The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Loa #331): The Ox-Bow Incident / Shane / The Searchers / Warlock, , Clark Walter Van Tilburg, Schaefer Jack

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter van Tilburg Clark explores the thin line between civilization and barbarism through the story of a lynch mob that targets three innocent men, exposing a dark authoritarian impulse at work the American frontier. Set in Wyoming in 1889, a time when ranchers and cattle companies waged war with each other, Jack Schaefers iconic Shane deploys many of the genres most essential elements, brilliantly filtered through a boys perceptions. Alan Le Mays The Searchers, the basis for John Fords cinematic masterpiece starring John Wayne, follows the dogged quest of two men to rescue a young girl taken prisoner by Comanche warriors. And Oakley Halls Warlock, a novel that anticipates the later books of Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry, casts the battle for control of a southwestern outpost as a bloody saga pitting a marauding gang of cowboys and rustlers against the towns defenders, led by the legendary gunslinger Clay Blaisedell. All four novels were memorably adapted for the screen, and their gripping stories--told with brisk narrative energy, psychological depth, and laconic humor--have contributed unforgettably to the Westerns enduring legacy in American culture.