Hall's Warlock

[dennis grace]

Mathew opines:

>IMNERHO, you've missed the forest for the trees here,  the magnificent 
>thing about Warlock is not the Pynchonesque textual structure, but the 
>issues the book deals with - ie the question of conflicted freedoms in an 
>newly expanding frontier, one of TRP's faves. 

<snippage of a pretty fair generalized account of the themes of _Warlock_>

You missed the point TRP made about the tentative nature of the new
"society" in a new western town.  In "A Gift of Books" TRP notes, "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." Sound familiar?  Remember Oedipa's dream?
That National Auto Dealers Association sign swinging in the wind, flashing
NADA, NADA, NADA?

>Surely these are more interesting questions than plot devices, narrative 
>tricks and dialogue.

Uh, no.  No they're not.  These questions only get asked BECAUSE of plot
devices, narrative tricks, and dialogue.  And Look again at TRP's review,
and you'll see that he rightly ties in Blaisdell's "personal abyss" with
considerations of the town's problems.  Plot devices, narrative tricks, and
dialogue.  Words, words, words.  That's all we have so, no there are no more
interesting questions than these.

>Sometimes you folks make me wonder...

Maybe you've lived next door to those "Live Free or Die" foax too long.

dgg
_____________
Dennis Grace
University of Texas at Austin
English Department
Recovering Medievalist

"Oh God comma I abhor self-consciousness."  --JB