Walter Van Tilburg Clark was born on August 3, 1909, and died on November 10, 1971. He was an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and teacher. He is considered one of Nevada's most important literary figures of the 20th century. In 1988, Clark became the first person inducted into the "Nevada Writers Hall of Fame," along with Robert Laxalt, who was Clark's student and another well-known Nevada author from the same time period. Two of Clark's novels, The Ox-Bow Incident and The Track of the Cat, were turned into movies. As a writer, Clark used common elements of Western stories to examine the human mind and explore important philosophical questions.

Biography

Clark was born in East Orland, Maine, but grew up in Reno, Nevada. He graduated from Reno High School in 1926. Clark attended college at the University of Nevada, Reno, where his father, Walter Ernest Clark, was the president. In 1933, Clark married Barbara Frances Morse and moved to Cazenovia, New York. There, he taught high school English and started writing fiction.

Clark’s first published novel, The Ox-Bow Incident (1940), was successful and is often considered the first modern Western. It avoids the typical overused phrases and predictable stories common in the genre. The novel tells the story of a lynch mob that mistakes three innocent travelers for cattle rustlers suspected of murder. After the travelers are hanged, the lynch mob learns they killed the wrong people. The book explores themes such as frontier law and responsibility. It received praise and earned Clark recognition as a writer of Westerns. In 1943, the novel was made into a movie starring Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan.

Between 1945 and 1949, Clark published two more novels: The City of Trembling Leaves and The Track of the Cat. In 1950, a collection of his short stories, The Watchful Gods and Other Stories, was released. His short stories appeared in national magazines during the 1940s and gained national recognition. He won the O. Henry Prize five times in a row from 1941 to 1945. Some of his stories, such as “Hook” and “The Wind and the Snow of Winter,” have been included in many story collections as classic examples of the genre. His short story, “The Portable Phonograph,” describes people living after a war (not a nuclear war, as some believe, since it was written in 1941). It is also well known. Two Hollywood films were based on Clark’s work. One, The Ox-Bow Incident, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. The other film, Track of the Cat, was based on Clark’s novel The Track of the Cat (the film’s title omits the word “the” used in the book’s title).

After 1950, Clark wrote less frequently and published no more fiction during the next two decades. He focused instead on teaching and giving lectures. From 1954 to 1956, he taught creative writing at the University of Montana in Missoula. Students admired his teaching and his unusual clothing, which included a blue turtleneck shirt, maroon corduroy jacket, grey slacks, and blue socks that did not change during the term. In 1955, Clark began teaching at a writer’s workshop at San Francisco State University. He moved there in 1956 to work full-time and help start a Creative Writing Program. He stayed there until 1962.

Clark returned to Reno in 1962 to work as a writer-in-residence at the university. He lived there until his death from cancer in Virginia City, Nevada, on November 10, 1971, at age 62. During his final ten years, he edited The Journals of Alfred Doten. He died nearly two years after his wife, Barbara (Frances Morse) Clark, who also died of cancer. His biographer, Jackson J. Benson, wrote about this in The Ox-Bow Man. In 1988, Clark was chosen, along with Robert Laxalt, to be the first writer inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, created by the Friends of the University of Nevada Libraries.

Books by Clark

• The Ox-Bow Incident, Random House (New York, NY), 1940; published with an introduction by Clifton Fadiman, Heritage, 1942; published with an afterword by W. P. Webb, Armed Services Edition, 1943; New American Library (New York, NY), 1960; reprinted by Modern Library Paperback Classics (New York, NY), 2001.
• The City of Trembling Leaves, Random House (New York, NY), 1945; published as Tim Hazard, Kimber (England), Armed Services Edition, 1946; 1951 (an abridged version). Reprinted as part of the Western Literature Series, University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 1991, 2003. With a "Foreword" by Robert Laxalt.
• The Track of the Cat, Random House (New York, NY), 1949; reprinted by University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 1993, 2003; with an "Afterword" by Walter Van Tilburg Clark.
• The Watchful Gods and Other Stories, Random House (New York, NY), 1950. (Contains "Hook," "The Wind and the Snow of Winter," "The Rapids," "The Anonymous," "The Buck in the Hills," "Why Don't You Look Where You're Going?," "The Indian Well," "The Fish Who Could Close His Eyes," "The Portable Phonograph," and "The Watchful Gods"). Reprinted by University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 2004. With a "Foreword" by Ann Ronald.

• Christmas Comes to Hjalsen (1930)
• "Dawn, Washoe Valley; Big Dusk; Pyramid Lake" (1932)
• Ten Women in Gale's House: And Shorter Poems (1932)
• "To a Friend with New Shoes" (1934)

• (Author of foreword) Robert Cole Caples: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1927–63 (catalog), [Reno, NV], 1964.
• (Editor) The Journals of Alfred Doten, archived 2015-09-21 at the Wayback Machine, 1849–1903, three volumes, University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 1973. Online edition username and password: doten.
• Walter Van Tilburg Clark: Critiques, edited by Charlton Laird; University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 1983. In this volume, some of Clark's works were collected and grouped with essays about Clark and his writings.