STORY HOUR

Michael Chabon and Oakley Hall chat in the library of UC Berkeley. The video is pretty dark, so think of it as a good radio show.

Michael Chabon wrote "Wonder Boys" and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," which won the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is the critically acclaimed "The Yiddish Policemen's Union."

Oakley Hall died last month, on May 12, 2008. Hall wrote "Warlock," a twisted literary western, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1958. Thomas Pynchon once remarked that he and Richard Farina formed a "mini-cult" around this book.

For years, Hall was considered the dean of West Coast fiction. He taught an impressive array of talented writers at UC at Irvine, including Chabon and Richard Ford. Some of his teaching was distilled in "The Art and Craft of Novel Writing," a book Robert Stone says is "simply the best book in print to examine the strategies and necessities involved in the making of a novel."

Oakley Hall, American writer and teacher, 1920-2008