When it comes to fiction genres, I’ve got my faves. As a young dude those were horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. Over the years I drifted away from all of these only to check in now and again on the hot new thang. Occasionally I’ve dabbled in mystery/thriller stuff, but never have I been a reader of Westerns (unless one includes Cormac McCarthy in that category).
I bought a remaindered copy of Warlock probably 20 years back and only just pulled it down off the shelf. Glad I did, because it’s a banger! Like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven it’s a rather sophisticated deconstruction of the myths associated with the American West and gunslingers and cowboys. The hero of the story has a morally ambiguous past and when hired to be Marshall of Warlock struggles with the ethics of his situation. Is he a murderer for hire, or a representative of law and order? What is a government other than an agency dictating behavior via the threat extreme violence? Can citizens have a sense of peace and freedom without a killer to back up those ideals? How is a hired gun who kills to keep the peace different from a blackguard who kills to take money from a stagecoach?
The novel features some historical figures and also transposes mythic characters from the OK Corral into thinly disguised avatars. There are IWW prototypes working the mines and rebelling against brutal treatment, there are cross-border skirmishes between cattle rustlers in the US and Mexico, there are Apaches, there is the US Cavalry and a half-crazed senile general. Whores, saloon keepers, merchants, deputies, judges, and rugged outlaws eek out a living in a land where law is dictated by force and mob rule. There is the outlaw turned deputy who, like the hero, tries to do the right thing but cannot always navigate the complexities of the myriad relationships and power struggles. And there is revenge; a LOT of revenge.
The novel surprised me often by subverting standard genre tropes familiar from TV and film. The writing was elegant and Oakley Hall created engaging and multifaceted characters and situated them in an intricately detailed setting.
My one critique involves a love scene which descends into bodice-ripper cliché. But overall I thought Warlock was excellent and it pulled me inevitably to its satisfying conclusion. Thomas Pynchon called it one of America’s greatest novels–it’s certainly better than anything he wrote (excepting perhaps The Crying of Lot 49).
Mysterium Coniunctionis 