Some time last week, an older gentleman came into the library looking for a western novel. He said he hadn't read any before, but wanted to try out something a bit different from his usual authors. I showed him the western fiction section, and decided my best recommendation for a new reader would be a collection of short stories by Louis L'Amour. He stopped in again today, returned the book, reported it as "excellent," and thanked me for my suggestion. It made my day. Finding the right book for the right reader is always our goal as librarians.
If you're unfamiliar with the genre, westerns are adventure stories set in the American frontier. While it could be argued that the James Fenimore Cooper Leatherstocking Tales were proto-westerns, or the "Penny Dreadfuls" first published in the 1860s were the first westerns, most folks consider novels written after 1900 and set in the first few decades after the end of the US Civil War (1865) as typical. Plots may include range wars between cattle barons and homesteaders, conflicts with native tribes, vigilantes bringing cattle rustlers or bank robbers to justice, and the more mundane trouble of driving cattle from the plains of Texas to the railways up north.
Louis L'Amour got his start in fiction by publishing short stories in various pulp magazines in the late 1930s, coinciding with the rise of radio dramas which often included cowboy adventures like The Lone Ranger. Unlike many authors, he lived an adventurous life himself. He grew up in North Dakota on the Great Plains, he worked as a merchant seaman, and was even a professional boxer. After World War II, he wrote more short stories and published his first novels as radio and television westerns continued to grow in popularity. While best known for his western fiction, he also wrote poetry, an autobiography, a science fiction novel, and stories about merchant marine adventures.
His books tend to be a bit formulaic, but in a polished way rather than a cut-and-paste hack job. The action is solid, the descriptions colorful, and the pacing is quick, but not hurried, if that makes sense. There is violence aplenty, but not especially gory in its descriptions. Romance tends to be fairly chaste. I would even recommend them for tween and teen readers who need more of a challenge than the usual grade-level assignments.
Have you read Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, Owen Wister, or any other classic western authors? Who is your favorite, and why?
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