Louis L'Amour

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Louis L'Amour (March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was an American author. L'Amour's books, primarily Western fiction, remain enormously popular, and most have gone through multiple printings. At the time of his death all 101 of his works were in print (86 novels, 14 short-story collections and one full-length work of nonfiction) and he was considered "one of the world's most popular writers"^[1][2]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Reception 3 Awards 4 Death 5 Novels 6 Sackett novels 7 Talon and Chantry novels 8 Kilkenny novels 9 Hopalong Cassidy novels 10 Collections of short stories 11 Short stories 12 Non-fiction books 13 Poetry 14 Compilations with other authors 15 Film adaptations 16 Notes 17 See also 18 External links

[edit] Biography

He was of French-Canadian background, born in Jamestown, North Dakota.

Louis L'Amour was not only one of the World's best-selling storytellers; in many ways he typified the consummate Western man, proud of his accomplishments and shy in his remembrances.^[3]

L'Amour credited his work ethic to his parents. L'Amour's father's name was spelled LaMoore, but Louis changed it to L'Amour. L'Amour's father, a veterinarian and farm machinery salesman, was also involved in local politics. L'Amour played cowboys and Indians in the family barn, which served as his father's veterinary hospital, and did more than his share of reading — particularly G. A. Henty, a British author of historical boys' novels during the late nineteenth century. L'Amour said, "[Henty's works] enabled me to go into school with a great deal of knowledge that even my teachers didn't have about wars and politics."^[3][1]

L'Amour said that luck had nothing to do with his successes, not long before his death in June 1988. "Nor have I had any connections or breaks that I did not create for myself."^[3] His self-education resulted in academic boredom, so he left school and Jamestown at fifteen after completing the tenth grade. By hitchhiking and riding the rails, he traveled to Oklahoma City to visit an older brother who was the governor's secretary, but he soon moved on. He then found work in West Texas skinning cattle that had died from a prolonged drought. His boss was a seventy-nine-year-old wrangler who had been raised by Apaches, who taught young Louis about tracking and using herbs. His next job was baling hay in New Mexico's Pecos Valley, across the road from Billy the Kid's grave. There he met Judge Cole in Ruidoso and became acquainted with some thirty former gunfighters, rangers, and outlaws in the area.^[3]

L'Amour continued as an itinerant worker, traveling the world as a merchant seaman until the start of World War II. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army as a tank destroyer commander. As early as the 1930s he began to sell stories to pulp magazines. After serving in World War II, he continued to write stories for magazines. In the 1950s, he began to sell novels. He eventually wrote more than one hundred novels, selling more than 225 million copies that were translated into dozens of languages.^[1]

During the 1960s, L'Amour intended to build a working town typical of those of the nineteenth-century Western frontier, with buildings with false fronts situated in rows on either side of an unpaved main street and flanked by wide boardwalks before which, at various intervals, were watering troughs and hitching posts. The town, to be named Shalako after the protagonist of one of L'Amour's novels, was to have featured shops and other businesses that were typical of such towns: a barber shop, a hotel, a dry goods store, one or more saloons, a church, a one-room schoolhouse, etc. It would have offered itself as a filming location for Hollywood motion pictures concerning the Wild West. However, funding for the project fell through, and Shalako was never built.^[4]

[edit] Reception

It has been noted that the quality of his books could be "uneven" and plots "rely on coincidences".^[2]One professor is quoted as saying, "L'Amour, rather like Stephen Crane and the early Faulkner, could have profited from basic freshman English instruction"^[2]

When interviewed not long before his death, he was asked which among his books he liked best. His reply:

“

I like them all. There's bits and pieces of books that I think are good. I never rework a book. I'd rather use what I've learned on the next one, and make it a little bit better. The worst of it is that I'm no longer a kid and I'm just now getting to be a good writer. Just now.[5]

”

[edit] Awards

In 1982 he won the Congressional (National) Gold Medal, and in 1984 President Ronald Reagan awarded L'Amour the Medal of Freedom. L'Amour is also a recipient of the state of North Dakota's Roughrider Award.

[edit] Death

L'Amour died from lung cancer on June 10, 1988 and was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.^[1] His autobiography detailing his years as an itinerant worker in the west, Education of a Wandering Man, was published posthumously in 1989.

[edit] Novels

(including series novels eg the Sackett novels)

• Westward the Tide (London, 1950; first US publication 1976)
• The Riders of High Rock (1951)
• The Rustlers of West Fork (1951)
• The Trail to Seven Pines (1951)
• Trouble Shooter (1952)
• Hondo (1953)
• Showdown at Yellow Butte (1953)
• Crossfire Trail (1954)
• Heller with a Gun (1954)
• Kilkenny (1954)
• Utah Blaine (1954)
• Guns of the Timberlands (1955)
• To Tame a Land (1955)
• The Burning Hills (1956)
• Silver Canyon (1956)
• Last Stand at Papago Wells (1957)
• Sitka (1957)
• The Tall Stranger (1957)
• Radigan (1958)
• The First Fast Draw (1959)
• Taggart (1959)
• The Daybreakers (1960)
• Flint (1960)
• Sackett (1961)
• High Lonesome (1962)
• Killoe (1962)
• Lando (1962)
• Shalako (1962)
• Catlow (1963)
• Dark Canyon (1963)
• Fallon (1963)
• How the West Was Won (1963)
• Hanging Woman Creek (1964)
• Mojave Crossing (1964)
• The High Graders (1965)
• The Key-Lock Man (1965)
• Kiowa Trail (1965)
• The Sackett Brand (1965)
• The Broken Gun (1966)
• Kid Rodelo (1966)
• Kilrone (1966)
• Mustang Man (1966)
• Matagorda (1967)
• The Sky-Liners (1967)
• Chancy (1968)
• Conagher (1968)
• Down the Long Hills (1968)
• The Empty Land (1969)
• The Lonely Men (1969)
• Galloway (1970)
• The Man Called Noon (1970)
• Reilly's Luck (1970)
• Brionne (1971)
• The Ferguson Rifle (1971)
• North to the Rails (1971)
• Tucker (1971)
• Under the Sweetwater Rim (1971)
• Callaghen (1972)
• Ride the Dark Trail (1972)
• The Man from Skibbereen (1973)
• The Quick and the Dead (1973)
• Treasure Mountain (1973)
• The Californios (1974)
• Sackett's Land (1974)
• Man From the Broken Hills (1975)
• Over on the Dry Side (1975)
• Rivers West (1975)
• The Rider of Lost Creek (1976)
• To the Far Blue Mountains (1976)
• Where the Long Grass Blows (1976)
• Borden Chantry (1977)
• Bendigo Shafter (1978)
• Fair Blows the Wind (1978)
• The Mountain Valley War (1978)
• The Iron Marshal (1979)
• The Proving Trail (1979)
• Lonely on the Mountain (1980)
• The Warrior's Path (1980)
• Comstock Lode (1981)
• Milo Talon (1981)
• The Cherokee Trail (1982)
• The Shadow Riders (1982)
• The Lonesome Gods (1983)
• Ride the River (1983)
• Son of a Wanted Man (1984)
• The Walking Drum (1984)
• Jubal Sackett (1985)
• Passin' Through (1985)
• Last of the Breed (1986)
• West of Pilot Range (1986)
• A Trail to the West (1986)
• The Haunted Mesa (1987)

[edit] Sackett novels

In fictional story order (not the order written). [1]

• Sackett’s Land - Barnabas Sackett
• To the Far Blue Mountains - Barnabas Sackett
• The Warrior’s Path - Kin Ring Sackett
• Jubal Sackett - Jubal Sackett, Itchakomi Ishai
• Ride the River - Echo Sackett (Aunt to Orrin, Tyrel, and William Tell Sackett)
• The Daybreakers - Orrin and Tyrel Sackett, Cap Rountree, Tom Sunday
• Lando - Orlando Sackett, the Tinker
• Sackett - William Tell Sackett, Cap Rountree
• Mojave Crossing - William Tell Sackett and Nolan Sackett
• The Sackett Brand - William Tell Sackett, and the whole passel of Sacketts!
• The Skyliners - Flagan and Galloway Sackett
• The Lonely Men - William Tell Sackett
• Mustang Man - Nolan Sackett
• Galloway - Galloway and Flagan Sackett
• Treasure Mountain - William Tell Sackett
• Ride the Dark Trail - Logan Sackett
• Lonely on the Mountain - William Tell, Orrin and Tyrel Sackett

There are also two Sackett-related short stories:

• "The Courting of Griselda" (available in End of the Drive)
• "Booty for a Badman" (available in War Party)

Sacketts are also involved in the plot of 7 other novels:

• Bendigo Shafter (Ethan Sackett)
• Dark Canyon (William Tell Sackett)
• Borden Chantry (Joe Sackett, killed in ambush that B Chantry solves murder)
• Passin' Through (Parmalee Sackett is mentioned as defending a main character in the book)
• Son of a Wanted Man (Tyrel Sackett)
• Catlow (Ben Cowhan marries a cousin of Tyrel Sackett’s wife)
• Man from the Broken Hills (Em Talon a main character in this book was in fact born a Sackett. Mentions William Tell Sackett)

[edit] Talon and Chantry novels

• Borden Chantry
• Fair Blows the Wind
• The Ferguson Rifle
• The Man from the Broken Hills (Em Talon a main character in the book was born a Sackett)
• Milo Talon (Is a cousin to the Sacketts through his mother Em Talon)
• North to the Rails
• Over on the Dry Side
• Rivers West

[edit] Kilkenny novels

Interestingly, the last story (in fictional story order) was published more than 20 years before the other installments.

• The Rider of Lost Creek (1976)
• The Mountain Valley War (1978), which previously been released as a magazine novella, entitled A Man Called Trent and was re-written for the Kilkenny trilogy. A Man Called Trent is included in the short story collection entitled The Rider of the Ruby Hills (1986)
• Kilkenny (1954)
• A Gun for Kilkenny Is a short story featuring Kilkenny as a minor character, from the collection Dutchman's Flat (1986).
• Monument Rock, a novella in the story collection of the same name.

[edit] Hopalong Cassidy novels

Originally published pseudonymously as "Tex Burns".

• The Riders of High Rock
• The Rustlers of West Fork
• The Trail to Seven Pines
• Trouble Shooter

[edit] Collections of short stories

• War Party (1975)
• The Strong Shall Live (1980)
• Yondering (1980; revised edition 1989)
• Buckskin Run (1981)
• Bowdrie (1983)
• The Hills of Homicide (1983)
• Law of the Desert Born (1983)
• Bowdrie's Law (1984)
• Night Over the Solomons (1986)
• The Rider of the Ruby Hills (1986)
• Riding for the Brand (1986)
• The Trail to Crazy Man (1986)
• Dutchman's Flat (1986)
• Lonigan (1988)
• Long Ride Home (1989)
• The Outlaws of Mesquite (1990)
• West from Singapore (1991)
• Valley of the Sun (1995)
• West of Dodge (1996)
• End of the Drive (1997)
• Monument Rock (1998)
• Beyond the Great Snow Mountains (1999)
• Off the Mangrove Coast (2000)
• May There Be a Road (2001)
• With These Hands (2002)
• From the Listening Hills (2003)
• Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: The Frontier Stories - Volume 1
• Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: The Frontier Stories - Volume 2
• Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: The Frontier Stories - Volume 3
• Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: The Adventure Stories - Volume 4
• Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: The Frontier Stories - Volume 5
• Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: - Volume 6 coming october 28, 2008

[edit] Short stories

n.b. selected

• "Trap of Gold"

[edit] Non-fiction books

• Education Of A Wandering Man
• Frontier
• The Sackett Companion
• A Trail Of Memories: The Quotations Of Louis L'Amour (compiled by Angelique L'Amour)

[edit] Poetry

• Smoke From This Altar

[edit] Compilations with other authors

• The Golden West
• Stagecoach

[edit] Film adaptations

• Heller in Pink Tights, 1960. Starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren. Directed by George Cukor. Adapted from Heller With a Gun.
  
• The Quick and the Dead, 1987. Starring Sam Elliott and Kate Capshaw. Directed by Robert Day.
  
• Conagher, 1991. Starring Sam Elliott and Katherine Ross. Directed by Reynoaldo Villalobos.
  
• Crossfire Trail, 2001. Starring Tom Selleck, Virginia Madsen, and Wilford Brimley. Directed by Simon Wincer. TV Movie by TNT.
• The Diamond of Jeru (2001) (TV) (short story)... aka Louis L'Amour's The Diamond of Jeru (USA: complete title)
• Crossfire Trail (2001) (TV) (book)... aka Louis L'Amour's 'Crossfire Trail' (USA)
• Shaughnessy (1996) (TV) (novel "The Iron Marshal")... aka Louis L'Amour's Shaughnessy (Australia), and, Louis L'Amour's Shaughnessy the Iron Marshal (USA: DVD box title)
• Conagher (1991) (TV) (novel)... aka Louis L'Amour's Conagher
• The Quick and the Dead (1987) (TV) (novel)
• Louis L'Amour's Down the Long Hills (1986) (TV) (novel)... aka Down the Long Hills
• Five Mile Cree (2 episodes, 1984)
• Walk Like a Man (1984) TV Episode (inspiration "The Cherokee Trail")
• When the Kookaburra Cries (1984) TV Episode (inspiration "The Cherokee Trail")
• The Shadow Riders (1982) (TV) (novel)... aka Louis L'Amour's The Shadow Riders
• The Cherokee Trail (1981) (TV) (story)... aka Louis L'Amour's The Cherokee Trail (USA)
• Disneyland (1 episode, 1981)
  • ... aka Disney's Wonderful World (USA: new title), The Disney Sunday Movie (USA: new title)
  • .. aka The Magical World of Disney (USA: new title)
  • .. aka The Wonderful World of Disney (USA: new title)
  • .. aka Walt Disney (USA: new title)
  • ... aka Walt Disney Presents (USA: new title)
  • .. aka Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (USA: new title)
• The Sacketts (1979) (TV) (novels "The Daybreakers" and "Sackett")... aka The Daybreakers (USA: cut version)
• Hombre llamado Noon, Un (1973) (novel)... aka The Man Called Noon (Philippines: English title) (UK) (USA)& Lo chiamavano Mezzogiorno (Italy)
• Cancel My Reservation (1972) (novel "The Broken Gun")
• Catlow (1971) (novel "Catlow")
• Shalako (1968) (novel)... aka Man nennt mich Shalako (West Germany)
• Hondo (17 episodes, 1967)
  • - Hondo and the Rebel Hat (1967) TV Episode (character)
  • - Hondo and the Apache Trail (1967) TV Episode (character)
  • - Hondo and the Gladiators (1967) TV Episode (character)
  • - Hondo and the Hanging Town (1967) TV Episode (character)
  • - Hondo and the Death Drive (1967) TV Episode (character)
  • ....(12 more)
• Hondo and the Apaches (1967) (TV) (story "The Gift of Cochise")
• Kid Rodelo (1966) (novel)
• Taggart (1964) (novel)
• Guns of the Timberland (1960) (novel)
• Heller in Pink Tights (1960) (novel "Heller With A Gun")
• Apache Territory (1958) (novel "Last Stand at Papago Wells")
• The Tall Stranger (1957) (novel "Showdown Trail"), The Rifle (USA) and Walk Tall (USA: alternative title)
• Maverick (1 episode, 1957)
• Stage West (1957) TV Episode (story)
• Sugarfoot (1 episode, 1957)... aka Tenderfoot (UK)
• The Strange Land (1957) TV Episode (story)
• Utah Blaine (1957) (novel)
• The Burning Hills (1956) (novel)
• Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (1 episode, 1956)... aka Herald Playhouse (USA: syndication title, Schlitz Playhouse (USA: new title)and The Playhouse (USA: syndication title)
• Flowers for Jenny (1956) TV Episode (story)
• Blackjack Ketchum, Desperado (1956) (novel "Kilkenny")
• "City Detective" (1 episode, 1955)
• Man Down, Woman Screaming (1955) TV Episode (story)
• Stranger on Horseback (1955) (story)
• Climax! (1 episode, 1955)... aka Climax Mystery Theater (USA)
• The Mojave Kid (1955) TV Episode (story)
• Treasure of Ruby Hills (1955) (story)
• Four Guns to the Border (1954) (story)... aka Shadow Valley (USA)
• Hondo (1953) (story "The Gift of Cochise")
• East of Sumatra (1953) (story)

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Sackett Family
• Hopalong Cassidy
• The Louis L'Amour Companion by Robert Weinberg

[edit] External links

• Louis L'Amour at the Internet Book List
• Louis L'Amour at the Internet Movie Database
• Louis L'Amour official website
• 1984 audio interview with Louis L'Amour by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio at Wired for Books.
• Renaissance Man of Western Novels - An Interview by Hank Nuwer
• Maverick Writers 1987 interview with Louis L'Amour at his home in Los Angeles by Jean Henry Mead.
• Works by or about Louis L'Amour in libraries (WorldCat catalog)