Warlock

[jbor]

A little bit of false advertising on Pynchon's part, that whole "neglected"
classic and "books that failed to attract wide attention" spiel. It was
Pulitzer Prize-nominated in its year of publication (1958) and straight away
snapped up by Hollywood and turned into a (pretty doggone classy) movie the
following year starring A-listers Henry Fonda, Dorothy Malone, Anthony Quinn
and Richard Widmark and directed and produced by Edward Dmytryk.

But, as Westerns go, I've gotta agree that _Warlock_ isn't half bad; it's
definitely a cut above some of the other books Pynchon has blurbed since.
Once you've read the novel it's easy to see why he likes it so much: in
"full, mortal, blooded humanity" the distinctions between "good" guys and
"bad" guys aren't as clear cut as the "legends" would like us to believe,
and this is a realisation which drives all of Pynchon's own fiction as well.

Pynchon repeats his endorsement of _Warlock_ in his 1983 'Intro' to Fariña's
_Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me_:

[...] I suppose by then I was learning from Fariña how to be amused at some
of my obsessions. Also in '59 we simultaneously picked up on what I still
think is among the finest of American novels, Warlock, by Oakley Hall. We
set about getting others to read it too, and for a while had a micro-cult
going. Soon a number of us were talking in Warlock dialogue, a kind of
thoughtful, stylized, Victorian Wild West diction. This may have appealed to
Fariña partly as another method of maintaining Cool.

The first time I read Been Down. . . was in manuscript, an early draft in
the summer of 1963. I remember giving him a lot of free advice, though I've
forgotten what it was exactly. But fortunately he didn't take any of it. He
must have wondered if I thought we were still back in writing class. Later,
having rewritten it, ten pages from the end of the final draft, his hand
went out on him. "Did you hear about my Paralyzed Hand?" he wrote in a
letter. "Why Tom old boy"-- Warlock talk-- "I woke up this here otherwise
promising morning with a clump of inert floppy for a hand. Lentils. Lentils
and some kind of exhaustion known only to nits in sedentary occupations. Me,
the once hunter after restless game gone to seed in a J. C. Penney armchair
covered by a baby blanket. . . . But the hand came back by pins and needles
after a month and I got done. . . . "

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_farina.html

(not to be confused with Pynchon's blurb written for the first publication
of Fariña's novel in 1966)

Another interesting thing in the 'Holiday' feature that was reposted is that
in December 1965 that magazine's editors were already listing Pynchon
alongside I.B. Singer, Heller and Albee as one of "America's distinguished
authors". It's a reminder of just how substantial the critical impact of
_V._ had been.

best