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 ourbest 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
General
Imprint: |
Nyrb Classics
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
November 2005 |
First published: |
November 2005 |
Authors: |
Oakley Hall
|
Dimensions: |
204 x 134 x 135mm (L x W x H) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
488 |
Edition: |
Main |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-59017-161-5 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
Genre fiction >
Westerns
|
LSN: |
1-59017-161-6 |
Barcode: |
9781590171615 |
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