competition with the Chronicle for largest circulation. The Examiner is owned by William Randolph Hearst and Ambrose Bierce is one of its most well-known writers. Tom Redmond is new to the news game but determined to make a name for himself, which he is doing due to a number of the ‘stunt journalism’ stories he is involved in. The story is told by Tom.

A story had been written, earlier, about the importing of young girls from China who are then put to work as slaves and prostitutes. Tom is doing a follow-up story and is introduced to Miss Lindley, a young woman who is involved in rescuing these girls and giving them better lives. Through Miss Lindley, to gets a real look at what is happening, and he also learns of pornography that goes on among the elite of the Sausalito yachting crowd. There may be a link between the two worlds.

When it looks that there could also be a connection between the Sausalito group and a blackmailing attempt on Hearst’s mistress, things get very interesting. With Bierce’s notoriety and connections, Tom finds himself investigating the thin threads that may link the Chinese girls’ situation and the Sausalito activities to the blackmail.

The writing is good and the pace is smooth and the dialogue is crisp and entertaining. Another great read back in time.

Warlock is a rare book: a novel whose Western setting couldn't be further from the drawing rooms of England, but what George Eliot did for Middlemarch, Hall does for Warlock— a New Mexico (maybe) mining town that owes a lot to Tombstone, Arizona. To find a modern work that might compare to this, you have to look to another medium: David Milch's cable series Deadwood — to which this book served as an obvious inspiration. But the book, as is usually the case, is richer.

To be sure, the book requires a bit of work for those (like me) whose attention span has been shortened and dulled by online media. There are many scenes that, although fully described, have a meaning that may not become clear until many pages later. Sometimes you read them and wonder what you're missing, when in truth, you haven't missed anything. On the other hand, sometimes a character says something that you don't quite get, and you're left to remember what that character happened to see or hear in a previous chapter in order to make sense of it. Adding to this, the idiom that many of the character speak, though authentic-seeming, doesn't always match the conventional movie-Western idiom we're used to. It adds to the sense of realism, but sometimes it leaves you scratching your head. What does it mean to crawfish? What exactly is the difference between a jack and a mucker? In short, reading Warlock requires a brain; it may be a Western, but it's no mere airport read.

I regret that this book is set in a (violent) man's world. Amidst a couple of dozen well drawn males, there are only two significant female characters: one weak and controlling, one strong but ineffectual. Even in a rough, frontier mining town, that half of the human race deserves more representation. That said, the major characters are deep and believable, even while they occupy stock roles: Johnny Gannon, the inwardly sensitive but outwardly stoic deputy, always underestimated; Clay Blaisedell, the Gary Cooper gunslinger who finds himself bending under the weight of the role of town Superman; Tom Morgan, the despicable killer-gambler who is nonetheless Blaisedell's only true friend, and many more.

In short, this book is to your typical Western as a Jane Austen novel is to Bridget Jones' Diary. Warlock presents an unsentimental mix of complex characters and lets their internal and external struggles throw light on issues of individual and social morality that are relevant in all places and eras, and never more so than today. Rich, long, and increasingly absorbing as you do the necessary work of paying attention, it's the first novel I've read in several years that made me want to return to the first page and start again.

Amazing. This extraordinary 1958 Western novel made me miss my subway stop 3 times in 2 weeks.

An epic story. The writing is dense, with meaning in every sentence. The story arc reminded me very much of "The Octopus" by Frank Norris.

old mining swindle leads to murder in early S.F.

Like many, I bought this book after reading that Thomas Pynchon was a big fan of it, and he was absolutely right about it. His capsule review on the back of my edition has an astute emphasis on the unique role that the western novel/film has come to play in the American psyche: mementoes of the second, true Founding, where the country was clawed from the earth by the miners and gunfighters and criminals unable or unwilling to fit in anywhere else, blowing thin soap bubbles of civilization that would all too often pop and leave only death behind. If you've ever seen The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance you'll find a lot that's familiar here, in particular the parts about the economics of the frontier and the desperate struggles for survival that consumed many formerly prosperous towns: Warlock, like so many other boomtowns, is more Tombstone than Phoenix. Where Warlock really captivated me was in its treatment of the classic black hat/white hat battle between the hired sheriff, Clay Blaisedell, and his opponent Abe McQuown. The book is clearly aiming on some level to be partly a discussion on why people need heroes (the book's version of the shootout at the OK Corral is particularly explicit about this), so after finishing it you can easily spend hours thinking about what it really means when some Reagan/Bush-type character puts on a cowboy hat and starts talking about Law and Order or Wanted Dead or Alive, and why they feel compelled to do it in the first place. But this western isn't boring in the slightest; its themes of labor struggles, amorality, and myth-busting flow smoothly from the action and the characters, all of whom have their own special relationship to the town and each other. Deputy Johnny Gannon is particularly interesting. Warlock is one of the best and deepest westerns I've ever read; the writers of Deadwood probably have a few well-read copies of it.

fewer doors than advertised

Morgan is a dish, don't @ me.

This review is only for "Shane" by Jack Schaeffer:

For a lot of legitimate reasons western novels get as little respect as romance novels, and, in fact, I’ve several times seen westerns characterized disparagingly as “romance novels for men.” But for a lot of equally legitimate reasons, westerns and romance novels, when they are approached in a serious manner by their authors, deserve the same respect granted to their supposedly more sophisticated cousins. Jack Schaefer’s 1949 novel Shane is most definitely a western that stands tall for good reason.

Shane certainly has its share of fistfights, and even includes a memorable gunfight between two of the fastest gunslingers passing through the state of Wyoming. But it also features a young couple trying to teach their son Bob (the novel’s narrator) right from wrong to provide him with a proper moral code he can live by for the rest of his life. It features a man so conflicted by his past that he struggles to keep himself under control even when violence is the only way to protect himself and those he loves. And it even explores one of the sweetest love-triangles I’ve ever encountered in a novel. Shane may not be the perfect western novel, but it comes as close as any to meeting that standard.

“He rode easily, relaxed in the saddle, leaning his weight lazily into the stirrups. Yet even in this easiness was a suggestion of tension. It was the easiness of a coiled spring, of a trap set.”

That’s the impression that Shane gave Bob when the two first set eyes on each other as Shane rides up to the Starrett farm. From that first moment, the boy senses something different about Shane, something very dangerous to anyone who might dare cross him for the wrong reason. Shane arrives just about the time that half-a-dozen small farmers are being coerced by a rich cattleman to walk away from the homesteads upon which they depend for a living. The man wants to drive large herds of cattle through the territory, but he cannot do that if he has to bypass all the fenced-off farms adjoining his own property. And after receiving a big government contract to supply as much beef as he can come up with, he will do whatever it takes to destroy the farms in his way.

Shane has to choose a side or ride away. He doesn’t ride away.

Soon enough, Shane becomes a symbol of resistance to both sides of the fence dispute, something that he both regrets and accepts:

“In some strange fashion the feeling was abroad that Shane was a marked man. Attention was on him as a sort of symbol. By taking him on father had accepted in a way a challenge from the big ranch across the river. What had happened to Morley had been a warning and father had deliberately answered it. The long unpleasantness was sharpened now after the summer lull. The issue in our valley was plain and would in time have to be pushed to a showdown. If Shane could be driven out, there would be a break in the homestead rank, a defeat going beyond the loss of a man into the realm of prestige and morale. It could be the crack in the dam that weakens the whole structure and finally less through the flood.”

Neither Shane, nor the Starretts, are willing to let that happen.

Bottom Line: Shane is filled with memorable characters, heroes and villains, alike. One of the most memorable is Marian Starrett, a woman strong enough to support her husband in his fight to save their livelihood from the man who wants to steal it from them. The complicated relationship between Joe Starrett, his wife Marian, and Shane is one that Schaefer handles perfectly in this, his debut novel. Shane is so good that I can only imagine the pressure that Schaefer must have felt for the rest of his life to match it.

The best Western I've ever read.

Pretty impossible to ever equal the greatness of Warlock, but The Bad Lands ends on a very strong note after slowly building up for most of the story.

Fantastic existential western. Deadwood without the Shakespearean vernacular, but certainly a novel read by Milch. So good.

Ambrose Bierce and his colleague/sidekick Tom Redmond are called on by their boss, publisher “Willie” Hearst, to look into the murder of a very popular San Francisco preacher. Said preacher was better known for his many, many female conquests than for his piety, which means there’s a long list of suspects, but Bierce hones in on one of the preacher’s other passions, that of the suffragettes, who happen to be planning a march in The City which many men oppose. Things only get more complicated when three young female orators known as “the Trey of Pearls,” come to town and Tom Redmond falls madly in love…. I think there are four or five books in this series, although I’ve only read three before this one; at any rate, the series order doesn’t seem to matter very much in this case. Many readers will be quite upset with the misogynistic and racist stereotyping in the series, but if you can keep in mind the fact that these attitudes were the norm in the period in which the series is set (this book is set in 1892), there’s a lot to enjoy here, not least the fact that each chapter is headed with a definition from Bierce’s real book, “The Devil’s Dictionary,” which are hilarious. I didn’t really buy into the solution to the crime, but the period setting and characters were well done; so, with the caveat about race and gender noted above, a mild recommendation from me.

Somewhat dated, but quite useful, even after having read several other books on novel writing. Still had fresh information to offer, and many classic books the author insists that writers must read (with writerly eyes, no doubt, as now I can no longer read just for fun...), and samples of his own synopsis and novel notes.
To Community,
William-James-MEOW Date: Sunday, July 15. 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era)

Somewhat dated, but quite useful, even after having read several other books on novel writing. Still had fresh information to offer, and many classic books the author insists that writers must read (with writerly eyes, no doubt, as now I can no longer read just for fun...), and samples of his own synopsis and novel notes.
To Community,
William-James-MEOW Date: Sunday, July 15. 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era)

This reads like an existential western, with real character development and angst abounding, but with no lack of dramatic showdowns. The film starring Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn is okay, but removes the entire subplot regarding the miners (the economy of Warlock is based on their livelihoods). Now to track down the second of Hall's trilogy: The Bad Lands.