Warlock
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4.6 • 35 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST: Venture to the Wild West in this classic Western novel about a gun-slinging lawman who must restore peace to a silver mining boomtown.
“A riveting Western that's also a work of literature.” —NPR
“Among the finest of American novels.” —Thomas Pynchon, author of Gravity’s Rainbow
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.
Customer Reviews
Among that handful of transcendent great Western novels
immersive, compulsively readable, at times ur-Homeric. I first read this in a little cabin on the Gulf, in Baja, with the vast desert and middle-distanced mountains backed up to this palapa and featureless shoreline. And Warlock was perfectly attuned to the setting. (I also re-read Juan Rulfo’s ‘Pedro Paramo’ there, but for some reason that one seemed more syntonic with the Yucatán...).
It’s entirely enjoyable on its surface merits alone, only enriched when considered in any of several contexts. For example: it was published first in 1958 & HUAC and the blacklist are clearly reflected. And it does a good deal of cloud busting with many of the traditional Western types and tropes- the gunfighting hero and his shady gambler sidekick taking out those who must needs be taken out to preserve the life and fortune of his friend. The ingenue sweetheart, et all. Lots of fun. Better than the Oxbow Incident or the Big Sky.