Louis L’Amour by Robert L. Gale
1986; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 21; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wal.1986.0172
ISSN1948-7142
Autores Tópico(s)American Literature and Culture
Resumo258 Western American Literature ments of writers like W. D. Howells, William and Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt, Frederic Remington and Ernest Hemingway (all of whom were important to Wister), and of circumstances like the general unrest of the 1890s, the Spanish American War and World War I (all of which touched his career in important ways). Much of the information presented is irrelevant (a long account of the 1892 Johnson County Cattle War, which Wister neither witnessed nor wrote about, for instance) and some isembarrassingly mistaken (calling Wister’svolume of short fiction, Members of the Family, Members of the Wedding). The book’s treatment of history is inconsequential, and its attempts at literary criticism are worse. If you must buy the book, be sure to spend some time studying the inter esting fellow on the dust jacket, who, very plainly, isnot contained between his unbent hat brim and his unstained bootsoles. You won’t find much evidence of him inside, except as a frontispiece. BEN M. VORPAHL The University of Georgia Louis L’Amour. By Robert L. Gale. (Boston: Twayne, 1985. 153 pages, $13.95.) Louis L’Amour’s writing has elicited a variety of responses—among his masses of loyal readers, slack-jawed admiration; among journalists, celebra tion as a popular entertainer; among literary commentators, irony at best and sneering contempt at worst. In this Twayne volume, Professor Gale does a good job of steering a middle course. He shows respect for L’Amour’sachieve ment, while also focusing on his subject’s excesses and errors. In this short book (119 pages of commentary), Gale offers a brief bio graphical sketch, summarizes the extent of L’Amour’sproductions, assesses the author’s strengths and weaknesses, covers a wide range of secondary material in unobtrusive, entertaining endnotes, and includes a selective, annotated bibliography. The book shows an admirable thoroughness that must have been frustrated by the publisher’s imposed brevity. The work also shows patience and a sense of humor—absolute necessities for anyone conducting a sustained and serious study of L’Amour. About half of the book is devoted to a systematic, meticulously chrono logical survey of L’Amour novels—usually about one paragraph per run-ofthe -mill tale, and longer discussions on major works such as Bendigo Shafter, Comstock Lode, The Lonesome Gods,and The Walking Drum. Some of these brief accounts are delightfully written, combining tongue-in-cheek summary and brief assessments. Gale does not flinch at calling a book “ruinously hasty” (p. 49), “grievous” (p. 71), “undistinguished” (p. 54), “generally splendid” (p. 70), or “a first-rate piece of fiction” (p. 63). Gale devotes a substantial chapter to the family sagas, primarily the Sackett tales, which have enthralled millions. This chapter may be of service Reviews 259 to such readers, but it is somewhat laborious in detailing the Sackett gene alogies and the chronology of their inter-related stories. There seems to have been a compulsion to sort out L’Amour’s sloppy, nonchalant method. Also, this chapter suffers from charitable comparisons between L’Amour and writers of unquestionably bigger league, such as Balzac, Galsworthy, Jules Romains, and Faulkner. Gale is right on target, though, in characterizing L’Amour as melodra matic rather than epic, “as he [L’Amour] tends wrongly to define himself” (p. 96). He also shows a good sense of L’Amour’s egotism and superficial wisdom, and he concludes reasonably that L’Amour is a “self-aggrandizing phenomenon on our current literary scene” (p. 118). He is; and this book should therefore be welcome and useful to general readers of Westerns, to L’Amour enthusiasts, and to Western American literary scholars. JOHN D. NESBITT Eastern Wyoming College jean Stafford. By Mary Ellen Williams Walsh. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985. 113 pages, $16.95.) Professor Walsh of Idaho State University is the first in the field with a book-length study of a superb but neglected writer. This is a small book and its aims are modest: to demonstrate that Stafford’s fiction “is often highly autobiographical,” and to show that “her exploration of the human condition begins with an exploration of what it means to be female.” Arranging her discussion of Stafford’stotal...
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