false 183199 3 Oakley Hall's legendary <i>Warlock</i> 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.<br><br>"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&#8212;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&#8212;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 <i>Warlock</i> 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." &#8212;Thomas Pynchon 177043 book 1980 Warlock (New York Review Books Classics) total:181|5:4|4:2|3:0|2:0|1:0| 181 788 389 48 5 3 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 19 10:36:44 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 12 18:50:54 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 3 false false Mon Sep 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 12 10:02:30 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 22 07:22:40 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 2 false false Tue May 13 23:23:26 -0700 2008 Wed May 14 21:56:04 -0700 2008 ___________________________________...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Mar 05 23:33:46 -0800 2007 Tue Jul 15 20:53:04 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jan 29 12:29:26 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 29 12:34:12 -0800 2008
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...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Aug 20 09:13:04 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 20 09:13:15 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Oct 18 15:42:26 -0700 2007 Thu Oct 04 16:05:59 -0700 2007 Thu Oct 18 15:42:08 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Oct 04 10:26:50 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 04 10:38:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 1 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed May 23 10:38:47 -0700 2007 Fri Jun 06 07:11:17 -0700 2008
Slow moving, weak prose best read by intellectual wanna-be's with too much time on their ha...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Oct 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 03 17:31:22 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 22 20:07:09 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Jun 06 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 06 22:08:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 06 22:16:59 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Nov 25 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 05 10:56:47 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 05 13:33:18 -0800 2008 1 more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jan 05 09:45:08 -0800 2009 Fri May 01 08:11:15 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Oct 08 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 05 15:55:11 -0700 2008 Sat Oct 11 15:14:37 -0700 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Jun 18 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue May 20 19:56:10 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 20 08:58:01 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Mar 27 11:06:23 -0700 2008 Mon May 04 15:20:56 -0700 2009
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 l...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Feb 26 07:27:00 -0800 2008 Fri Apr 25 09:38:25 -0700 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 09 16:54:35 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 09 17:14:26 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 18 10:47:23 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 18 10:55:41 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Fri Feb 13 19:20:45 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 20:09:20 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=183199