Oakley Hall, 87; his novels helped define Western literature
Oakley Hall, an author and teacher whose novels set in California and environs helped define Western literature in the postmodern era and who also helped launch the literary careers of such prominent students as Michael Chabon, Richard Ford, and Amy Tan, has died. He was 87.
Mr. Hall died Monday of complications from cancer and kidney disease at his home in Nevada City, Calif., said his daughter Brett Hall Jones.
In a richly varied and productive career, Mr. Hall wrote more than 20 novels, including "Warlock" (1958), a fictional account of the early West that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and "The Downhill Racers" (1963), about skiers in the Sierra Nevada. Both books were made into movies.
He also was a professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, and a co-director of the school's writing program. He joined the faculty in 1968.
"Oakley was a hugely generous mentor who was very important to many writers," Michelle Latiolais, co-director of the university's programs in writing, said Thursday.
As a teacher, "his course on how to structure a work of fiction was legendary," said Latiolais, a former student of Mr. Hall.
He wrote several guides to fiction writing, including "The Art and Craft of Novel Writing" in 1989.
As a novelist, Mr. Hall wrote "psychological realism," Latiolais said. He often used the historical West as his setting, without the white hats and black hats.
"Warlock" is set in a California mining town where a gunslinger lawman tries to impose order. Violent gangs, murky politicians, and a decent woman who is a prostitute are among the cast of characters.
"Oakley complicated a romantic moral clarity we had about the West," Latiolais said.
She said he also helped lay the groundwork for several generations of revisionist writers notably Cormac McCarthy, whose "Blood Meridian," a 1985 novel, follows a gang of Anglo scalp hunters in the mid-1800s.
Mr. Hall's other books include a series of mysteries with American satirist Ambrose Bierce as the main character. The first in the series, "Andrew Bierce and the Queen of Spades," was published in 1998.
Mr. Hall wrote the libretto for "Angle of Repose," an opera by Andrew Imbrie based on the novel by California writer Wallace Stegner.
As a teacher, Mr. Hall was admired, beloved, and feared.
"Oakley would stay on a piece of writing, get into it on a molecular level," Chabon said Thursday. "He wasn't harsh, but he didn't pull any punches. . . . He had a classic gruff exterior, but you knew he was a warm and affectionate man who was really trying to help. That made the criticism easier to take."
In 1969, Mr. Hall cofounded the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, a summer program with workshops and informal lectures held at a ski resort near Lake Tahoe. The program offers unpublished writers the chance to hear from established authors. Ford and Tan, both close friends of Mr. Hall, have been guest speakers.
"Squaw is where I got my start as a writer," Tan said Thursday.
