TPPM _The Gift_: Oakley Hall, an author about authors

[Glenn Scheper]

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/gift.html

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Oakley_Hall.htm
 Oakley Hall Bibliography

 Oakley Hall is the author of short stories, novellas,
 libretti, mainstream novels and mysteries. His novel Warlock
 was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a
 feature film. For more than twenty years he was director of
 the writing programme at the University of California at
 Irvine.

http://www.biercephile.com/
 The Ambrose Bierce Appreciation Society

 This page is dedicated to one of the most under appreciated
 authors and journalists of all time: Ambrose Gwinett Bierce.
 "Bitter Bierce" was quite famous in his day, but now only a
 core following of academics and curmudgeons know about him.

 Book Release: Oakley Hall spits out another
 ill-characterized Bierce mystery with Ambrose Bierce and the
 Trey of Pearls.

http://virtual-markets.net/~gizmo/1997/oakley.html
 Printed Matter -- Oakley Hall -- Page

        (much bio/writing)

 Oakley Hall's 21st novel, "Separations," weaves together
 many strands of stories from the Old West.

 Writing this novel must have pleased Hall, who had the
 opportunity to delve into and research many of his favorite
 myths of the era.

 "Oakley Hall is the closest person I can think of as a
 successor to Wallace Stegner, not only in his personal
 character but in his serious literary attention to the
 West,"

        [Again, like Ambrose Bierce, Oakley Hall's ficitonal
        character, Bret Harte, was in real-life, an author:]

 Hall combines Western fact and fiction effectively, to the
 extent that readers may be interested in following up on the
 real lives of some of his characters -- for instance, Bret
 Harte.

 A collection of Bret Harte's best short stories...

http://www.greenmanreview.com/ambrose.htm
 Oakley Hall, Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades /Ambrose Bierce and the Death of Kings

        (much on writing style)

 Oakley Hall uses San Francisco of the 1880s and 1890s as the
 setting for Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Swords and
 Ambrose Bierce and the Death of Kings, two mysteries
 featuring the journalist, satirist, and short story writer
 Ambrose Bierce as an amateur detective. Tom Redmond, a
 journalist mentored by Bierce, narrates the books.

http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,0_1000013845,00.html
 Oakley Hall

 Oakley Hall is the author of twenty works of fiction,
 including Warlock, Downhill Racer (both of which were made
 into films), and, most recently, Separations. He lives in
 San Francisco.

http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_hall_oneeyedjacks.html
 Oakley Hall, Ambrose Bierce and the One-Eyed Jacks

 Period writing, particularly if it uses real historical
 figures, requires a fine eye for detail and the ability to
 get into the mindset of the era under consideration. The
 best authors in this style use just enough detail to make
 this work. Too much detail and the novel becomes an academic
 treatise. Lost in the information are any attempts at
 memorable characters or plot. Getting it right is a careful
 and rare skill.

        [That is, a *Gift* that some authors might have,
        --and right up Pynchon's historical novel alley]

 Oakley Hall amply demonstrates this skill in bringing
 Ambrose Bierce back for a third time as a
 detective/newspaperman in Ambrose Bierce and the One-Eyed
 Jacks.

Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
Copyleft(!) Forward freely.