The Ox-Bow Incident
Walter Van Tilburg Clark
Read November 2008
Copy borrowed from Ramsey County Public Library, White Bear Lake branch
Essay written Saturnday, January 24th, 2009
I should never read the prefaces to books. Especially classics like this. The writers of prefaces assume you have already read the book a dozen times and know the ending and therefore have no problem giving away the ending. I remember the preface to Hunger by Knut Hamsun, written by Isaac Bashevis Singer, gave away the endings not only to Hunger itself, but also Pan and Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment. Grr.
I like Wallace Stegner, or at least, liked the one book I've read by him. But he spoiled the end to The Ox-Bow Incident for me. Shame on him.
It was a pretty heartbreaking book. Without giving away the ending too much myself, let me just say it was quite frightening and profound.
This is exactly the kind of western I like. Intelligent. The kind of stuff Thomas Savage wrote in spades. I need to track down more of this genre. Problem is there's so much crap in the western genre, it's hard to find the goodness.
Just keep digging, I guess. Follow the branches. If an article on A.B. Guthrie, Jr. compares him to Wallace Stegner, go there. If Wallace Stegner leads you to Walter Clark, go there.
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