Product Description

Set in 1885, The Ox-Bow Incident is a searing and realistic portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American West. First published in 1940, it focuses on the lynching of three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and order are abandoned. The result is an emotionally powerful, vivid, and unforgettable re-creation of the Western novel, which Clark transmuted into a universal story about good and evil, individual and community, justice and human nature. As Wallace Stegner writes, [Clark's] theme was civilization, and he recorded, indelibly, its first steps in a new country.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #402260 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-27
• Released on: 2004-04-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780812972580
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Inside Flap
Set in 1885, The Ox-Bow Incident is a searing and realistic portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American West. First published in 1940, it focuses on the lynching of three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and order are abandoned. The result is an emotionally powerful, vivid, and unforgettable re-creation of the Western novel, which Clark transmuted into a universal story about good and evil, individual and community, justice and human nature. As Wallace Stegner writes, [Clark's] theme was civilization, and he recorded, indelibly, its first steps in a new country.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author
Wallace Stegner's many books include Crossing to Safety, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Angle of Repose.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1


Gil and I crossed the eastern divide about two by the sun. We pulled up for a look at the little town in the big valley and the mountains on the other side, with the crest of the Sierra showing faintly beyond like the rim of a day moon. We didn't look as long as we do sometimes; after winter range, we were excited about getting back to town. When the horses had stopped trembling from the last climb, Gil took off his sombrero, pushed his sweaty hair back with the same hand, and returned the sombrero, the way he did when something was going to happen. We reined to the right and went slowly down the steep stage road. It was a switch-back road, gutted by the run-off of the winter storms, and with brush beginning to grow up in it again since the stage had stopped running. In the pockets under the red earth banks, where the wind was cut off, the spring sun was hot as summer, and the air was full of a hot, melting pine smell. Rivulets of water trickled down shining on the sides of the cuts. The jays screeched in the trees and flashed through the sunlight in the clearings in swift, long dips. Squirrels and chipmunks chittered in the brush and along the tops of snow-sodden logs. On the outside turns, though, the wind got to us and dried the sweat under our shirts and brought up, instead of the hot resin, the smell of the marshy green valley. In the west the heads of a few clouds showed, the kind that come up with the early heat, but they were lying still, and over us the sky was clear and deep.


It was good to be on the loose on that kind of a day, but winter range stores up a lot of things in a man, and spring roundup hadn't worked them all out. Gil and I had been riding together for five years, and had the habit, but just the two of us in that shack in the snow had made us cautious. We didn't dare talk much, and we wanted to feel easy together again. When we came onto the last gentle slope into the valley, we let the horses out and loped across the flat between the marshes where the red-wing blackbirds were bobbing the reeds and twanging. Out in the big meadows on
both sides the long grass was bending in rows under the wind and shining, and then being let upright again and darkening, almost as if a cloud shadow had crossed it. With the wind we could hear the cows lowing in the north, a mellow sound at that distance, like little horns.

It was about three when we rode into Bridger's Wells, past the boarded-up church on the right, with its white paint half cracked off, and the houses back under the cottonwoods, or between rows of flickering poplars, every third or fourth one dead and leafless. Most of the yards were just let run
to long grass, and the buildings were log or unpainted board, but there were a few brick houses, and a few of painted clapboards with gimcracks around the veranda rails. Around them the grass was cut, and lilac bushes were planted in the shade. There were big purple cones of blossom on them. Already Bridger's Wells was losing its stage-stop look and beginning to settle into a half-empty village of the kind that hangs on sometimes where all the real work is spread out on the land around it, and most of the places take care of themselves.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews

Thoughtful western about results of mob justice.
I am an English teacher. I came across reviews of The Ox-Bow Incident while doing a search for a student. I have always regarded this as a book which should be required reading, both for its literary and social value; and when teaching 11th grade, I have used it as a class assignment. The first part of the book which some readers found slow is really quite necessary; it provides the background that shows the reader that these are quite ordinary people - people that one would meet everyday. It contrasts with the violence in which they later become involved. The lynching of three innocent men is really not the crux of the story but rather the pivotal incident which allows the author to lead the reader to see what happens when one abandons law and order and then, when there are tragic results, must come to terms with his own conscience. I would also recommend the film with Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn which is well acted and true to the novel. I have generally found that once students get into the novel, the book generates a good deal of thoughtful writing and discussion.

Lynch Mob Justice Then and Now
I teach a literature class that focuses on crime and punishment in America, especially capital punishment. Among the books and films on this course are Sister Helen Prejean's "Dead Man Walking," Walter Mosely's, "Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned," and "The Ox-Bow Incident."

Since "Ox-Bow" is the oldest of the works in terms of both writing and time period, I begin with it. This story of a mob hysteria that begins in righteousness and boredom and ends with the lynching of three innocent men never fails to stun and intrigue my students, most of whom could at first care less about "Westerns," whether they be novels or films. What gets them primarily is the relentless of the action. Everyone who reads the novel at some point wants to throw it down and shout, "For god's sake, these men are obviously innocent, let them go!" The laconic, collective insanity of the "posse" is so severe that the hangings push the novel's premise very hard, hard enough that the deaths of the men are almost unbelievable. Yet that is Clark's point. Mobs don't reason; one or two men can sway them. And from this dangerous combination, utterly unreasonable events can happen.

The faceless mob that goes along with its leaders is possibly instructive in the debate over capital punishment in America. Other than Japan, which still hangs a few criminals ritualistically each year, the United States is the last industrially-advanced country in the world to execute prisoners. The pro-capital punishment forces in the U.S. tend to be led by politicians and district attorneys with political agendas and egos not entirely unlike Tetley, the leader of the mob in "Ox-Bow." Of course, the faceless populace of America goes along with these leaders - although recent polls show that support for executions is declining here.

"Ox-Bow" was written sixty years ago and takes place 115 years ago (in 1885). Yet it is still an important American novel, driving as it does to the hearts of men and how mindless retributive justice can lead them to horrific acts of violence.

A study in mob psychology.
This classic novel by Clark is a superb study of mob rule; of how normal men can allow their inner anger and authoritarianism to control their judgment and honesty. The story is told in the first person by Art Croft, a trailhand who rides into the small Nevada town of Bridger's Wells in 1885 with his friend Gil Carter. The first chapter (there are only five chapters) has all of the structure of a typical western novel (bar, poker game, fight), yet when a young rider arrives to say that some cattle have been stolen and a man killed, the story about how men let anger goad their actions sets the novel apart from other westerns. It is a true classic. In 1977 the Western Writers of America named it one of the top twenty-five western novels of all time (it was ranked second after Wister's "The Virginian"). The book was also made into a classic film starring Henry Fonda. I recommend this book highly. I really don't understand the comments of the reviewer from Massachusetts (of Jan. 10, 1999). The tale is very realistic.