Warlock (was Re: But the world isn't like that

[calbert at hslboxmaster.com]

A reader writes:


"Blaisdell never buys into his picture as a hero. He knows what he is,
and what is about, first to last. It is the good foax who think him
heroic. And writers who think him good copy. His sidekick the gambler
buys into his own image as a bad guy, feeds the image, and in the end
to embraces it."


.....and this is really part of the general ambiguity which makes this book
so engaging....As mark says, the role is foisted on a very reluctant
Blaisdell, and the manner in which the two friends are eventually set in
"manichean opposition" is masterfully executed......It is one of Hall's
talents - he doesn't "define" good and evil, these evolve in the course of
his work, and the consequent conclusion for the reader is that these
concepts are contextual......


"Blaisedell states the course of the town's future disillusionment with
him flat out in a twon meeting at the beginning of the book. Events go
as predicted, with the exception that "love" enters the picture and
distorts it, aligning Blaisdell in part at least with an embryonic
labor movement. it is the labor vs. capital subplot which makes the
book interesting and important. This subplot is eliminated in the Henry
Fonda film."


Yup....the elimination essentially neuters the entire work. This subplot is
seminal to the actions which surround it, it informs the debate about
"incorporation" (the preterite/elect), it also frames the basic questions
about who or what represents "good"......there is a ghost of this in
VINELAND, where P relates the sordid underside of the "labor struggle" of
two generations of Frenesi's kin.

It is Blaisdell's private 
>     abyss, and not too different from the town's public one. 
>     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 our best 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.

"It's a good book, as I said. Not "Pynchonian", but a good book. It will
never be worth a "group read" IMO."

...but here I must diverge from my esteemed correspondent....Though it
cannot lend itself to the type of analysis that we subject Pynchon novels
to, it does provide a scheme which Pynchon has clearly adopted in his own
work. Beyond the "political ambiguity", Warlock also plays on themes dear
to Pynchers, to wit, the uncertainly of "narration" (there are several
narrators, each with a defined perspective), this is particularly fun when
he covers the central gunfighth from two or three perspectives..........and
Oakley Hall provides a standard by which all really bad characterizations
should be judged - Kate Dollar is another in a LONG LINE of wretchedly
drawn female characters in the Hall ouevre. Oakley must either be gay or
obliviously hetero.....just brutal........those who have read some of his
other books should be able to confirm this observation.....

A swiflty moving group effort here would, in my opinion, provide a lot of
listers with a fresh perspective on our hero........and I doubt that more
than a handfull will prove resistant to this book's charms.....

My well travelled, heavily soiled copy will have to make its way back from
Louisville, KY, however.....

love,
cfa





mark


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