The Watchful Gods and Other Stories
This edition of Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s collection of short stories—which includes “Hook,” Clark’s most renowned story—makes these pieces available again to a new generation of readers.Critic John R. Milton once said that Walter Van Tilburg Clark "did perhaps more than anyone else to define (in his fiction) the mode of perception, the acquisition of knowledge, and the style which we tend to call Western." In 1950, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, author of the acclaimed novel The Ox-Bow Incident, published a collection of short stories that had already won distinction in various national magazines. The collection was well received by reviewers, and subsequent critics have noted that these stories reflect both Clark’s literary power and the major concerns of his novels: the interior and intuitive complexities of good and evil, and the fragile, intricate web that connects humankind to the rest of the natural world.A foreword by Ann Ronald, one of the West’s most astute literary critics, sets the stories into the context of Clark’s oeuvre and illuminates the way they reveal crucial characteristics of this writer’s imagination.
Literature & FictionShort Stories & AnthologiesShort StoriesLiterary
RELEASED1972
PUBLISHERBallantine Books
LENGTH190
LANGUAGEEN
Because his three published novels had their locale in the state of Nevada, Walter van Tilburg Clark had come to be considered a Westerner. Actually he was born in East Orland, Maine on August 3, 1909. When he was eight years old, his father became president of the University of Nevada. Clark attended high school in Reno and received a B. A. and M. A. from the University of Nevada. After two years devoted to philosophy and literature at the University of Vermont, he accepted a post at Cazenovia, New York as a teacher and basketball coach. With the appearance of The Ox-Bow Incident in 1940, Walter Van Tilburg Clark came into immediate prominence as a writer. His novel was acclaimed by the critics and later was made into what has been acknowledged to be one of the finest motion pictures ever produced in Hollywood. The City of Trembling Leaves, published in 1945, further established Clark's literary reputation as spokesman for the new generation in the West. This novel was followed in 1949 by a Western legend, The Track of the Cat (which also became a movie), and in 1950 by a volume of short stories entitled The Watchful Gods. Then a professor of English at San Francisco State College, Mr. Clark lived with his wife in San Francisco.
The Watchful Gods and Other Stories
This edition of Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s collection of short stories—which includes “Hook,” Clark’s most renowned story—makes these pieces available again to a new generation of readers.Critic John R. Milton once said that Walter Van Tilburg Clark "did perhaps more than anyone else to define (in his fiction) the mode of perception, the acquisition of knowledge, and the style which we tend to call Western." In 1950, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, author of the acclaimed novel The Ox-Bow Incident, published a collection of short stories that had already won distinction in various national magazines. The collection was well received by reviewers, and subsequent critics have noted that these stories reflect both Clark’s literary power and the major concerns of his novels: the interior and intuitive complexities of good and evil, and the fragile, intricate web that connects humankind to the rest of the natural world.A foreword by Ann Ronald, one of the West’s most astute literary critics, sets the stories into the context of Clark’s oeuvre and illuminates the way they reveal crucial characteristics of this writer’s imagination.
Literature & FictionShort Stories & AnthologiesShort StoriesLiterary
RELEASED1972
PUBLISHERBallantine Books
LENGTH190
LANGUAGEEN
Because his three published novels had their locale in the state of Nevada, Walter van Tilburg Clark had come to be considered a Westerner. Actually he was born in East Orland, Maine on August 3, 1909. When he was eight years old, his father became president of the University of Nevada. Clark attended high school in Reno and received a B. A. and M. A. from the University of Nevada. After two years devoted to philosophy and literature at the University of Vermont, he accepted a post at Cazenovia, New York as a teacher and basketball coach. With the appearance of The Ox-Bow Incident in 1940, Walter Van Tilburg Clark came into immediate prominence as a writer. His novel was acclaimed by the critics and later was made into what has been acknowledged to be one of the finest motion pictures ever produced in Hollywood. The City of Trembling Leaves, published in 1945, further established Clark's literary reputation as spokesman for the new generation in the West. This novel was followed in 1949 by a Western legend, The Track of the Cat (which also became a movie), and in 1950 by a volume of short stories entitled The Watchful Gods. Then a professor of English at San Francisco State College, Mr. Clark lived with his wife in San Francisco.
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