Rereading Warlock I found again the light I remembered, an afternoon brightness, a clarity that is, I think now, the essence of good realism. In an almost literal way it illuminated the characters. When it focused on individual lives it seemed to vary its distance from each character as though there existed a different extension of sympathy or a withholding of it for different individuals in the narrative. The light I guess I had recognized the first time as western light. Big Sky light. Realism, I had thought at that time. This is good realism. And I became aware of the skill, the strategy of
...more
