2DaveWixon
Shocked and Appalled!
It appears that I may be the only person in this thread who is in fact a big fan of Louis L'Amour's books -- so I guess it falls upon me to go into a little more depth, in response to your first query...
LL was extremely prolific, and he had a long career; so there are a lot of his stories to choose from. And in my opinion, they should be divided into three major categories -- of which the second is the best.
LL, after wandering about the west pre-WWI (a time that included working in mining camps and as a boxer -- experiences he drew on a lot in his writings), and then serving as a tank commander in that War, began writing after the war, primarily submitting to the at-that-time large Western magazine market (he wrote some war stories, too). He wrote a large number of short stories, many of which were collected, in a number of volumes, a couple of decades ago (ex.: The Trail to Crazy Man, Law of the Desert-Born). He also started developing his skill in the novel -- but most of those from this period are rather stereotypical and uninteresting. (e.g., The Mountain Valley War, Utah Blaine, Crossfire Trail, Showdown at Yellow Butte)
Somehow -- and I have never tried to ascertain how this came about -- he turned a corner; and at that point his novels became, simply, engrossing. (The first of this wave include The First Fast Draw and Heller With a Gun.)(Hondo, from which would come a John Wayne movie as well as a television series, falls in this period.)
He was great at presenting aspects of Western scenery and history without preaching, a thing perhaps made easier to do by the fact that he had a knack for developing interesting and sympathetic characters that drew the reader into the story.
His novels from this period were short -- a good thing, because the plots were fairly simple, not at all convoluted (he did not pad out his stories) -- in large part because that was what the market wanted (all novels used to be shorter that we've become used to, remember...).
Frankly, his novels from this period are the ones I like best -- it's almost like popcorn: you can open one of them, fall into the story, and get through it in a couple or three hours. Literally, in my opinion, absolutely no one in the Western field is as sheerly readable at this L'Amour! (Silver Canyon, Chancy, Dark Canyon, Taggart, Flint, Lonigan, Matagorda, Fallon, Radigan, Kilrone, North to the Rails, Reilly's Luck, the Key-Lock Man, Shalako...)
In the later part of his career, he did what many successful authors do: his stories became more intricate, and longer; and he began stretching the boundaries he had once established for his work. In part this probably was a natural extension from the fact that a large number of his "short" novels were interrelated, presenting characters from various periods in his methological "Sackett" family...he wanted to take the family's history back in time, showing, apparently, a family tradition of resistance to various forms of oppression and of moving on to new horizons. (The Sky-Liners probably began this sequence, followed by, among others, Ride the Dark Trail, Sackett, Milo Talon, The Lonely Men, Mojave Crossing, Galloway, Lando, Mustang Man; going back in the family's history led to Fair Blows the Wind, which begins in 16th-century England). In this later period, even his non-series Westerns became longer and more complicated, including more of his researches: Bendigo Shafter, The Comstock Lode).
(L'Amour's long novel from the end of this period, The Walking Drum, is in fact not a Western at all, but a tale of merchant caravans in Europe in the late Middle Ages; but it's an interesting tale that evidences a lot of historical research and makes full use of the story-telling ability the author developed in his Western writing -- and I've always suspected that he intended to tie it in, eventually, to his "Sackett" family history...never happened, though...)
LL was not a simple-minded Western "hack," at all: he researched deeply into Western history, geography, and lore, but he looked beyond that field -- on one of the two occasions on which I met him, which occurred early in that change-process, I mentioned that one of his later novels seemed to have SF elements, and asked if he was familiar with the field. He was, he said, and he named some SF authors. His later novels Haunted Mesa and Lonesome Gods both feature substantial "fantasy" elements (I used quotes to recognize that those fantasy elements might be interpretable as "alternate worlds" ideas...)
Oh, yes, lest I forget: near the end of his career he published a book of poetry, which I found rather good: Smoke From These Altars.
There -- I hope that gives you some idea of the man; but please keep in mind that my shelf of his works is six feet long, there's just a lot I have not touched on -- help yourself!
Enjoy!
@2DaveWixon
LL was extremely prolific, and he had a long career; so there are a lot of his stories to choose from. And in my opinion, they should be divided into three major categories -- of which the second is the best.
LL, after wandering about the west pre-WWI (a time that included working in mining camps and as a boxer -- experiences he drew on a lot in his writings), and then serving as a tank commander in that War, began writing after the war, primarily submitting to the at-that-time large Western magazine market (he wrote some war stories, too). He wrote a large number of short stories, many of which were collected, in a number of volumes, a couple of decades ago (ex.: The Trail to Crazy Man, Law of the Desert-Born). He also started developing his skill in the novel -- but most of those from this period are rather stereotypical and uninteresting. (e.g., The Mountain Valley War, Utah Blaine, Crossfire Trail, Showdown at Yellow Butte)
Somehow -- and I have never tried to ascertain how this came about -- he turned a corner; and at that point his novels became, simply, engrossing. (The first of this wave include The First Fast Draw and Heller With a Gun.)(Hondo, from which would come a John Wayne movie as well as a television series, falls in this period.)
He was great at presenting aspects of Western scenery and history without preaching, a thing perhaps made easier to do by the fact that he had a knack for developing interesting and sympathetic characters that drew the reader into the story.
His novels from this period were short -- a good thing, because the plots were fairly simple, not at all convoluted (he did not pad out his stories) -- in large part because that was what the market wanted (all novels used to be shorter that we've become used to, remember...).
Frankly, his novels from this period are the ones I like best -- it's almost like popcorn: you can open one of them, fall into the story, and get through it in a couple or three hours. Literally, in my opinion, absolutely no one in the Western field is as sheerly readable at this L'Amour! (Silver Canyon, Chancy, Dark Canyon, Taggart, Flint, Lonigan, Matagorda, Fallon, Radigan, Kilrone, North to the Rails, Reilly's Luck, the Key-Lock Man, Shalako...)
In the later part of his career, he did what many successful authors do: his stories became more intricate, and longer; and he began stretching the boundaries he had once established for his work. In part this probably was a natural extension from the fact that a large number of his "short" novels were interrelated, presenting characters from various periods in his methological "Sackett" family...he wanted to take the family's history back in time, showing, apparently, a family tradition of resistance to various forms of oppression and of moving on to new horizons. (The Sky-Liners probably began this sequence, followed by, among others, Ride the Dark Trail, Sackett, Milo Talon, The Lonely Men, Mojave Crossing, Galloway, Lando, Mustang Man; going back in the family's history led to Fair Blows the Wind, which begins in 16th-century England). In this later period, even his non-series Westerns became longer and more complicated, including more of his researches: Bendigo Shafter, The Comstock Lode).
(L'Amour's long novel from the end of this period, The Walking Drum, is in fact not a Western at all, but a tale of merchant caravans in Europe in the late Middle Ages; but it's an interesting tale that evidences a lot of historical research and makes full use of the story-telling ability the author developed in his Western writing -- and I've always suspected that he intended to tie it in, eventually, to his "Sackett" family history...never happened, though...)
LL was not a simple-minded Western "hack," at all: he researched deeply into Western history, geography, and lore, but he looked beyond that field -- on one of the two occasions on which I met him, which occurred early in that change-process, I mentioned that one of his later novels seemed to have SF elements, and asked if he was familiar with the field. He was, he said, and he named some SF authors. His later novels Haunted Mesa and Lonesome Gods both feature substantial "fantasy" elements (I used quotes to recognize that those fantasy elements might be interpretable as "alternate worlds" ideas...)
Oh, yes, lest I forget: near the end of his career he published a book of poetry, which I found rather good: Smoke From These Altars.
There -- I hope that gives you some idea of the man; but please keep in mind that my shelf of his works is six feet long, there's just a lot I have not touched on -- help yourself!
Enjoy!
@2DaveWixon
