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Jun 08, 2011

Zach rated it:

An existential western, I suppose? A story of humanity forcing some meaning into (or out of) their lives, contending all the while with the madness of crowds, political reputations, and expectations both internal and external. I can't really think of a way to explain it without sounding kind of hokey, but it doesn't come across that way in the book at all.

But anyway, it IS a western, and so you have the outlaws, and the new marshal and his friend the saloon owner, and the concerned tow More...

7 comments like (8 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2009

Jim rated it:

I’ve wanted to read this book since I spied Thomas Pynchon’s endorsement in his introduction to Richard Farina’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, in which he reveals that he and Farina were fond of aping the book’s peculiar dialect. “We set about getting others to read it too, and for a while had a micro-cult going," he writes. "Soon a number of us were talking in Warlock dialogue, a kind of thoughtful, stylized, Victorian Wild West diction.” Pynchon’s influences are encyclopa More...

10 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jul 07, 2011

James rated it:

Yes, there is a book (actually there have been several over the years) that I do not like. In this case, Warlock by Oakley Hall, is a book that I found uninteresting and repetitive in spite of being otherwise well written. Amazingly, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 when it was originally published. I say amazingly although I have never been able to determine the basis for the Pulitzer judges' selections and I've found the winners (those that I have read) uneven in quality an More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 14, 2008

Steve rated it:

Oakley Hall died this past Monday. A friend turned me on to his "Warlock" last year, a very good read. If you are even remotely a fan of HBO's "Deadwood", you'll love this book. Here's an article from the S.F. Chronicle about Hall's life:
__________________________________________
Oakley Hall, a prolific author and influential writing teacher best known for the novels "The Downhill Racers" and "Warlock" - and as a founder of the Squaw Valley Com More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 15, 2008

Ryan rated it:

I am hesitant to give this novel four stars, as it might warrant five upon a reread. For a plot-heavy book such as this one, I've learned to be a little reticent in doling out hyperbolic praise so soon after finishing it. Certainly, this should be read in tandem to Cormac McCarthy's (anti-)western novels, which I do give that perfect rating to.

But about the book. I'd heard about it from Richard Farina and Thomas Pynchon, who both championed Hall's work as a masterpiece of 20th centur More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2008

Eric rated it:

I have never been very interested in Westerns. I picked this one up from the library on a whim.

It is a historical fiction, based loosely on the town of Tombstone and the legend of Wyatt Earp. At the beginning of the book, the parallels are obvious. The famous gunfighter is hired to keep the peace in a town where the law means nothing. His gambler best friend comes along. Rowdy rustlers are the adversary. Etc.

The novel quickly deviates from the historical basis and cuts More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 17, 2011

Tyler rated it:

Much of the American Myth was born out of "The Wild West"- particularly the notion of justified violence. This myth seems too appeal to those who like to see the world in simple terms; Good against evil, right vs. wrong, the sheriff against the outlaw.In the genre of Western books and movies the best work, it seems to me, are the films and novels that either question or explode these myths outright. Warlock, written in 1958, is one of the earliest and best examples.

Marshal More...

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Jul 27, 2010

Tony rated it:

Hall, Oakley. WARLOCK. (1958). ****. This novel from author Hall was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize in 1958, and still holds up remarkably well, even though it is a genre novel whose plot we have read and seen over and over again. The simple story line is about a new lawman, Clay Blaisedell, hired by the Merchant’s Association of the town of Warlock, to bring law and order back to the townspeople. Warlock is a mythical California border town whose main industry is silver mining, but wit More...

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Aug 20, 2009

jordan rated it:

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 More...

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Oct 18, 2007

Alex rated it:

An interesting portrait of the Wild West, this book places classic Tombstone-esque drama in a wider context of order, chaos, violence, and justice. Ostensibly composed in three major plot arcs, it starts off like any other Western, and gradually reveals more and more of a burgeoning American ethos of blood and fire. By the end, I realized I was reading a piece of high-end moral drama, and the trappings of the genre had fallen almost entirely by the way-side. Yee-haw.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 01, 2010

Steve marked it as to-read

In Holiday (vol. 38, #6, Dec. 1965, pp. 164-5) Thomas Pynchon writes:

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 tran More...

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Aug 30, 2010

Jim rated it:

I did not know what to expect when I picked up Warlock by Oakley Hall. Suffice it to say that here was an incredibly told tale of the Old West, its gunmen, cowboys, miners, lawmen, whores, even the U.S. Cavalry and, farther off, the Indians. Instead of paying lip service to the legend of the West, Hall sees the endless violence as leading to a kind of speeded-up karma working itself out, leading to both madness, glory, and dissolution.

As storekeeper Henry Holmes Goodpasture writes am More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 13, 2009

Steve rated it:

A great novel, and from an American Lit. point of view, it should be an important one, since it's clearly one of the best Post WW 2 novels I've read. The influence on the HBO series, Deadwood, is pretty obvious. I may write some more later.

*Update. Watched the movie yesterday, just to see how badly it would be screwed up. To my surprise, it didn't fall apart until about an hour and half in. Great cast, with Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn and Richard Widmark. Up until the point I menti More...

3 comments like

May 22, 2011

wally rated it:

Oakley Hall, born 1920, Marine Corps WWII Pacific, 1st book, Murder City in 1949.
Warlock, copyright 1958,divided into 3 “Books”, further divided into chapters 1-68, w/the Afterword this version is 471 pages long.
Introduction by Robert Stone.

A portion of Oakley Hall's note at the start: "the fabric of the story, too, is made up of actual events interwoven w/invented ones; by combining what did happen w/what might have happened, I have tried to show what should have happe More...

0 comments like

Oct 04, 2009

Ben rated it:

every now and then while i was reading this, i'd stop and close it and sort of look at it in my hands, first front cover, then back, then top and bottom, then side and spine, trying to figure out how so many people, places, and events could be held inside it. this book is like a world. a really small world, in that it all takes place within one tiny western frontier town, but by the time it ends it's like you know every inch of the place and every corner of every townsperson's soul and understan More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 19, 2010

Tyler rated it:

It's interesting, though not surprising, that many reader reviews of "Warlock" start with something along the lines of: "I don't normally read Westerns." While it is true that the novel deploys many generic Western tropes, "Warlock" is not genre fiction. Rather, as Pynchon points out, it is a masterpiece in which Hall uses the component pieces of the Western to tell the complicated history of American myth production. Part of that history is a coming to terms with More...

0 comments like

Jun 06, 2008

BeerDiablo rated it:

Unfortunately, reading this book well over 30 years past its publishing has dated it severely. Perhaps this is in part due to it influencing writers that would far outstrip this book on all facets.

Slow moving, weak prose best read by intellectual wanna-be's with too much time on their hands.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 31, 2010

thegift rated it:

the basic material of the western is all here: gunfights and -fighters, good and bad women, cowboys, miners, politicians, local businessmen, boss criminals, blood: somehow this all works to great effect. i tried to figure out the mythic characters and actions, renamed, for the first half, then just got swept up in this elegy for the west that was. deliberate myth-making, shaded characters not all evil and all good, gender conflicts, expectations to be a man, rewriting everything from your part More...

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Oct 22, 2009

Becky rated it:

This novel manages to be many things at once: western shoot-'em-up, existential question, philosophical treatise. Warlock is a very dense read, a world you inhabit for so long that the novel's questions about law, life, pride, love, hope and power are forced to become your own. I found my emotions as swept up as those of the townspeople, and am especially impressed with how Hall manages to show the two sides of every major character's moral coin, sometimes at the same time (except Jack Cade--C More...

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Jun 08, 2010

Mark rated it:

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 b More...

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Jun 06, 2009

Thorne rated it:

So I really read this out of curiosity, primarily because it is purported to be one of Pynchon's favorite books. It's one of only a half-dozen westerns I've ever finished, so I don't have much basis of comparison. But it's very clean, satisfying writing. Lots of action, and easy to get sucked in. It also posits a fun hypothetical -- what if the early socialist movement overlapped with the US conquest of the wild west? (How would the Doc Hollidays of history have navigated allegiances betwee More...

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Dec 05, 2008

Ryan rated it:

maybe the best novel of the Western era I've ever read, aside from Little Big Man (which I now intend to re-read). similar in ways to Dune with the political machinations and the "plans within plans within plans;" similiar to the movie Rashoman in that you get conflicting viewpoints of the same event and are often left to sort it out for yourself based on your opinions of the characters. As such, a very involving and almost interactive book. I'm already thinking about re-reading thi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 18, 2011

Laura rated it:

This novel is masterful. I am left stunned at the epic that is the small frontier town of Warlock. And like all very good books, I feel that I need to re-read it in order to understand its depth. Thomas Pynchon wrote that "it is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes 'Warlock' one of our best American novels," and I do agree. The reader is privy to the hearts and minds of a number of characters (dim-minded miners, a violent cripple, saloon-owners, a dry-goods merchant, an agoni More...

11 comments like

Jan 05, 2012

M.L. rated it:

1958. The 1881 shootout at the OK Corral.

I once lived in Arizona. I visited Tombstone and walked those mythic steps made memorable thanks to TV, movies, the generally accepted version of the settlement of the Wild West. Wyatt Earp. The tubercular Doc. The Clanton Gang.

As always, the physical reality of Tombstone and the Corral was a million times smaller than the version modeled on my imagination. Like Mount Rushmore: a miniature compared to what you expect.

More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2009

tim rated it:

Maybe I wasn't entirely in the mood for an existential moral western, or maybe I just don't know enough about frontier history and ensuing mythologies to completely appreciate the subtleties of reference and jumping-off framework for the larger themes at play here, but nonetheless, this is a damn fine book.

The plot is as convoluted and unguessable as good vintage noir. And almost every character is constantly shown from conflicting sides, like a Janus coin flipping in the hot, dry, More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

May 01, 2009

Alex rated it:

Oakley Hall deserves a place among the classic American authors for his exploration of the Western archetypes. The characters in Warlock become increasingly aware of the roles they are playing: gunfighter and citizen, rustler and deputy, miner and proprietor, doctor and rabble-rouser, nurse and whore. However, this awareness does not bring any freedom from the constraints of the roles; paradoxically, the realization of their role in some conflict leads the characters to limit their choices and More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 11, 2008

Joseph rated it:

Despite a bit of a wandering plot, this is a fun Western with memorable characters, a great sense of place, and overall an entertaining story. It's quite obvious that both the film Tombstone and the television series Deadwood pilfered from this book; whenever I read about Tom Morgan, I thought of Al Swearengen (minus all the "motherfuckers" and "cocksuckers"). The book could probably have done with some better editing. While I wouldn't say my interest was lost, the middle of More...

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May 04, 2009

dead letter office rated it:

i don't read many westerns.

i read this after reading (probably somewhere unreliable) that this was thomas pynchon's favorite book.

this book is most likely better than i think it was. i read it going on four years ago, and it keeps growing in my mind. it's in there circling like a planet and every time it comes around it's bigger and closer than it was before.

on top of all it otherwise is, this book was the genesis of my recurring dream involving a gunfight. More...

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Jul 12, 2011

Isaac rated it:

Warlock is a story about the growth of law and order out of relative chaos in a town bearing that name in some southwestern territory on the American frontier in the 1890's. Perhaps it's Tombstone, Arizona, as Thomas Pynchon opines in his blurb on the rear cover, referring to Oakley Hall's use of the fight at the OK Corral for inspiration, renaming his event, "Fight at the Acme Corral".

I loved "Warlock". It's one of those stories that weaves philosophical pondering More...

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Jul 15, 2011

JD rated it:

An amazing deconstruction of the Western. This could have easily ended after the first book, but Hall takes it beyond where the typical Western would've left us and explores the truth behind real characters living in a real, very dangerous, place. There are no stereotypes here, only people in a town, living in a violent world where there are no heroes and villains, but people who do good things and people who do bad things, and even then it's up for debate. A classic Western.

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