Oakley Hall essay

[kelber at mindspring.com]

The first paragraph of Powers' article is a great explanation of why the Western genre is so inaccesible to women (including myself).  It's not about the lack of female characters (or the stock nature of the ones who do appear: the whore with the heart of gold, the sweet but strong homesteader wife, the Annie Oakley type); it's about the lack of emotion.  The height of emotional expression for the Western Hero is a tightening of the jawbone.  Compare this to the garrulous male characters in the TV series, Deadwood, who are seething with emotion, and who are capable of describing their hurt or confusion at a perceived slight or setback.  Deadwood is the first Western I've been able to enjoy (though admittedly I've avoided the genre).  I've never read Warlock.  For those who have, is there a sense that it's influenced or inspired Deadwood?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Aug 13, 2006 1:02 PM
>To: Paul Di Filippo <pgdf at earthlink.net>, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Oakley Hall essay
>
>The gnomic, gun-toting code of the West
>
>By Katherine A. Powers  |  August 13, 2006
>
>I'll tell you what is a big mystery to me: the hero,
>or anti-hero, as he is as often as not, of the genre
>called "the Western." I seem to be missing the faculty
>that allows the reader to grasp what is at stake when
>the Western hero (or anti-hero) feels he's gotta do
>(or not do) some deed (or misdeed). I can't help
>comparing this baffling fellow with another literary
>figure, the "gentleman" of Victorian novels, a
>character whose code of conduct is just as inexplicit,
>but whose every nuance I feel I detect. John Henry
>Newman said, "It is almost a definition of a gentleman
>to say he is one who never inflicts pain." Conversely,
>it seems to me that it is almost a definition of a
>Western hero to say he is one who is forever
>inflicting pain, if not on someone else, then on
>himself, and preferably on both at one and the same
>time. The guy is just one big pain center, silently
>pulsing with an inarticulate hurt that raw whiskey
>can't ease. And as he claps his big old dusty hat on
>his big old dusty head, and walks through the swinging
>doors with an air of purpose, he leaves me staring at
>the page with no idea where he's going.
>
>Nonetheless, based on Robert Stone's compelling
>introduction, I was prompted to take up Oakley Hall's
>471-page "Warlock," a novel set in an Arizona mining
>town in the early 1880s (New York Review Books,
>paperback, $16.95 ). "I remember thinking," Stone
>writes of his first reading of the novel, which was
>first published in 1958 , "how wonderfully clear the
>book was. Not only clear ... but full of light." And
>rereading the book, he found that light again, "an
>afternoon brightness, a clarity that is, I think now,
>the essence of good realism. In an almost literal way
>it illuminated the characters." Perhaps in "Warlock,"
>I thought, I shall find the key to the Western code.
>
>The first thing I found was rich, exhilarating prose,
>Bible tinctured and redolent of the past. Clay
>Blaisedell has come to town as marshal at the
>invitation of the Citizens' Committee, there being no
>real government as the town is not even incorporated.
>His job is to bring an end, by killing if necessary,
>to the murder and mayhem wrought by a gang of
>obstreperous cowboys. But there are those who do not
>approve of such an extralegal expedient, foremost
>among them the town's provisional judge, a
>whiskey-marinated veteran of the Civil War who lost a
>leg at Shiloh and who speaks with the voice of
>righteousness, a character who, like so many in these
>hugely populated pages, deepens considerably
>throughout the book. He rails against the hiring of
>Blaisedell and holds forth on the nature of law to the
>disgust of the town's deputy sheriff, who lets the old
>man have it: "'The law is the law!' he panted. 'But
>there isn't enough of it to go around out here. So
>when we get a good man protecting this town from hell
>with its door open I am not going to see him choused
>and badgered and false-sworn and yawped at fit to
>puke!'"
>
>Continued...
>
>http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2006/08/13/the_gnomic_gun_toting_code_of_the_west/
>
>--- Paul Di Filippo <pgdf at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Foax--I cut and pasted the entire article behind
>> this URL and sent it in to the List, but it never
>> arrived.  Perhaps bagged by a size filter....
>
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