THE MODERN LIBRARY WEBSITE
Check out the Modern Library website at www.modernlibrary.com for:
The Modern Library e-newsletter
A list of our current and upcoming titles and series
Reading Group Guides and exclusive author spotlights
Special features with information on the classics and other paperback series
Excerpts from new releases and other titles
A list of our e-books and information on where to buy them
The Modern Library Editorial Board’s 100 Best Novels and 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century written in the English language
News and announcements
Questions? E-mail us at [email protected]
For questions about examination or desk copies, please visit the Random House Academic Resources site at
www.randomhouse.com/academic
WALTER VAN TILBURG CLARK
Walter Van Tilburg Clark was born August 3, 1909, in East Orland, Maine. In 1917 his father became president of the University of Nevada and the family moved to Reno, where Clark spent his formative years. In 1931, after receiving a master’s degree from the University of Nevada, Clark moved to Vermont to pursue a teaching career. His first book, Ten Women in Gale’s House and Shorter Poems, was published in 1932.
In 1933 Clark was married to Barbara Frances Morse, and in 1940 he published The Ox-Bow Incident. It was enthusiastically praised by critics (Max Gissen, in The New Republic, for instance, called it “a triumph of restraint and workmanship”; Ben Ray Redman, in The Saturday Review, dubbed it “a sinewy, masculine tale that progressively tightens its grip on the reader”; and Clifton Fadiman praised it as “a masterpiece”). The Ox-Bow Incident immediately established Clark’s reputation as a major American writer, one whose moral and artistic seriousness transcended and transformed the Western novel. It was made into a movie in 1943, and it remains a widely read American classic.
Clark published his second novel, The City of Trembling Leaves, in 1945; it was received somewhat more critically than The Ox-Bow Incident. In 1946 Clark returned to the West, taking up a teaching position at the University of Nevada. In 1950 Clark completed The Watchful Gods and Other Stories, his last published work.
Thereafter Clark remained a very active and committed teacher, and though he wrote much, he published little. At the time of his death Clark was working on two novels, and was editing the diaries of nineteenth-century frontiersman Alfred Doten. He died of cancer on November 10, 1971.
The Ox-Bow Incident Page 27
