Hall, O.M. 1920–2008

(Oakley Hall, Oakley M. Hall, Oakley Maxwell Hall, Jason Manor)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born July 1, 1920, in San Diego, CA; died of cancer and renal failure, May 12, 2008, in Nevada City, CA. Educator, novelist, and author. Hall wrote of the American West, past and present, wild and modernized, and of the people great and small who have made it the diverse aggregation of human enterprise that it is today. He wrote at least twenty-five books, mostly novels that span the Western panorama from the time of explorer and healer Cabeza de Vaca in Children of the Sun (1983), to contemporary fiction such as The Downhill Racers (1963), set on the ski slopes of the Sierra Nevada (which was later adapted as a film starring Robert Redford), and Love and War in California: A Novel (2007). Warlock (1958), a novel set in the early days of the West, was nominated for Pulitzer Prize. Hall did not write of the West as it often appears in fiction or films or even history books. His West was not a representation in black and white, but a colorful depiction of life as he saw it, full of complications and contradictions, heroic acts and poor decisions, triumphs and disasters, and, sometimes, surprises. Some of his novels are based on historical characters or events, such as The Coming of the Kid (1985), a satirical treatment of life in the days of gunslinger Billy the Kid. Others are even more fanciful, such as his series of mysteries (1998-2005) featuring a fictionalized version of the nineteenth-century American author Ambrose Bierce. Some early work appeared under the pseudonym Jason Manor. Hall was a product of the University of Iowa; he later taught briefly at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop. He taught English and creative writing at the University of California in Irvine from 1967 to 1990. Concurrently he was the founding director and later executive director of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Hall's literary awards included the Golden Spur of the Western Writers of America and the Wrangler Award of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. He was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1989.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2008, p. B7.