NP Warlock (1959)

[Charles Albert]

On 4/16/06, jbor at bigpond.com <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:


(O'Brien:
> _Warlock_ "is also a true western to the core, holding tight to the
> laws of the genre"; it "lives by its language, which sustains a
> through-line of pulp narration".)



Hall employs many of the devices of pulp westerns, but his "thematic"
concerns remain the same as those he devloped in Corpus of Joe Bailey
("coming of age around WW2"). To the extent WARLOCK has been discussed here,
I recall there being a consesus behind the idea that Hall was capable of
hitting some remarkably bad notes (Kate Dollar in particular), but the moral
ambiguities in which he traffics are analogous to those illustrated by
Pynchon. I would also suggest that the constant undercutting of narrative
"veracity" is not likely to be a feature of the works of Grey and L'Amour.


The movie is also pretty good. (O'Brien: "a very effective movie", not
> "effective" as you've misquoted.)



I beg to differ. It may be a "very effective" western - by the standards of
that genre - but it rendered little more than pulp by the neutering of those
elements of the narrative which reflect the memes which drive the book,
specifically the "incorporation issue". That and the casting inform my
disappointment....

. (It is "better than Blood Meridian"?



That is not what I said. I believe that WARLOCK is in many ways a "richer"
novel than Blood Meridian, but there is no question that McCarthy is a
superior wordsmith. Both reside in my personal top 10, but WARLOCK gets a
nod because, as a former Dostoyevsky enthusiast, I love the running battle
of ideas, the constant conflict of principles, which inform it. The
difference is that Dostoyevsky's resolutions are so often contrived in
accordance with his faith, whereas Hall just let's principle batter
principle until it becomes a flimsy shield wielded as convenient by broken
heroes.

Some of the passages in Blood Meridian are among the most memorable I have
read, but there was nothing in the realm of "meta-narrative" which offered
the same head shaking moments as those I experienced reading WARLOCK.


As for the original phrase I used "as far as pulp westerns go", I'll
> cop to that being a bit lazy. But it was a two-line email. And I would
> have thought it pretty obvious that I wasn't talking about paper
> quality or garishly-coloured covers.


Zane Grey became a millionaire because he offered what a VERY BROAD
selection of readers desired, most of whom sought to have their moral biases
confirmed, rather than challenged. My sense, though I don't know a great
deal about him, is that this quality also distinguished the work of L'Amour.
I can assure you, having delved into more than a half dozen of his titles,
it is not an objective Hall shares.....

With that I will hold any further comment on this topic........


love,
cfa
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20060416/3a70cdd2/attachment.html>