Oakley Hall (1920-2008)

May 14, 2008 12:30 PM

Novelist Oakley Hall, most famous for the western Warlock, has died at the age of 87. Here's a review of Warlock by Thomas Pynchon, a huge fan of the book.
posted by Lentrohamsanin (9 comments total)

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posted by dersins at 12:43 PM on May 14, 2008

Thank you for posting this. There was a cult literature thread a while back and I posted Warlock as being an example of a true cult novel. He was one of the authors who demonstrated that a really great Western could also be really great literature. It's too bad that the film adaptation of Warlock hasn't been rediscovered; it came out at the time of HUAC and was scripted by a blacklisted writer (and the film's themes contain an inherent criticism of witch hunts), and so it suffered.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:46 PM on May 14, 2008

Just read Warlock in the nice new NYRB edition, and I've been looking forward to checking out Hall's Ambrose Bierce series sometime soon. Warlock is a nice piece of work, sitting neatly on the fence between Serious Literature and pulp and for the most part sucessful as both. It seems like Hall deserves some of the attention that, for instance, Cormac McCarthy gets.
posted by RogerB at 12:54 PM on May 14, 2008

I bet Thomas Pynchon could craft one sweet front page post.
posted by geoff. at 12:58 PM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Is there a film adaptation of Blood Meridian?
posted by johannahdeschanel at 1:30 PM on May 14, 2008

I bet Thomas Pynchon could craft one sweet front page post.

A screaming comes across MeFi...
posted by newmoistness at 1:30 PM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Is there a film adaptation of Blood Meridian?

Coming soon from Ridley Scott

I also liked his pulp novels! Warlock is one hell of a book.

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posted by mattbucher at 1:47 PM on May 14, 2008

I read Warlock recently after an Ask MeFi recommended it. Good book. The extract quoted in the obit is a bit misleading since it's written from multiple points of view and that's just one of them.

RIP.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:19 PM on May 14, 2008

The 1959 film adaptation featured an all-star cast that included Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn and DeForest Kelly.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:26 PM on May 14, 2008