Warlock (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

by Oakley Hall (Author), Robert Stone (Introduction) "DEPUTY CANNING had been Warlock's hope..." (more)
Key Phrases: jail doorway, town patent, shell belt, Miss Jessie, Bright's City, General Peach (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Hall's brilliant, complex take on the American western, first published in 1958, more than stands the test of time. A newly hired gun-slinging lawman, Clay Blaisedell, tries to restore order to the mythical silver mining town of Warlock, Calif. His reputation for violence serves him well during the first robbery on his watch, but his quick trigger finger, and that of deputy John Gannon, also get him in trouble. A bizarre killing spree (covertly perpetrated by Blaisedell's best friend, a murky political figure named Tom Morgan) and an impending miners' strike (one that allows gang leader Abe McQuown to mount a charge against Blaisedell and Gannon) set up the inevitable final, blazing set of confrontations. Hall, who has written more than 20 novels, taps into the mythic essence of the Wild West with a potent combination of dense but fast-moving prose; a colorful cast of violent, corrupt characters; and a diabolical, ethically neutral worldview. His prosaic tracking of the town's violently shifting nodes of power is prescient and brings Cormac McCarthy to mind as the story unfolds. No account of the fictions of the American West can be complete without reconsidering this revelatory novel. (Dec. 7)
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From Library Journal
"Not since Walter Van Tillburg Clark's The Oxbow Incident has there been a novel of the West of as high a dramatic and literary quality as this one," said LJ's reviewer, adding that "Hall writes an individual, powerful prose, and obviously is thoroughly familiar with his milieu" (LJ 9/1/58). If Westerns circulate well in your library, lasso a copy of this one.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 488 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (November 21, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590171616
• ISBN-13: 978-1590171615
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #150,867 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thoughts from a convert, July 27, 2001

By	Jeffrey P. Stadelman (Williamsville, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Warlock (Paperback)

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A quirky, oddly intriguing novel, to be long remembered, April 13, 1999

By	Bryan Kamenetz (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Warlock (Western Literature Series) (Paperback)

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.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks Thomas Pynchon For Suggesting This Great Book, January 12, 2006

By	First Things First "captainreflection" (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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.