The Ox-Bow Man

A Biography Of Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Jackson J. Benson

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780874176919, 9780874175899
• eBook ISBN: 9780874176353
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies

Walter Van Tilburg Clark, author of the classic novel The Ox-Bow Incident, was one of the West's most important literary figures, a writer who contributed mightily to the tradition of viewing the West realistically and not through the veil of myth and romance. As a comparatively young man, he published three novels and a collection of short stories, then remained almost silent for the rest of his life, the victim of a paralyzing case of writer's block. Now Jackson J. Benson, one of the country's foremost literary biographers, has produced the first full-length biography of this brilliant, enigmatic, and ultimately tragic figure. Based on widely scattered sources—personal papers and correspondence; interviews with family members, friends, and others; and Clark's unpublished stories and poems—Benson's biography focuses on Clark's intellectual and literary life as a writer, teacher, and westerner. Benson masterfully balances his engaging account of the experiences, people, and settings of Clark's life with a penetrating examination of his complex psyche and the crippling perfectionism that virtually ended Clark's career, as well as offering up a thoughtful assessment of Clark's place in Western writing. In these pages, Clark lives again, a warm, complex, and ultimately anguished human being. Benson's remarkably astute and sensitive biography is destined to be the book that readers and researchers consult first for information about this major western writer.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One. From Maine to Nevada
• Chapter Two. Two Major Influences—Robert Cole Caples and Robinson Jeffers
• Chapter Three. Marriage, Children, and Cazenovia Central School
• Chapter Four. The Ox-Bow Incident and the Western Novel
• Chapter Five. Writer of Stories, Poems, and Letters
• Chapter Six. The Ox-Bow Movie and The City of Trembling Leaves
• Chapter Seven. Back to Nevada and The Track of the Cat
• Chapter Eight. Virginia City and The Watchful Gods and Other Stories
• Chapter Nine. Away from Home—Frustration and Longing
• Chapter Ten. From Iowa City, to Omaha, and to Columbia, Missouri
• Chapter Eleven. Two Resignations, Son and Father
• Chapter Twelve. Alone in Missoula and in Palo Alto
• Chapter Thirteen. The Move to Montana and Uncompleted Writing Projects
• Chapter Fourteen. On to Mill Valley and to Teaching at San Francisco State
• Chapter Fifteen. Back to Nevada and Becoming Alf Doten
• Chapter Sixteen. Teaching and Telling Stories in Reno
• Chapter Seventeen. The Doten Journals and Declining Health
• Chapter Eighteen. The Sweet Promised Land of Nevada
• Notes and Documentation
• Index