Oakley Hall, RIP

[Erik T. Burns]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/14/MNIJ10LJ9V.DTL

Oakley Hall, author of 'Warlock,' dies at 87

Heidi Benson, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Oakley Hall, author of "Downhill Racers" Chronicle photo,...

Oakley Hall, a prolific author and influential writing teacher best
known for the novels "The Downhill Racers" and "Warlock" - and as a
founder of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers - died Monday night
in Nevada City. He was 87.

His death was caused by cancer and kidney disease, said his daughter,
Brett Hall Jones, executive director of the Community of Writers.

Mr. Hall was one of a handful of writers who helped to define and
elevate California literature in the generation after John Steinbeck.

He was the author of more than 20 works of fiction and nonfiction,
including two books on the art of fiction writing and the libretto for
an opera based on Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose." Among the many
honors Mr. Hall received were lifetime achievement awards from the PEN
Center USA and the Cowboy Hall of Fame.

"Oakley Hall was a master storyteller who loved the West," said
California poet laureate Al Young, who has known Mr. Hall for nearly
three decades.
Pulitzer Prize finalist

Mr. Hall's novel "Warlock," a finalist for the 1958 Pulitzer Prize -
and the first of a trilogy - was reissued in 2005 as part of the New
York Review of Books Classics series with an introduction by Robert
Stone.

Set in the fictional 19th century town of Warlock, it draws on the
story of the OK Corral, said Edwin Frank, editor of the series.

"Oakley effectively rediscovered the Wild West for post-World War II
America - not as the heroic proving ground of the nation, but as a
weird dreamworld and tragically violent masquerade," Frank said. "It's
a great book, and it blazed a path for fellow writers like Thomas
Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy."

Author James D. Houston, a longtime friend and instructor at the Squaw
Valley Community of Writers, cites Mr. Hall's 1997 novel,
"Separations," as a favorite. "It is about the discovery of the
Colorado River, coming down through that canyon country on rafts in
the 19th century," Houston said. "It is some of the most remarkable
writing about the Western landscape that you'll ever see."

Mr. Hall was born in 1920 in San Diego and grew up in that city's
Mission Hills district and in Honolulu. After graduating from UC
Berkeley, he joined the Marines, serving in the Pacific during World
War II. After the war, Mr. Hall studied in Europe on the GI Bill and
went on to earn a master's of fine arts in creative writing from the
Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Mr. Hall's first book, published in 1949, was "Murder City," one of
several mysteries he wrote in the early years. "His novels and stories
reflect the landscapes that he inhabited most of his life," said
Young, "the Pacific islands of his youth, the foothills and ski slopes
of the Sierra and the streets and neighborhoods of San Francisco."

The skill for taut plotting and sharp characterizations, honed by
mystery writing, never left him. And in 1998 he returned to the genre
with a five-part series of historical mysteries with the legendary San
Francisco newsman Ambrose Bierce as protagonist. In a 2001 review of
"Ambrose Bierce and the Death of Kings," then Chronicle book critic
David Kipen wrote: "Oakley Hall gives a master class every time he
practices his craft."

For 20 years, Mr. Hall was director of the creative writing program at
UC Irvine, which quickly became one of the best in the country. Among
the writers who studied at Irvine and whose careers Mr. Hall helped to
launch are Richard Ford and Michael Chabon.
Founded writers' group

In 1969, Mr. Hall co-founded the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, an
annual summer writers' conference in the Sierra Nevada, where emerging
writers gain world-class instruction from famous authors and mingle
with literary agents and publishers in a beautiful setting. Mr. Hall
and his wife of 65 years, the photographer Barbara Hall, lived half of
each year in Squaw Valley and half in San Francisco.

Amy Tan credits the Squaw Valley Community of Writers with guiding her
from fledgling writer to published author. "Oakley was the reason that
I found my confidence as a writer," said Tan, who calls herself one of
his "literary offspring." And, she adds, "the Halls are a remarkable
family. They are deep-hearted and stalwart, generous and kind and
giving."

In January, Mr. Hall read from his most recent novel, "Love and War in
California" - published last year by St. Martin's Press - at the
Moffitt Library at UC Berkeley. His former student, Michael Chabon,
introduced him.

"That book is a perfect bookend to his first literary novel, 'Corpus
of Joe Bailey,' " Chabon said. Both books are set in San Diego in the
years leading up to World War II and feature a young man with literary
ambitions.

"It is so interesting to see a writer return at the end of his career
to the same material he was working with in the beginning - and to see
the different approach he takes," said Chabon. "He brings himself full
circle."

Mr. Hall is survived by his wife; their son, Oakley Hall III; their
daughters, Sands Hall, Tracy Hall and Brett Hall Jones; and seven
grandchildren.

A memorial will be held in August at the Squaw Valley Community of
Writers conference; another is planned for San Francisco in autumn. In
lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Doctors
Without Borders, 333 Seventh Ave., Second Floor, New York, NY
10001-5004 or to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, P.O. Box 1416,
Nevada City CA 95959.
Oakley Hall books

FICTION

"Murder City" (1949)

"So Many Doors" (1950)

"Corpus of Joe Bailey" (1953)

"Mardios Beach" (1955)

"Warlock" (1958, 2005)

"The Downhill Racers" (1963)

"The Pleasure Garden" (1966)

"A Game for Eagles" (1970)

"The Adelita" (1975)

"The Bad Lands" (1978)

"Lullaby' (1982)

"The Children of the Sun" (1983)

"The Coming of the Kid" (1985)

"Apaches" (1986)

"Separations" (1997)

"Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades" (1998)

"Ambrose Bierce and the Death of Kings" (2001)

"Ambrose Bierce and the One-Eyed Jacks" (2003)

"Ambrose Bierce and the Trey of Pearls" (2004)

"Ambrose Bierce and the Ace of Shoots" (2005)

"Love and War in California" (2007)

NONFICTION

"The Art and Craft of Novel Writing" (1994)

"Heroes Without Glory: Some Good Men of the Old West" (with Jack Schaefer, 1987)

"How Fiction Works" (2000)
Sample of Hall's work

>From Oakley Hall's novel "Warlock" (New York Review Books):

It is four in the morning by my watch. Mine is the only light I can
see, the scratching of my pen the only sound. Here astride the dull
and rusty razor's edge between midnight and morning, I am sick to the
bottom of my heart. Where is Buck Slavin's bright future of faith,
hope and commerce? What is it even worth, after all? For if men have
no worth, there is none anywhere. I feel very old and I have seen too
many things in my years, which are not so many; no, not even in my
years, but in a few months - in this day.

Outside there is only darkness, pitifully lit by the cold and
disinterested stars, and there is silence through the town, in which
some men sleep and clutch their bedclothes of hope and optimism to
them for warmth. But those I love more do not sleep, and see no hope,
and suffer for those brave ones who will fall in hopeless effort for
us all, whose only gift to us will be that we will grieve for them a
little while; those who see, as I have come to see, that life is only
event and violence without reason or cause, and that there is no end
but the corruption and the mock of courage and of hope.

Is not the history of the world no more than a record of violence and
death, cut in stone? It is a terrible, lonely, loveless thing to know
it, and see - as I realize now the doctor saw before me - that the
only justification is in the attempt, not in the achievement, for
there is no achievement; to know that each day may dawn fair or fairer
than the last, and end as horribly wretched or more. Can those things
that drive men to their ends be ever stilled, or will they only thrive
and grow and yet more hideously clash one against the other so long as
man himself is not stilled? Can I look out at these cold stars in this
black sky and believe in my heart of hearts that it was this sky that
hung over Bethlehem, and that a star such as these stars glittered
there to raise men's hearts to false hopes forever? This is the sky of
Gethsemane, and that of Bethlehem has vanished with its star.

E-mail Heidi Benson at hbenson at sfchronicle.com.