Warlock

[Yoshihiko Kihara]

Skip Wolfe writes:
>In his introduction to a recent edition of Richard
>Farina's _Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me_ TRP mentions their
>absorption with Oakley Hall's novel _Warlock_ during their Cornell days.
>. . .  I'm just curious to know if there are any discernible traces of it 
in >Pynchon's own work -- or even if it's worth reading.

And JM replies:
>I found Warlock by Oakley Hall in a library about 6 months ago.  I read
>about 50 pages and gave up.  It seemed like a run of the mill western,
>and I saw no connection with TRP's stuff.

TRP in fact RECOMMENDS Oakley Hall's  _Warlock_ (1958) .
In December 1965 the American magazine _Holiday_ carried an article entitled 
'A Gift of Books', in which Pynchon nominated the book.
David Seed, in the Introduction to his _The Fictional Labyrinthsof Thomas 
Pynchon_ (Macmillan: London, 1988), summarizes the story (pp.1-2). (Sorry I 
can't reproduce it here.)

But here's TRP's own comments:
"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 
dust as easily as a corpse can." ("A Gift of Books," _Holiday_, 38. vi (Dec. 
1965), p. 164)

Now, don't you guys think that _Warlock_ *is* connected to TRP's fictions?

Yoshihiko Kihara
Kyoto, Japan