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Warlock

(Legends West #1)

Oakley Hall,

Robert Stone (Introduction)

4.28 · Rating details · 2,718 ratings · 342 reviews

Oakley Hall's legendary Warlock 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 America Oakley Hall's legendary Warlock 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.

"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--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--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 Warlock 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." --Thomas Pynchon ...more

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Paperback, 471 pages

Published November 21st 2005 by New York Review of Books (first published 1958)

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· 2,718 ratings · 342 reviews

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Dec 25, 2012 Madeleine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, blogophilia, 2013

The venerable Thomas Pynchon wrote a laudatory back-cover blurb for Warlock, a book that he indirectly directed me to via his introduction to Richard Fariña's Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me, wherein he details its prominent role in the pair's Cornell days and how their own whole sick crew adopted the vernacular of the beleaguered characters making their ways through this novel. I'm not even going to pretend like I have any business treading terrain already traversed and thoroughly owne The venerable Thomas Pynchon wrote a laudatory back-cover blurb for Warlock, a book that he indirectly directed me to via his introduction to Richard Fariña's Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me, wherein he details its prominent role in the pair's Cornell days and how their own whole sick crew adopted the vernacular of the beleaguered characters making their ways through this novel. I'm not even going to pretend like I have any business treading terrain already traversed and thoroughly owned by T. Ruggs but I was so blown away by this tome that I can't pass up an opportunity to add my surprised (and, at the time of this review's final revision process, somewhere in the hazy middle ground between wine-soaked and week-day hungover) admiration to the mix.

The Western is a genre that I find as dry and dusty as the landscape its tales so often play out against. I don't much care for the setting -- both in the geographic sense and the era itself -- nor do I have any pressing need to watch gun-battle climax after gun-battle climax (the heavy-handedness of such symbolism not even withstanding). While there are a few notable exceptions (I did love High Noon, which I only watched for the sake of a grade, as well as the veritable classic that is Back to the Future III), they are but a scant few oases in the vast wasteland of a genre that has offered little to hold my interest.

So even with Pynchon's literary ardor in mind, my interest in this book took a nosedive when I realized that it was a Western. Visions of whiskey-soaked tempers, petulant saloon girls and gun-totin' outlaws passed across my judgmental regard with the enthusiastic reception of a tumbleweed rolling along an abandoned mining town's long-forgotten roads.

Thankfully, 2013 is turning out to be the year of misguided misgivings, as various volumes have shattered my lukewarm (if that) expectations; Warlock proved to be no exception. It turned so many stale conventions on their heads that I had no choice but to take notice of how masterfully it asserted its claim on a bygone and often cliched era. The early-1880's peculiar zeitgeist became an effective vehicle for illustrating how times may have changed but the nature of man knows no chronological boundaries.

Pretty early in the book (like, the second page) comes a roll call of sorts introducing the cowboy outlaws comprising the San Pablo gang who are regarded, to varying degrees, as a united threat to the delicately balanced society of Warlock, a town that's a sort of reimagined Tombstone. But close on its heels (like, the next sentence) is the admission that "[t]here is no unanimity of opinion even now amongst those of us who believe them at least to be a regrettable element," allowing that only one of nearly a dozen named men is truly a menace to humanity and the rest are at the mercy of temperament, opinion and sobriety (or the lack thereof). The duality of the human animal is the most dominant force of this novel: There is no such thing as a "good" or "bad" man, just circumstances that bring out one side more than the other. Nary a character escapes a full examination of his or her integrity's strength, either through the (admittedly biased) eyes of others or by betraying the full range of their personalities in reaction to a host of dire situations, and it allows for Warlock to become populated by a hot-blooded, fully realized cast, each of whom has a specific role to serve in a unique capacity.

Because this book is also about perception and loyalty and how easily those two seemingly cut-and-dry ideals can be skewed according to circumstance and motivation, the reader is called to question even the most well-meaning of characters who let themselves fall victim to the simple human failing of being swayed by either public opinion or the limited view of a much bigger picture. One of the town's shopkeepers, for example, keeps a journal that allows for the novel's lone first-person perspective and, despite his determination to be as objective as possible, finds himself regarding other characters' well-intentioned actions with an increasing, though reluctant, distaste because he simply doesn't know the full story: The reader knows him to be a rational man and is forced to reconcile his mistakenly waning respect for admirable characters when the shopkeeper has proven himself to be an otherwise reasonable voice. It is no fault of his own, as he is operating with insight to only a small portion of a much more complicated story, but it forces the reader to consider just how difficult it is to remain untainted by faulty information and the powerful lure of partiality.

The result of all these dueling forces, both internal and external, is that heroes of this book aren't regarded by the lowly populous as heroes for very long, as the very human compulsion to aggrandize an extraordinary man to superhuman proportions is only rivaled in its desperate intensity by the cynical satisfaction of witnessing a revered figure plummet just as swiftly to reviled depths. Not that a modern-day audience can draw any contemporary parallels to such flagrant displays of schadenfreude, eh? ...more

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May 19, 2019 Spencer Orey rated it really liked it

Shelves: the-bleak-west

Great character-driven drama with perfect use of wild west language creates a literary western that takes the time to break apart the grand mythology of the wild west. We're left with a place of unclear laws and people struggling to survive and cheat each other and find meaningful paths through a mostly desolate life.

My favorite scene had nothing to do with the central gunslinger dramas. One example: a law enforcement character gets invited to dinner by the mysterious new woman who moves to town ...more

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Jun 03, 2016 Matthew Quann rated it really liked it

Shelves: nyrb-classics

YEE-HAW, IT'S A LITERARY WESTERN

Warlock was as fine a book as any to read on vacation in the city in which I grew up. Within this daunting tome are the tensions between good and evil, right and wrong, the law and the lawless. It was appropriate to return to this subject matter in the place in which I first came to terms with my own understanding of justice, right, and wrong.

The other reason it is appropriate is that this book felt a lot like school, both the good and the bad.

The Good

Back in hig ...more

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Jul 16, 2012 David rated it really liked it

Shelves: nyrb

Feeling barfy and delirious this past weekend finally gave me the necessary downtime to finish this book—which isn't meant to imply that Warlock is a chore to read, but only that I had developed a sudden distaste for reading itself and preferred to while away my hours watching bad television with my hand down my pants. (By the way, from the mouthbreathing vantage of my sofa, all of you nerds mooning over Bolaño and Pynchon look like Urkel.) Anyway, even though this western novel has a lot of ins ...more

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Aug 12, 2009 Zach rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

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 townfolk, and 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 townfolk, and a lot of showdowns. Only this book is concerned with the source of Order and Right (Men are wild, not wicked, said Rousseau, who knew not Warlock) and so, as it turns out, some people are more satisfied with the chief outlaw keeping order among his men than with the new marshal imposing the law. Only the marshal isn't actually the Law-he has been hired by the Citizens' Committee of shop-owners. The Law, such as it is in the unincorporated West (Possibly she came, too, because this is the Frontier, which term I understand is a romantic one to those not there residing), rests with a string of deputies, the last of whom is determined to make something honorable of the position. Only he used to ride with the outlaws, so no one in town trusts him. Meanwhile there's also a mining strike (again, who maintains Order, the workers or the company?), a romantic interest for the marshal who is more concerned with his ideal than with the man himself, businessmen seeking a town charter, an insane cavalry general, a drunken judge who occasionally presents the moral foundations of the book, and a woman with a mysterious past involving the marshal and the saloon owner (a strong female character from a western written more than 50 years ago!).

All of this in deceptively simple prose that manages to be ornate without stooping to floridity. Incredible.

Ah, the pure shine of a few moments of heroism, high courage and derring-do! In its light we genuflect before the Hero, we bask in the warmth of his Deeds, we tout him, shout his praises, deify him, and, in short, make of him what no mortal man could ever be. We are a race of tradition-lovers in a new land, of king-reverers in a Republic, of hero-worshipers in a society of mundane get-and-spend. It is a Country and a Time where any bank clerk or common laborer can become a famous outlaw, where an outlaw can in a very short time be sainted in song and story into a Robin Hood, where a Frontier Model Excalibur can be drawn from the block at any gunshop for twenty dollars.

Yet it is only one side of us, and we are cynical and envious too. As one half of our nature seeks to create heroes to worship, the other must ceaselessly attempt to cast them down and discover evidence of feet of clay, in order to label them as mere lucky fellows, or as villains-were-the-facts-but-known, and the eminent and great are ground between the millstones of envy, and reduced again to common size. ...more

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Nov 22, 2013 Brian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Brian by: Thomas Pynchon

Is not the history of the world no more than a record of violence and death cut in stone?

There's a lot to love in Warlock for fans of American westward expansion, gritty Manifest Destiny narratives with well-drawn morally ambiguous characters. At every turn in the story Hall reminds the reader that frontier life was forever covered in blood and dust, and when humanity works hard to create a hero out of a human, the best that can happen is that person will fail miserably. Hall writes the story sh ...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Drew rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recommended-by-other-authors

If you haven't already read Pynchon's encyclopedic blurb above, let me direct your attention to it right now.

Done? Well, let me assure you that every bold claim Pynchon makes about this book is true. And the beauty of it is that Warlock may be a novel of ideas, as he argues, but it is not primarily that. It's primarily a thinking man's Western, a history of authority, a gritty tale of revenge and strife. If that sounds roughly the same, there's a good reason for that: that all of the preaching o ...more

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Nov 21, 2015 Tony rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nyrb-classics, top-ten-2016, u-s-lit

. . . heat-hazed, blurred out of focus. That's Warlock. . . . a place where passions in all things run high, and men go armed as they wear hats against the sun, and where a large proportion of the inhabitants is of the ignorant and unwashed class, if not actual renegades from the law elsewhere. It's a place where the dust itself is a character. Where a mountain range looms off a ways, called The Dinosaurs, a constant presence. As if human struggle and the violence that men bear within them ever ...more

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Sep 04, 2009 tim rated it really liked it

Recommended to tim by: Jonathan Davis

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, dusty desert ...more

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Jun 19, 2018 Dax rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, 4-stars, nyrb-classics

Impressive for a number of reasons. "Warlock" is an old school shootout western with a rich cast of characters. Despite the significant amount of gunfire that takes place, this is a character driven novel. As Pynchon noted in his fantastic review, Hall's novel illustrates the fragility of human society, and the quality of Hall's writing and the depth of his characters separate this novel from your standard western fare. "Warlock" is deserving of its inclusion as a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

I admit ...more

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Jul 15, 2020 Jim rated it really liked it

Shelves: novels, 20th-century, author-north-american, nyrb, read-in-2020

I'm not sure how to define this book... a thinking man's western, with a 1950's psychodrama edge... that's the best I can come up with

Okay, so this is a re-imaging of the events of the Gunfight at the OK Corral in 19th century Tombstone, Arizona - in this case, renamed "Warlock". The characters apparently bear some relation to historical people, but I'm not inclined to research this topic.

So, we have a mining town, cattle-rustling cowboys out in the valley, paper cutout whores in a never-really- ...more

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Oct 04, 2009 Ben Loory rated it it was amazing

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

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Jan 19, 2009 Jim rated it it was amazing

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 encyclopaedic but t 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 encyclopaedic but this book seemed like an odd choice: a retelling of the story of Wyatt Earp versus the Clanton Gang in Tombstone, Arizona. This didn’t resonate with my reading of Pynchon at all – until Against the Day came out.

I finally tucked into Warlock this year and finished it last night. It’s an amazing work of fiction. The novel is set in Warlock but you can’t really call it a town – there’s no sheriff and every deputy who has pinned a star to his chest has either been run off or killed. It’s a desolate, lawless outpost of humanity that wouldn’t exist at all if it wasn’t for the nearby mines. Every so often cattle rustlers led by a renegade named McQuown ride up from San Pablo six hours away to raise hell. When the barber is killed the citizens decide enough is enough and send for a hired gun – Clay Blaisedell – to serve as Marshall.

As good as advertised with a pair of gold handled pistols given to him by a writer of cheap Western novelettes, Blaisedell restores order to Warlock, but it’s a species of order that is compromised by Blaisedell’s ruthlessly short-tempered companion, Tom Morgan, and complicated by Warlock’s newest deputy, John Gannon, a former member of the McQuown Gang.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The cast of characters in what Pynchon refers to in the jacket copy as an “agonized epic” is amazing: a one-legged alcoholic judge, a laudanum-taking doctor, a bad guy (a composite of Doc Holliday and Morgan Earp, Wyatt’s brother) who is a genuine sociopath, whores learning new tricks, anarchic miners, ruthless rustlers, lynch mobs out for rope justice, Apaches on the warpath, a piano player cut down in his prime, and an insane Cavalry officer who keeps the shaft of an arrow he was shot with in an leather case.

Hall’s masterstroke is the presentation of Blaisedell and Gannon: men who are neither good nor evil, but whose behavior vacillates between the two. These characters are incredibly complex, which puts Warlock head and shoulders above horse operas where the sheriff wears white and the bad guys always end up on Boot Hill. William S. Burroughs, no stranger to oaters, writes: “Some’s bastards, some’s ain’t. That’s the score.” Not in Warlock. This multiplicity of morals reflects the strange career of Wyatt Earp who was a champion to some and a villain to others, depending on where he was and when you happened to meet him. In other words, a true American hero.

This brings me back to Pynchon; I’d like to point out some of the aspects of Warlock that might have influenced him:

1) CAST OF THOUSANDS: Warlock, we’re told, is sparsely populated, but in the course of the novel it feels like we meet every blessed citizen. When we’re in the company of McQuown’s gang or a congregation of striking miners, everyone is listed by name. Pynchon and Hall were both in the military and servicemen turned writers understand the lie of an intimate cast of characters who are together from boot camp until they die in each other's arms on the field of battle. The real world, especially the military, doesn’t work that way. The bane of your existence during 90 days of basic training may never be seen or heard from again and the guy you served with in Japan might suddenly pop up in San Diego ten years down the road. Compression is essential in movies, which get their structure from the stage, but Pynchon sees no need for compressing characters in his sprawling novels and he seems to have gotten that from Hall. In Warlock’s defense you need a big cast when dozens get planted in the ground.

2) ON-THE-NOSE NAMES: From V’s Benny Profane to Against the Day’s Mia Culpepper (I didn’t catch the pun until I started listening to the audio book), Pynchon has never been afraid to saddle his characters with preposterous names. Some =times the names are clues, other times ciphers, and much of the time they are jokes – both of the practical and private variety. The first person we meet in Warlock is Henry Holmes Goodpasture, who minds the general store and serves as Warlock’s moral compass. We meet men with colorful names like Curley Burne, Peter Bacon, Pike Skinner, and so forth. And can there be any doubt that the affections of a lady less than virtuous named Kate Dollar will come at a steep price?

3) “WARLOCK TALK”: Here’s a sample of the “thoughtful, stylized, Victorian Wild West diction” that fired Pynchon’s imagination. “I am not going to see him choused and badgered and false-sworn and yawped at fit to puke by a one-legged old son of a bitch like you!” Warlock is full of talk of “burned up peace officers” and “San Pablo hardcases.” I never thought of Pynchon as a writer who engaged in much regional (or temporal) vernacular, but it’s all over Against the Day. Again, this could be the result of listening to the audio book version, but the frequency and ease with which he slips into “thoughtful, stylized, Victorian Wild West” diction is startling. Pynchon pulls it all off because he uses dialogue sparingly and his narrators frequently end up sounding like Goodpasture:

“The earth is an ugly place, senseless, brutal, cruel, and ruthlessly bent only upon the destruction of men’s souls. The God of the Old Testament rules a world not worth His trouble, and He is more violent, more jealous, more terrible with the years. We are only those poor, bare, forked animals Lear saw upon this dismal heath, in pursuit of death, pursued by death.”

Sounds downright Pynchonese, doesn’t it? It’s almost as if Hall is channeling Pynchon’s Puritan forebears. I’m probably guilty of drinking the Kool-Aid of the micro-cult; nevertheless, Warlock is a fascinating read, if a bit on the long side, but worthy of your attention all the same.
...more

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Aug 16, 2020 Stewart Mitchell rated it really liked it

I can’t tell if this is a novel or a cheap hotel, because this thing is the BEST WESTERN.

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Mar 18, 2020 Malum rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, western

A true anti-Western. This is not a romanticized vision of the Wild West, where gunslingers are seen as noble wandering samurai and everyone cheers when he guns down the bad guy. Here, morality is very gray and when people die--even main characters--it is with very little fanfare (sometimes even happening off screen). This is a story about people who think violence will solve their problems, but end up finding out that all it does is stain their souls.

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Apr 16, 2013 Jim rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, western

Nicely written but a bit drawn out; I think the book could have been 50 pages shorter and possibly been more effective. I wouldn't give Mr Hall full points for originality, however - his gunfight at the Acme corral is practically a carbon copy of the OK Corral shootout, right down to what were reported to be direct quotes from the principals involved in the latter gunfight. The Rattlesnake Canyon massacres were obviously derived from the historical Skeleton Canyon and Guadalupe Canyon massacres. ...more

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Jun 19, 2014 Howard rated it it was amazing

Shelves: american-west, fiction, western-fiction, american-history, arizona, writer-deserves-to-be-remembered, earps

Reread

...more

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May 13, 2008 Steve rated it really liked 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 Community of Writers - died Monday night in Nevada City. ...more

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Jun 04, 2011 M.L. Rudolph rated it it was amazing

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.

Oakley Hall takes that mythic wester ...more

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May 23, 2007 BeerDiablo rated it did not like it

Shelves: abandonned

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. ...more

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May 16, 2012 Carl R. rated it it was amazing

I don’t know what took me so long to get around to this (probably) best-known of Oakley Hall’s works. Maybe the title put me off because I thought I might be getting into an Ann Rice world of vampires. Not a worry. Writer Working readers know my admiration for Hall (see my obit piece, May 5, 2008), and Warlock has only increased the admiration.

The premise is pretty simple--there’s a gunfight more or less modeled on the Tombstone Arizona event involving Wyatt Earp. But Hall is not writing a simp I don’t know what took me so long to get around to this (probably) best-known of Oakley Hall’s works. Maybe the title put me off because I thought I might be getting into an Ann Rice world of vampires. Not a worry. Writer Working readers know my admiration for Hall (see my obit piece, May 5, 2008), and Warlock has only increased the admiration.

The premise is pretty simple--there’s a gunfight more or less modeled on the Tombstone Arizona event involving Wyatt Earp. But Hall is not writing a simple historical novel. He chooses the incident at his Acme Corral in a town named after a man they called a witch but who self-corrected to change the word to Warlock. So you have a a historical event that’s become an American myth peopled by legendary figures like the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday, which Oakley turns into a powerful story about mythmaking, justice, the fragility of society. Along the way, you get involved with the battle between unions and corporations as well as the why’s and wherefores of government and the meaning of human existence itself.

It’s just a scrawny little mining town, Warlock is, unincorporated, a place with a couple of saloons, a few whores, a few respectable businesses and no church where a few unlucky souls have wound up after misadventures elsewhere. There are a few civic-minded folks who have hopes for its future and are in a Babbit sort of mode. We find the stock western characters--gamblers, gunfighters, renegade cowhands, a cattle boss bent on running the town, a wannabe judge with a drinking problem, a virtuous young woman running a boarding house. The law-abiders and others with a stake in stability hire a gunfighter to put stop to the terror of rampaging cowhands, and things proceed from there. But not in your stock western way.

These hard-bitten people are soul-searchers, it turns out. And there’s an educated storekeeper named Goodpasture who’s keeping a diary which we glimpse from time to time. Even the best of these characters do ugly things from time to time. They are always worried about why they or anyone else is doing something, searching for motives, ascribing motives out of their own wishful thinking, just as we lay upon our public figures our own wishes and wants and get disappointed when they are unable to divine and carry out our aspirations.

The hired gun is named Blaisedale (Blaise for “blaze”? as you can see from Goodpasture, names mean something in this novel.) He does a great job at the Acme corral. However, much as they wanted the dead men to be dead, some begin to talk about the justice of it, whether he did it right, and for the right reasons. And they begin to fear and envy him, and they divide into camps of people who revere him and others who despise him. These camps divide and redivide like amoebas as the plot of the book proceeds, and we begin to understand that Warlock is as much about us, the public that invests its “heroes” with qualities they don’t and can’t possess as it is about the main characters. It’s about people who hang around the mythic figures and how they try to assume roles that would have been impossible for them to imagine without them around--whether they fit the roles or not.

I could go on and on, for this is a complex book. But I’ll end with a couple of passages:

“...people don’t matter a damn. 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.”

And

“I am the black rattlesnake of Warlock. My mother was a timber wolf and my daddy a mountain lion and I strangled them both the day I was born.”

Those were the days. . . ...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Joe rated it it was amazing

Warlock left me with both a profound sense of literary satisfaction, and a less definable, more visceral sense of extreme unease. What, exactly, happened here? To these people, to this place, to the idea and ideals they were all striving for and living up to? What does it mean, that anybody can change so much, and yet nobody really changes at all? There is a feeling, upon closing this book, that the story of this one wild, small town has devastating ramifications for all of us, though I am not s Warlock left me with both a profound sense of literary satisfaction, and a less definable, more visceral sense of extreme unease. What, exactly, happened here? To these people, to this place, to the idea and ideals they were all striving for and living up to? What does it mean, that anybody can change so much, and yet nobody really changes at all? There is a feeling, upon closing this book, that the story of this one wild, small town has devastating ramifications for all of us, though I am not sure what they are: But if these characters, who are so real and so flawed and so nuanced, these proto-heroes and -villains, who morph so swiftly into their own antitheses and back again in the eyes of their peers and, also, in themselves; if these human symbols can suffer so much, just by trying so hard to do what is right, what hope do the rest of us have? The more exceptional you are, Warlock seems to say, the more you are destined to fail. The more you think you know what you are, the worse your one moment of truth will be. The more you care about somebody else, the more chance you stand of injuring them beyond their own imagining.

More than these small interpersonal struggles, Warlock tries to crack apart the very idea of "society." Set in an imaginary version of Tombstone, AZ, Warlock tells the tale of hired-killer-slash-marshal Clay Blaisedell—a gentleman gunslinger paid handsomely by the business interests of Warlock to bring law and order to their small mining town, which has for years been terrorized (or protected?) by down-valley rancher Abe McQuown. Other residents include Johnny Gannon, a former associate of McQuown's, who returns from a long sojourn away after an unspeakable incident of violence; the suspicious and callous Tom Morgan, Blaisedell's close and loyal friend, who always seems to be at the center of controversy; a whiskey-bloated judge whose holier-than-thou harangues often comprise the only backbone of Warlock's morality; a mysterious woman in black who rides in on a coach and adds an explosive element to Warlock's chemical makeup; an insane General who holds the town's fate in his hands; a romantic do-gooder whose virgin love wreaks havoc with the primary players. All of these characters' fortunes rise and fall on a dime or a draw, as they each try to remain immovable, even while the townspeople try to bend them to their will—and, indeed, to their very sense of morality. The results are exciting, heartbreaking, explosive, breathless, and beautiful. Add to the mix a burgeoning miners' strike that takes the story well beyond the Warlock borders, into the bank vaults and business offices of San Francisco, and you have a Genuine American Tale.

Hall's writing is mostly impeccable, and his handle on the characters and the language allows the reader to effortlessly slip from a monosyllabic exchange, to a poetic passage on the lonely-raw beauty of the land, to a page-long diatribe on the nature of man and law that might seem better fit in the writings of Rousseau. But you buy it all the while because, as you might expect, there is romance and humor and blood here, too, and enough to drown the philosophy when necessary.

Can real and lasting law truly be forged out of violence or, perhaps more to the point, is there ever any other way to forge it? This seems to be the biggest question of them all, in this amazingly crafted novel and moral tale. But, more relevant to me, can any of us ever live up to our own ideals; and if so, is it worth it? ...more

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Jan 10, 2018 Joaco rated it really liked it

Shelves: cajonera

I can understand why this book is regarded a classic of the Western genre. It took me some time to understand this since I am a bit culturally far away from it, but when I finally did and started researching the references every piece fell into place.

Hall uses some of the most cherished characters from the American mythos retells and humanizes the events of Tombstone, Arizona. That is, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corrall and the characters of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Big Nose Kate, placed on t ...more

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Jul 21, 2020 robin friedman rated it really liked it

On A Frontier Between History And Legend

Oakley Hall (1920 -- 2008) begins "Warlock", his daunting 1958 novel, with a brief Prefatory Note. He observes that the book's characters are a mix of the real and the imagined and that many of the people in the book are "composites of figures who live still on a frontier between history and legend." He similarly observes that the actions in the story consists of "actual events interwoven with invented ones." Hall's goal is to suggest to the reader what "s On A Frontier Between History And Legend

Oakley Hall (1920 -- 2008) begins "Warlock", his daunting 1958 novel, with a brief Prefatory Note. He observes that the book's characters are a mix of the real and the imagined and that many of the people in the book are "composites of figures who live still on a frontier between history and legend." He similarly observes that the actions in the story consists of "actual events interwoven with invented ones." Hall's goal is to suggest to the reader what "should have happened" in the development of the West rather than what did happen. He concludes his Preface with the statement: "The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction."

The Prefatory Note is the only short moment of "Warlock", but it aptly suggests the novel's depth and complexity. The book is set in the fictitious town of Warlock in the American Southwest from 1880 -- 1881. The main character is a gunman, Clay Blaisedell, loosely modeled on Wyatt Earp. Many fantasies and fictions have spread about Earp (1848 -- 1929) as noted several times within the novel itself.

The novel includes several sets of characters who interact with and often fight with each other throughout the book. The first group centers around law enforcement officials in Warlock, Blaisedell and his deputies. Another group consists of the business people of Warlock who form a committee that hires and supervises Blaisedell. A third group consists of a large group of cattle rustlers in an adjacent valley who frequently terrorize the town. A related group of outlaws consist of "road agents" who hold up stagecoaches. The officials in the neighboring town of Bright's City form a fifth set of characters. Then, there are the silver miners of Warlock who strike against the mining company and its local representative. The miners' are cared for by a doctor and by his assistant, Jessie, the "angel of Warlock. Another important female character is a tough-minded prostitute, Kate Dollar.

There is yet another important character, a member of the citizen's committee named Henry Holmes Goodpasture. The book is largely narrated in the third person, but the stolid, reliable Goodpasture kept a detailed Journal of the events of the day which is quoted often in the book and drives the story along Goodpasture reflects extensively on the events he relates, as in this passage meditating on one of Blaisedell's many shootings in Warlock.

"I feel drained by an over-violent purge to my emotions, that has taken from me part of my manhood, or my humanity. I feel scraped raw in some inner and most precious part. The earth is an ugly place, senseless, brutal, cruel, and ruthlessly bent only upon the destruction of men's souls. The God of the Old Testament rules a world not worth His trouble, and He is more violent, more jealous, more terrible with the years. We are only those poor, bare, forked animals Lear saw upon his dismal heath, in pursuit of death, pursued by death."

Hall's novel captures many facets of the residents of Warlock and the Old West and of the lawless violence of the settlements. The book also is highly reflective, in Goodpasture's voice and in the voices of the other characters including Blaisedell. The texture of the book as long and detailed and adds difficulty to what was already a lengthy, complex book. The book shows great insight into the ambiguities of human conduct and of situations. Much of the book is told in the language of harsh realism. Yet that is not the total or perhaps the essential story. Hall and also Goodpasture are deeply in love with the Old West and taken with the importance of legend. For all their human frailties, the characters in this novel are heroic and larger than life. Goodpasture worries in a letter written late in his life that he had "gradually stylized and simplified those happenings, [in Warlock] , that I have fancifully glorified those people, and sought to give them superhuman stature." Goodpasture still believes, writing in 1924, that Blaisedell, Warlock, and the other inhabitants of the Old West are worth the effort to understand, difficult is understanding may be, and to learn from and celebrate.

The effort required to read this slow and occasionally plodding novel will be rewarded. The book offers both a picture of the Old West and a lengthy meditation on the growth of the law and community. "Warlock" is available in a book published by the New York Review Books Classics and in a new Library of America volume, "The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s and 50s", edited by novelist Ron Hansen.

Robin Friedman ...more

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Oct 12, 2014 Patrick rated it it was amazing

An excellent existential, noir western. The only familiarity I had with Oakley Hall was through Thomas Pynchon, who has raved about Warlock at various points. I, like many others, picked it up because of Pynchon's mentions. It was published in 1958 and apparently at that time, the literary agent Candida Donadio (Pynchon, Heller, Robert Stone) was pushing it on her friends and clients.

It is sort of an alternate take on the gunfight at the OK Corral mythology. I guess it could also be thought of ...more

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Sep 25, 2017 Claudia Putnam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, cut-above-genre

Not your father's western. Beautiful writing, a departure point for McCarthy and others who have tried to take on the mythology of the American West. Hall stays in reality, though he distorts the myths in service of his in own story... That is, this novel is no more historical than the popular conceptions of the figures portrayed here are. But it is more likely. And probably more true.

I felt the book lost itself a bit in the second half. Maybe it's 4.5 stars. Well worth the ride.

PS... the title ...more

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May 13, 2011 wally rated it it was amazing

Shelves: hall

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 happened.....the pursuit of tr ...more

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Dec 15, 2020 Josh Friedlander rated it liked it

Shelves: nyrb, dystopia

In 1861 the Bascom Massacre began the series of clashes known as the Apache Wars on the United States' western frontier, as Americans began to settle the territory conquered in the Mexican War. It largely ended in 1886 when the Apache leader Geronimo surrendered to Charles B. Gatewood. That is roughly when this novel is set, a thinly-disguised retelling of the shootout at the O.K. Corral (Henry Fonda, who played the Wyatt Earp stand-in Clay Blaisedell in the 1959 film, had earlier played Earp in In 1861 the Bascom Massacre began the series of clashes known as the Apache Wars on the United States' western frontier, as Americans began to settle the territory conquered in the Mexican War. It largely ended in 1886 when the Apache leader Geronimo surrendered to Charles B. Gatewood. That is roughly when this novel is set, a thinly-disguised retelling of the shootout at the O.K. Corral (Henry Fonda, who played the Wyatt Earp stand-in Clay Blaisedell in the 1959 film, had earlier played Earp in John Ford's My Darling Clementine) and the spectre of a legendary brave named "Espirato" lurks at its edges. It is thick with the tropes of the genre: tables covered in oilcloth, card games behind batwing doors, women of ill repute keeping a derringer in their petticoats, and a fast-drawing, laconic hero who becomes the de facto guardian of justice by being the only good man in a corrupt place. Hall's writing is rich and of its period (with multiple distinctive voices), perhaps standing comparison with TV's Deadwood (although not as philosophically inflected as Butchers' Crossing) and was the subject of a "mini-cult" led by Thomas Pynchon. The theme of lawlessness and the thin edge of civilisation also comes up frequently, as the town makes a futile attempt to be incorporated by the corrupt bureaucrats of neighbouring Bright City. Also this:

"We have orders to shoot if we have to, Marshal!”

"Why, I can shoot too, Major!”

There was a shout of approbation from the crowd. It ceased immediately as Blaisedell raised a hand for quiet...

He rose in his stirrups. "Major—”

The major motioned to him to be silent and said, "You are now in armed rebellion against the United States government. Do you realize that, sir?”

Blaisedell stood with his arms hanging loosely at his sides, his fair hair gleaming in the sun. Behind and to the right of him Miss Jessie stood straight and proud, with her chin held high.

"Major,” Blaisedell said. "The United States government was got in armed rebellion before either of us was born. And got for one thing by people wanting to keep soldiers from busting through the houses they lived in, if I remember my history books right.”

Blaisedell, like the heroes of another great Western writer, Elmore Leonard, is strong and silent - strong because silent - living in a hostile world outside of civilisation and trying be only as violent as necessary, but no less.

Warlock came out at the height of McCarthyism, and it's certainly possible to read it as being about that, with its feckless and cowardly townspeople forsaking their protector (no spoilers - this book does have several big twists, though), just as High Noon was in its time. (John Wayne turned it down for this reason, and broke with his friend Gary Cooper over blacklisting, as did Fonda with Jimmy Stewart.) Pynchon seems to see it as something vaster "we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a colour 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." But the book works just as well simply as an evocation of the ghosts of America's past. ...more

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Mar 04, 2018 Aiden Heavilin added it · review of another edition

stopped at page 150. perfectly good genre fiction of course, but a hard-boiled Western simply isn't much what I'm interested in reading these days, with the stuff on my to-read list. Nevertheless, if you're in the mood, this is a decent adventure. ...more

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Jul 21, 2020 brian rated it really liked it

i don't read many westerns, but this one was good ...more

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About Oakley Hall

Oakley Hall

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Oakley Hall also wrote under the nom de plume of O.M. Hall and Jason Manor.

Oakley Maxwell Hall was an American novelist. He was born in San Diego, California, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and served in the Marines during World War II. Some of his mysteries were published under the pen names "O.M. Hall" and "Jason Manor." Hall received his Master of Fine Arts in English fr ...more