Customer Reviews

Warlock: A novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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?).

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.

NYRB remains one of the few companies I will buy books from directly instead of used online- and that's because they put out titles like this. Anyone looking for the core text of shows like Deadwood, Rome, even the Sopranos, need look no further than Oakley Hall's imaginative way with the character driven plot and then, lo and behold, you realize everyone's cribbing from Hall! Ok, of course not point by point, but this book is a masterpiece of interlaced action and rumination, except the rumination slowly goes off course, becomes too self assured, and ultimately reveals said ruminator's short comings when compared with what's happening on the ground and the actual facts of the mattter. And all of this intentionaly done! And done for no other purpose than to please and entertain the reader! Oakley Hall loves you and he loves America! Stick with this book. If it at first it seems too epistolary, have faith, it hardens, it becomes concrete and third person. And yes it is even stupidly moving, in the best tradition of the Americas, and it will make you want to be a better person, while at the same time revealing what a chump you are for even worrying about yourself, when your fellow man stands apart in need.

Special note, I have no idea what Robert Stone's intro really has to do with the book itself or really anything, but it sounds like something a Dog Soldiers character would have come up with so that's kind of neat.

Like Lonesome Dove and Deadwood, Warlock takes the western genre and refuses all the cliches, creating the possibility of actually understanding history in the terms of men, women, their frailties, and the power of the land. It goes beneath the obvious surfaces, reweaves actual history, and adds a level of writing expertise that makes it an American classic along the lines of what Hawthorne does to the Gothic in The Scarlet Letter. I couldn't put it down. In it, you see the roots of McMurtry's work and Deadwood, and even intersections with John Ford. For those who love the Western, you must read it. For those, like Pynchon, who want to groove on characters, sentences and a fictional world made vivid and compelling, check it out. A wonderful, satisfying and heartbreaking read.

Warlock is the first in a trilogy by author Oakley Hall, the second novel in the trilogy being Badlands, followed by Apaches. I was simply awed by the writing of Mr Hall, and the universal human truths he reminds the reader of. I can see that more than a few writers must have read Oakley Hall's novels, most especially Cormac Mccarthy. Warlock was published in 1958, and Badlands was at least 10 yrs later, followed by Apaches, which was at least another decade later. Mr Hall also does the fine Ambrose Bierce series of novels, and with a career spanning 5 decades, he is still underated and underapreciated by the general public. do yourself a favor and discover this most excellent writer.

Just this week marked the one year anniversary of Oakley Hall's death, a giant of American letters, albeit one whose reputation always burned far brighter among writers than it did among the general reading public. While the rerelease of "Warlock" Hall's masterpiece may not herald him getting the readership he deserves, perhaps it will be a step in the right direction.

With "Warlock" Hall succeeded where only a fine writer really can, taking a well trod genre and then stretching and bending it into something fresh and innovative. At a cursory glance, the characters and setting will feel familiar to most American readers, since the Western is so deeply imbedded in our culture. Yet "Warlock" goes beyond such conventions. The characters are rich and complex, John Gannon among the most memorable of any I've encountered in any novel, and with his mastery of prose, Hall's sentences and descriptions pour forth as if sung. Nor does "Warlock" operate only on the level of surface story telling, though it can be read as such, but that would be to miss so much. With a deceptively minimalist style, Hall plumbs the depths with a meditation on American archetypes, not simply in terms of characters, but likewise in terms of setting, and offers much food for thought regarding our cultures complicated relationship with violence.

None of which is to say Hall's "Warlock" is an easy read. It most certainly is not. Yet if a reader is willing to put in the time and attention, the reward returned is rich indeed. From the first epic description of the setting as Hall sweeps down onto the town of Warlock, to last perfectly rafted page, you will be glad for the effort.

The "horse opera"; an endearing but somehow pejorative term attached by critics and audiences alike to the spate of movies, television shows and, I suppose, Western-frontier themed books. Unfortunately, the cowboy book and movie have just about entered a period of total eclipse. A recent reprieve appeared on the Hollywood scene in the excellent, "3:10 to Yuma" and "True Grit" remakes, as well as a host of original films including "Shane", "The Searchers", "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", all of Clint Eastwood's movies and quite a few others. A few classic novels such as "The Oxbow Incident", A.B. Guthrie's "The Big Sky", Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" (I'm certain I've omitted a few) hang on and it is to these books that "Warlock" must be compared, as the literary pretensions of Oakley Hall suggest he is gunning for inclusion in the immortal pantheon. The book generally succeeds, but stylistic elements detract from the otherwise heroic effort.

Outside the "dime novel" circuit (maybe including Zane Gray, Louis Lamour and others of lesser note like Karl May), most Westerns use the frontier marshall, gunslinger, rancher or cowpoke as a symbol of the Knight Errant, "a man without armor in a savage land" to borrow a phrase from Richard Boone, the gunman for hire, the paladin of "Have Gun, Will Travel" fame. The dusty and violent frontier town represents the twisted aspect of the American soul and the usual goal is moral redemption through violence. Authors labor under the constraints imposed by the genre and often the films and novels fall flat when they overreach in the moral realm. Often, "less is more" both cinematically (e.g., the Sergio Leone films, John Huston's movies) and novelistically. Only a few Western novels have been unvarnished successes and I've listed my preferences in the first paragraph.

"Warlock" is written in three parts or perhaps better stated as three "episodes". Its formed from excerpts from a journal kept by a local shopkeeper and town notable, Henry Holmes Goodpasture, lengthy ruminations from the protagonists and author "voice overs". In fact, its structure suggests an extended screenplay. Major characters include Gannon (Deputy Sheriff, reprising the role of Festus of "Gunsmoke" fame); Jesse Marlow (the Miss Kitty stand-in); Kate (the sometimes prostitute and anguished love of Gannon) and her frequent foil (and past "romantic" interest), Tom Morgan (gambler and surrogate Bat Masterson); the bad man (McQuown and his gang); the Doc Charles Adams character ("Gunsmoke" again); the drunken Judge Roy Bean character and, of course, the nefarious and generally evil minded mine owners and their power-backers (starring the curiously named US Cavalry General, Peach). The mostly silent protagonist, Clay Blaisdell is the gunslinger-marshall and he sports twin gold-handled Colts, a trademark item like Lucas McCain's custom Winchester ("The Rifleman"). While Blaisdell seems to be modeled after Gary Cooper ("High Noon") Morgan and Clay play the roles of Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay (of Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities"): their follies a deux and tragic interactions (which seem almost fated to occur) are the center of the tale.

With that background, Hall's book features occasionally beautiful prose and sometimes magnificent plotting but it sometimes staggers under pretentious, contrived and lame prose which slows the story and constrains character development. The pompous Goodpasture is insightfully portrayed through his diary entries, as this depiction of the consequences of the gunfight at the Acme Corral suggests: "There is one wicked rumor that sets me in a rage. It has obviously sprung from another that was current here before the Acme Corral fight. This was that it was not the 'innocents' who robbed the stage at all, but Morgan in company with unnamed accomplices. Now the accomplices have been named. They were Morgan's lookout, Murch, and Blaisedell! It seems that the Cowboys became, somehow, advised of this, had definite proof, and came into Warlock to establish their innocence by broadcasting it. Consequently, they had to be shot down immediately by Blaisedell and Morgan, so that the truth would not be known." Rumor, gossip and shifting loyalties are a theme in this book and the quicksand of public opinion is nicely summarized in this paragraph. Goodpasture (and Hall) use this as a vehicle for more profound commentary on American society to great effect.

Hall's evocation of the Western frontier milieu is first-rate. Here is an example: " Curly rode in from the river on his way back to San Pablo from Bright's City, blowing on his mouth organ. The music was pleasant to his ears in the silence around him, and the sun was pleasant upon his back as the gelding Dick plodded over the bare brown ridges and down the grassy draws. The Dinosaurs towered to the southwest with the sun on their slopes like honey, and from the elevation of the ridges he could see the irregular line of cottonwoods marking the river's course toward Rattlesnake Canyon." So is this description of Peach's office: "It is a great room with westward-looking windows, corded with the mementos of his career: an umbrella stand in which are tattered banners, bullet-torn regimental colors, a pair of confederate standards; on the wall a large painting of the Battle of the Snake River Crossing, the teepees beyond them; on the wall also a varnished plaque on which was the scalp of some vanquished foe, with long, dusty braids; and there were quivers of arrows, moth-eaten war bonnets, Apache shields, war clubs, peace pipes, and framed photographs of Peach shaking hands with various chieftains. Upon his desk was the leaether-wrapped stick he often carries, which is supposed to be the sharft of an arrow that almost killed him. The whole room seems a dusty and unkempt museum, or perhaps it is only a facsimile of his mind-a vacant space, inhabited by heroic memories." The stick and the vacant space metaphor brilliantly foreshadow the confrontation between the miners, Blaisedell and Peach near the story's end.

So, what's not to like? Here is an example of the leaden prose that sometimes makes the book fall flat: "Why, then it is none of your business after all," she said. There was an edge of anger to her voice, and as she went on it was more and more angry , and filled with hate. "You look up to him, don't you?"...You should know how men look up to him, since you do yourself. Because he is so fine. He is quick on the draw-does that make him fine" He is a hired killer! Morgan hire him to kill a man and Fort James hired him to kill men, and Warlock has. It must be fine and brave and manly to be a hired killer, but you can't expect a woman to understand why men will worship him like a saint because he-" "Stop it!" Exactly. Certainly, there must be a more elegant method of depicting Clay than this pompous prose. If the aim is to parody the style of the time, Charles Portis does it better ("True Grit").

"Warlock" did not leave the indelible impression of novelty, literary brilliance and sheer strangeness accomplished by McCarthy in "Blood Meridian" nor does it have the slightly sardonic and humerous tone of Portis' novel. It does not convey the atmospherics of "The Big Sky", nor does it have quite the tension of "Oxbow". What it evokes instead is the sort of hollow feeling, a kind of a sorrow or nostalgia evoked in the reader for a time gone by in the West, much like when Joey called after Shane as he rode away into the hills in the 1953 film, "Shane, come home!" because you know he never will and there will probably not be too many more novels of the old West like this one.