Last week saw the passing of a true Western writer, Oakley Hall. He was a Western writer in the widest sense, a resident and lover of California, who used the genre’s ideas of violence and conquest and discovery to create his fiction. He wrote in different styles and genres, including a nice series of historical detective stories featuring the real-life satirist Ambrose Bierce as their hero. However, his reputation as a serious novelist of Western fiction rests mainly on this ambitious novel, which re-tells a true story already told so many times it has taken on the status of myth: The shootout at the OK Corral. In this fictionalized version, Tombstone, Arizona becomes a town called Warlock, and all roads lead to the climax at the Acme Corral. Along the way, the old Western set pieces are all on display: the principled conscience of a strong sheriff versus the corrupt lawlessness of a band of outlaws; the love of a fiery woman; scenes that reveal strength and cowardice in unlikely places. The whole is weaker than the sum of its parts; the book drags more than a little in spots. But the basic idea—how quickly a society’s civilized veneer can be torn due to the darkness, or weakness, of human nature—had a special relevance in the McCarthy era that has not faded at all over the years. - Gilligan

Labels: Books