Walter Van Tilburg Clark
Personal Information
Description
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.
Books
Fifty Best American Short Stories
Contents: Survivors / Elsie Singmaster -- Lost Phoebe / Theodore Dreiser -- Golden honeymoon / Ring W. Lardner -- I'm a fool / Sherwood Anderson -- My old man / Ernest Hemingway -- Telephone call / Dorothy Parker -- Double birthday / Willa Cather -- Faithful wife / Morley Callaghan -- Little wife / William March -- Babylon revisited / F. Scott Fitzgerald-- How beautiful with shoes / Wilbur Daniel Steele -- Resurrection of a life / William Saroyan -- Only the dead know Brooklyn / Thomas Wolfe -- Life in the day of a writer / Tess Slesinger -- Iron City / Lovell Thompson -- Christ in concrete / Pietro Di Donato -- Chrysanthemums / John Steinbeck -- Bright and morning star / Richard Wright -- Hand upon the waters / William Faulkner -- Net / Robert M. Coates -- Nothing ever breaks except the heart / Kay Boyle -- Search through the streets of the city / Irwin Shaw -- Who lived and died believing / Nancy Hale -- Peach stone / Paul Horgan -- Dawn of remembered spring / Jesse Stuart -- Catbird seat / James Thurber -- Of this time, of that place / Lionel Trilling -- Wind and the snow of winter / Walter Van Tilburg Clark -- Enormous radio / John Cheever -- Children are bored on Sunday / Jean Stafford -- NRACP / George P. Elliott -- In Greenwich there are many gravelled walks / Hortense Calisher -- Other foot / Ray Bradbury -- Three players of a summer game / Tennessee Williams -- Mother's tale / James Agee -- Magic barrel / Bernard Malamud -- Circle in the fire / Flannery O'Connor -- First flower / Augusta Wallace Lyons -- Contest for Aaron Gold / Philip Roth -- One ordinary day, with peanuts / Shirley Jackson -- To the wilderness I wander / Frank Butler -- Ledge / Lawrence Sargent Hall -- This morning, this evening, so soon / James Baldwin -- Tell me a riddle / Tillie Olsen -- Old army game / George Garrett -- Pigeon feathers / John Updike -- Sound of a drunken drummer / H.W. Blattner -- Keyhole eye / John Stewart Carter -- Long day's dying / William Eastlake -- Upon the sweeping flood / Joyce Carol Oates.
Fahrenheit 451 and Related Readings
Contains: [Fahrenheit 451]( / novel by Ray Bradbury -- Afterword to the novel / Ray Bradbury -- The portable phonograph / short story by Walter Van Tilburg Clark -- "You have insulted me" / letter by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.-- Burning a book / poem by / William Stafford -- A summer's reading: What is the point of reading? / short story by Bernard Malamud -- The Paterson Public Library / memoir by Judith Ortiz Cofer -- The phoenix / short story by Sylvia Townsend Warner.
Great American Short Stories
The track of the cat
Set in the early 20th century at an isolated ranch in the Sierra Nevada mountains, cattle are disturbed and one family member Curt thinks it is a "black panther" (a puma or mountain lion). He and a brother set out in pursuit of the beast in the midst of winter. Left brotherless by the marauding cat, Curt continues his hunt and has a long and painful demise in the face of a harsh blizzard.
Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow
Hour after westerly / Robert M. Coates -- Housing problem / Henry Kuttner -- Portable phonograph / Walter Van Tilburg Clark -- None before me / Sidney Carroll -- Putzi / Ludwig Bemelmans -- Demon lover / Shirley Jackson -- Miss Winters and the wind / Christine Noble Govan -- Mr. Death and the redheaded woman (the rider on the pale horse) / Helen Eustis -- Jeremy in the wind / Nigel Kneale -- Glass eye / John Keir Cross -- Saint Katy the virgin / John Steinbeck -- Night Flight / Josephine W. Johnson -- Cocoon / John B.L. Goodwin -- Hand / Wessel Hyatt Smitter -- [Sound Machine]( / Roald Dahl -- Laocoön Complex / J.C. Furnas -- I am waiting / Christopher Isherwood. Witnesses / William Sansom -- Enormous radio / John Cheever -- Heartburn / Hortense Calisher -- Supremacy of Uruguay / E.B. White -- Pedestrian / Ray Bradbury -- Note for the milkman / Sidney Carroll -- Eight Mistresses / Jean Hrolda -- In the penal colony / Franz Kafka -- Inflexible Logic / Russell Maloney.
Great American Short Stories [34 stories]
Contains: Winter Dreams What Stumped the Bluejays To Build a Fire A Jury of Her Peers The Storm The Pioneer Hep-Cat The Furnished Room I Can’t Breathe The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber A New England Nun The Chrysanthemums [Tell-tale Heart]( The Man Who Saw the Flood [Barn Burning]( The Yellow Wall Paper Hook The Key The Shore Line at Sunset The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown Coroner’s Inquest Roman Fever The Outcasts of Poker Flat The Last Gas Station The Fifty-First Dragon Sir Edmund Orme The Daemon Lover The Blue Hotel You’ll Never Know, Eear, How Much I Love You The Beauty The Devil and Daniel Webster Winter Night [Bartleby the Scrivener]( Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor The Boarded Window Jug of silver / Truman Capote -- Night club / Katharine Brush -- The lost Phoebe / Theodore Dreiser -- [The most dangerous game]( / Richard Connell -- The magic barrel / Bernard Malamud -- If Grant had been drinking at Appomattox / James Thurber -- The legend of Sleepy Hollow / Washington Irving -- The music of Erich Zann / H.P. Lovecraft -- Enoch and the gorilla / Flannery O'Connor -- The untold lie / Sherwood Anderson -- Horse thief / Erskine Caldwell -- The haunted boy / Carson McCullers -- The valiant woman / J.F. Powers -- The minister's wife / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The rockpile / James Baldwin -- The enchanted bluff / Willa Cather -- O how she laughed / Conrad Aiken.
The watchful gods, and other stories
"These classic stories by the author of The Ox-Bow Incident reflect Clark's literary power and the major themes of his writing career. Clark was one of the modern West's most significant writers, among the first to explore the fragile, intricate interactions between humankind and the West's vast and often haunted landscape, as well as the interior and intuitive complexities of good and evil. This edition includes "Hook," Clark's most renowned story, and a foreword by literary critic Ann Ronald that sets the stories into the context of Clark's oeuvre and career."--Jacket.