Writing
Hall's first writing was fiction. His first novel, On the Way to the Sky, is set in Utah and explores themes that surface frequently in his work: small-town life, surviving a broken home, Mormonism, hunting and fishing, music, and rodeo. Writer Mag Dimond asked Hall in 1997 which of his books were his favorite and why. "His first choice was On the Way to the Sky, the book he wrote when he was about twenty-one, a steely, sweet autobiographical novel he didn't publish until almost six years later. About this book he simply says, 'I was able to define my past, get it behind me where it belongs.' . . . This stunning little novel is rich in characters suggested by real people . . . written in startlingly original language." The New York Times Book Review noted, "Mr. Hall invents distinctive family backgrounds for his three heroes and arranges them into an impressionistic chronicle." In Rock and Roll Retreat Blues, his second novel, the humor is sardonic; it is a commentary on the world of rock and roll and the culture it creates and drives. According to a Publisher's Weekly review, "The book is chock-full of familiar contemporary figures—Hell's Angels, revolutionaries, people spaced out on religion or brown rice or drugs, even such exotics as the "plaster casters." Yet Hall is fresh and funny, and he makes Artie's search for his own psyche very real and very much a part of our times. (Excerpts ran in Penthouse)." The third novel, The Master of Oakwindsor, set in 1908 England, explores the clash between rural England and a new and darker industrial Britain and between two families. Bestseller magazine writes, "After three successful novels and an Academy Award–winning screenplay, it is no surprise that Hall's novel brings a fresh outlook to the overworked genre of historical romance. The Master of Oakwindsor is a diverse and brilliantly colored portrait of England and Europe at the turn of the century, bristling with event and detail."
Hall's numerous books of nonfiction, which include his photographs, treat various subjects, including rock and roll, rodeo, cowboy life, bodybuilding, prison, the historic churches of the Southwest, and the border between the United States and Mexico. "The Border, about desperate lives lived on both sides of the United States–Mexico border, is at once a compelling piece of work, a lucid and personal rendering of Hall's own border experiences both in words and 'pictures.'" Let 'Er Buck is "a really deep look at rodeo and some rodeo people. Most of us have seen what goes on in the arena; this book mostly deals with the rest of it. . . . What has said with his typewriter and his camera is bound to be controversial." About Hall's book In New Mexico Light, Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, wrote: "the thoughtful text in this book testimony to the work of an artist who has dedicated his life to observing the rich cultural texture of New Mexico." In New Mexico Magazine, Jon Bowman writes, "Hall accompanies the images with some of the most lucid, engaging essays on the photographic process you'll ever read. He's a straight-shooter all the way. There's no mention of f-stops or arcane technical knowledge, but rather some fine storytelling, mixing in roughly equal doses of the sacred and the profane."
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