L'Amour, Louis 1908–1988

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L'Amour, Louis 1908–1988

(Tex Burns, a house pseudonym, Jim Mayo)

PERSONAL: Born March 28, 1908, in Jamestown, ND; died June 10, 1988, of lung cancer in Los Angeles, CA; son of Louis Charles (a veterinarian and farm-machinery salesman) and Emily (Dearborn) LaMoore; married Katherine Elizabeth Adams, February 19, 1956; children: Beau Dearborn, Angelique Gabrielle. Education: Self-educated.

CAREER: Author and lecturer. Held numerous jobs, including positions as longshoreman, lumberjack, miner, elephant handler, hay shocker, boxer, flume builder, and fruit picker. Lecturer at many universities including University of Oklahoma, Baylor University, University of Southern California, and University of Redlands. Military service: U.S. Army, 1942–46; became first lieutenant.

MEMBER: Writers Guild of America (West), Western Writers of America, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, American Siam Society, California Writers Guild, California Academy of Sciences.

AWARDS, HONORS: Western Writers of America Award-Novel, 1969, for Down the Long Hills; LL.D., Jamestown College, 1972; Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, North Dakota, 1972; National Book Award, 1980, for Bendigo Shafter; Buffalo Bill Award, 1981; LL.D., University of LaVerne and North Dakota State University, both in 1981; Distinguished Newsboy Award, 1981; National Genealogical Society Award, 1981; Congressional Gold Medal, 1983; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1984; LL.D., Pepperdine University, 1984.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Westward the Tide, World's Work (Surrey, England), 1950, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

Hondo (expanded version of his story, "The Gift of Co-chise"; also see below), Gold Medal (Greenwich, CT), 1953, reprinted with introduction by Michael T. Marsden, Gregg (Boston, MA), 1978, original reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

Crossfire Trail (also see below), Ace Books (New York, NY), 1954, reprinted with introduction by Kieth Jarrod, Gregg (Boston, MA), 1980, original reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

Kilkenny (also see below), Ace Books (New York, NY), 1954, reprinted with introduction by Wesley Laing, Gregg (Boston, MA), 1980, original reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

Heller with a Gun (also see below), Gold Medal (Greenwich, CT), 1954, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

To Tame a Land, Fawcett (Boston, MA), 1955, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

Guns of the Timberlands, Jason (New York, NY), 1955, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

The Burning Hills, Jason (New York, NY), 1956, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

Silver Canyon (expanded version of his story, "Riders of the Dawn"), Avalon (New York, NY), 1956, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1981.

Last Stand at Papago Wells (also see below), Gold Medal (Greenwich, CT), 1957, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

The Tall Stranger (also see below), Fawcett (Boston, MA), 1957, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

Sitka, Appleton (New York, NY), 1957, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

Radigan, Bantam (New York, NY), 1958, reprinted, 1986.

The First Fast Draw (also see below), Bantam (New York, NY), 1959, reprinted, G.K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1989.

Taggart, Bantam (New York, NY), 1959, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1982.

Flint, Bantam (New York, NY), 1960, reprinted, 1985.

Shalako, Bantam (New York, NY), 1962, reprinted, 1985.

Killoe (also see below), Bantam (New York, NY), 1962, reprinted, 1986.

High Lonesome, Bantam (New York, NY), 1962, reprinted, 1982.

How the West Was Won (based on the screenplay by James R. Webb), Bantam (New York, NY), 1963, reprinted, Thorndike (Waterville, ME), 1988.

Fallon, Bantam (New York, NY), 1963, reprinted, 1982.

Catlow, Bantam (New York, NY), 1963, reprinted, 1984.

Dark Canyon, Bantam (New York, NY), 1963, reprinted, 1985.

Hanging Woman Creek, Bantam (New York, NY), 1964, reprinted, 1984.

Kiowa Trail (also see below), Bantam (New York, NY), 1965.

The High Graders, Bantam (New York, NY), 1965, reprinted, 1989.

The Key-Lock Man (also see below), Bantam (New York, NY), 1965, reprinted, 1986.

Kid Rodelo, Bantam (New York, NY), 1966, reprinted, 1986.

Kilrone, Bantam (New York, NY), 1966, reprinted, 1981.

The Broken Gun, Bantam (New York, NY), 1966, reprinted, 1984.

Matagorda, Bantam (New York, NY), 1967, reprinted, 1985.

Down the Long Hills, Bantam (New York, NY), 1968, reprinted, 1984.

Chancy, Bantam (New York, NY), 1968, reprinted, 1984.

Conagher, Bantam (New York, NY), 1969, reprinted, 1982.

The Empty Land, Bantam (New York, NY), 1969, reprinted, 1985.

The Man Called Noon, Bantam (New York, NY), 1970, reprinted, 1985.

Reilly's Luck, Bantam (New York, NY), 1970, reprinted, 1985.

Brionne, Bantam (New York, NY), 1971, reprinted, 1989.

Under the Sweetwater Rim, Bantam (New York, NY), 1971.

Tucker, Bantam (New York, NY), 1971.

Callaghen, Bantam (New York, NY), 1972.

The Quick and the Dead, Bantam (New York, NY), 1973, revised edition, 1979.

The Man from Skibbereen, G.K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1973.

The Californios, Saturday Review Press (New York, NY), 1974.

The Rider of Lost Creek (based on one of his short stories), Bantam (New York, NY), 1976.

Where the Long Grass Blows, Bantam (New York, NY), 1976.

The Mountain Valley War (based on one of his short stories), Bantam (New York, NY), 1978.

Bendigo Shafter, Dutton (New York, NY), 1978.

The Iron Marshall, Bantam (New York, NY), 1979.

The Proving Trail, Bantam (New York, NY), 1979.

Lonely on the Mountain, Bantam (New York, NY), 1980.

Comstock Lode, Bantam (New York, NY), 1981.

The Cherokee Trail, Bantam (New York, NY), 1982.

The Shadow Riders, Bantam (New York, NY), 1982.

The Lonesome Gods, Bantam (New York, NY), 1983.

Son of a Wanted Man, Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

The Walking Drum, Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

Passin' Through, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

Last of the Breed, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

West of the Pilot Range, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

A Trail to the West, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

The Haunted Mesa, Bantam (New York, NY), 1987.

"SACKETT FAMILY" SERIES; NOVELS

The Daybreakers, Bantam (New York, NY), 1960, reprinted, 1984.

Sackett, Bantam (New York, NY), 1961, reprinted, 1984.

Lando, Bantam (New York, NY), 1962, reprinted, 1985.

Mojave Crossing, Bantam (New York, NY), 1964, reprinted, 1985.

The Sackett Brand, Bantam (New York, NY), 1965, reprinted, 1985.

Mustang Man, Bantam (New York, NY), 1966, reprinted, 1986.

The Sky-Liners, Bantam (New York, NY), 1967, reprinted, Thorndike (Waterville, ME), 1986.

The Lonely Men, Bantam (New York, NY), 1969, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

Galloway, Bantam (New York, NY), 1970.

Ride the Dark Trail, Bantam (New York, NY), 1972, reprinted, 1986.

Treasure Mountain, Bantam (New York, NY), 1972.

Sackett's Land, Saturday Review Press (New York, NY), 1974.

To the Far Blue Mountains, Dutton (New York, NY), 1976.

Sackett's Gold, Bantam (New York, NY), 1977.

The Warrior's Path, Bantam (New York, NY), 1980.

Ride the River, Bantam (New York, NY), 1983.

Jubal Sackett, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

"THE CHANTRYS" SERIES; NOVELS

North to the Rails, Bantam (New York, NY), 1971.

The Ferguson Rifle, Bantam (New York, NY), 1973.

Over on the Dry Side, Saturday Review Press (New York, NY), 1975.

Borden Chantry, Bantam (New York, NY), 1977.

Fair Blows the Wind, Bantam (New York, NY), 1978.

"THE TALONS" SERIES; NOVELS

Rivers West, Saturday Review Press (New York, NY), 1974, reprinted, Dutton (New York, NY), 1989.

The Man from the Broken Hills, Bantam (New York, NY), 1975.

Milo Talon, Bantam (New York, NY), 1981.

PUBLISHED UNDER HOUSE PSEUDONYM TEX BURNS: "HOPALONG CASSIDY" SERIES; NOVELS

Hopalong Cassidy and the Riders of High Rock, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1951, Aeonian (Leyden, MA), 1974.

Hopalong Cassidy and the Rustlers of West Fork, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1951, reprinted, Aeonian (Leyden, MA), 1976.

Hopalong Cassidy and the Trail to Seven Pines, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1951, reprinted, Aeonian (Leyden, MA), 1976.

Hopalong Cassidy: Trouble Shooter, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1952, Aeonian (Leyden, MA), 1976.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED UNDER PSEUDONYM JIM MAYO; REPRINTED UNDER AUTHOR'S REAL NAME; NOVELS

Showdown at Yellow Butte (also see below), Ace Books (New York, NY), 1954, reprinted with introduction by Scott R. McMillan, Gregg (Boston, MA), 1980, original reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1983.

Utah Blaine (also see below), Ace Books (New York, NY), 1954, reprinted with introduction by Wayne C. Lee, Gregg (Boston, MA), 1980, original reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

OMNIBUS VOLUMES

Kiowa Trail [and] Killoe, Ulverscroft (Leicester, England), 1979.

The First Fast Draw [and] The Key-Lock Man, Ulverscroft (Leicester, England), 1979.

Four Complete Novels (includes The Tall Stranger, Kilkenny, Hondo, and Showdown at Yellow Butte), Avenal Books (New York, NY), 1980.

Five Complete Novels (includes Crossfire Trail, Utah Blaine, Heller with a Gun, Last Stand at Papago Wells, and To Tame a Land), Avenal Books (New York, NY), 1981.

L'Amour Westerns (four volumes), Gregg (Boston, MA), 1981.

SHORT STORIES

War Party, Bantam (New York, NY), 1975.

Yondering, Bantam (New York, NY), 1980.

The Strong Shall Live, Bantam (New York, NY), 1980.

Buckskin Run, Bantam (New York, NY), 1981.

Law of the Desert Born, Bantam (New York, NY), 1983.

Bowdrie, Bantam (New York, NY), 1983.

The Hills of Homicide, Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

Bowdrie's Law, Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

Riding for the Brand, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

Dutchman's Flat, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

The Trail to Crazy Man, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

The Rider of the Ruby Hills, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

Night over the Solomons, Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

West from Singapore, Bantam (New York, NY), 1987.

Lonigan, Bantam (New York, NY), 1988.

Long Ride Home, Bantam (New York, NY), 1989.

The Outlaws of Mesquite, Bantam (New York, NY), 1991.

Valley of the Sun: Frontier Stories, Bantam (New York City), 1995.

West of Dodge: Frontier Stories, Bantam (New York City), 1996.

End of the Drive, Bantam (New York, NY), 1997.

Monumental Rock, Bantam (New York, NY), 1998.

Beyond the Great Snow Mountain, Bantam (New York, NY), 1999.

Off the Mangrove Coast, Bantam (New York, NY), 2000.

May There Be a Road, Bantam (New York, NY), 2001.

With These Hands, Bantam (New York, NY), 2002.

From These Listening Hills, Bantam (New York, NY), 2003.

The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: The Frontier Stories, Volume 1, Bantam (New York, NY), 2003.

SCREENPLAYS

(With Frank J. Gill, Jr., and Jack Natteford) East of Sumatra, 1953.

(With George Van Marter and Franklin Coen) Four Guns to the Border, 1954.

(With Tom Hubbard and Fred Eggers) Treasure of the Ruby Hills, 1955.

(With Herb Meadow and Don Martin) Stranger on Horseback, 1955.

(With Jack Natteford) Kid Rodelo, 1966.

OTHER

Smoke from this Altar (poetry), Lusk (Oklahoma City, OK), 1939.

Frontier (essays), photographs by David Muench, Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels (nonfiction), Bantam (New York, NY), 1988.

A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L'Amour (excerpts from L'Amour's fiction), compiled by daughter, Angelique L'Amour, Bantam (New York, NY), 1988.

The Education of a Wandering Man (autobiography), Bantam (New York, NY), 1989.

Off the Mangrove Coast, Bantam (New York, NY), 2001.

Also author of Man Riding West, Carroll & Graf.

Also author of filmscripts and more than sixty-five television scripts. Contributor of more than four hundred short stories and articles to more than eighty magazines in the United States and abroad, including Argosy, Collier's, and Saturday Evening Post.

ADAPTATIONS: More than forty-five of L'Amour's novels and short stories have been adapted into feature films and television movies, including Hondo, Warner Bros., 1953, East of Sumatra, Universal, 1953, Four Guns to the Border, Universal, 1954, Treasure of the Ruby Hills, Allied Artists, 1955, Kilkenny, Columbia, 1956, The Burning Hills, Warner Bros., 1956, Utah Blaine, Columbia, 1956, Walk Tall, Allied Artists, 1957, Last Stand at Papago Wells, Columbia, 1958, Heller with Pink Tights (based on his Heller with a Gun), Paramount, 1960, Guns of the Timberlands, Warner Bros., 1960, Taggart, Universal, 1964, Kid Rodelo, Paramount, 1966, Shalako, Cinerama Releasing Corp., 1968, Catlow, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1971, The Broken Gun, Warner Bros., 1972, The Man Called Noon, Scotia-Barber, 1973, Down the Long Hills, Disney Channel, 1986, and The Quick and the Dead, Home Box Office, 1987; the "Sackett Family" series was made into a television miniseries, The Sacketts. Many of L'Amour's novels and short stories have been adapted for presentation on audio cassettes, including Riding for the Brand (adapted from a short story from Riding for the Brand), Bantam, 1987, Bowdrie Passes Through, (adapted from a short story from Bowdrie), Bantam, 1988, Keep Travelin' Rider (adapted from a short story from Dutchman's Flat), Bantam, 1988, and One for the Mojave Kid (adapted from a short story from Dutchman's Flat), Bantam, 1988.

SIDELIGHTS: Dubbed the "Paul Bunyan of American letters" by a contributor for People, Western writer Louis L'Amour was a "legend of excess." At his death in 1988 he had written ninety novels and twenty short-story collections, in addition to screenplays, essays, and books of poetry. When describing someone like L'Amour it was necessary to use terms as wide and grand as the West about which he wrote. He sold more books than nearly every other contemporary novelist. He wrote more million-copy bestsellers than any other American fiction writer. He was the only novelist in this nation's history to be granted either of the country's highest honors—the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom—and L'Amour received them both. When he died, nearly two hundred million copies of his books were in print. A contributor for St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture explained part of the attraction of L'Amour's books: "Decidedly outside the genteel traditions of the Eastern publishing establishment, L'Amour's works are noted for their spare prose, rugged situations, unambiguous morality, and colorful casts of straight-shooting characters who tamed the American frontier West with grit and determination."

L'Amour's achievements, including the prestigious National Book Award in 1980 for Bendigo Shafter, were even more remarkable when one considered the obstacles that he overcame to achieve popularity. He had no formal education, spent much of his youth wandering from job to job, and was over forty by the time he published his first novel. Among his first published books were some volumes of poetry and stories about the Far East. "I also wrote some sport stories, some detective stories, and some Western stories. It so happens that the Westerns caught on and there was a big demand for them. I grew up in the West, of course, and loved it, but I never really intended to write Westerns at all," L'Amour told CA. After he started publishing his work, his novels were often not even reviewed by critics. As Ned Smith of American Way noted, L'Amour suffered the same fate as the majority of Western writers who found themselves "largely greeted with indifference … by the critics." James Barron, writing in the New York Times, cited L'Amour's comment that explained how he felt about being labeled a writer of "Westerns": "If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it's a historical novel…. If it's west of the Mississippi, it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to it."

L'Amour ignored criticism or—lack of it—and decided to do what hardly anyone had ever done before, make a living as a Western writer. L'Amour's determination to persevere led to increased critical interest in his work; the literary establishment eventually could no longer continue to disregard such a popular writer. Newsweek contributor Charles Leerhsen noted that as L'Amour entered his fourth decade as a novelist "the critics back East [were] finally reviewing his work—and praising his unpretentious, lean-as-a-grass-fed-steer style."

Some critics maintained that L'Amour's style was the key to his appeal. They applauded his ability to write quick-paced action novels filled with accurate descriptions of the Old West—or whatever other locale in which his protagonists found themselves. "Probably the biggest reason for L'Amour's success …," wrote Ben Yagoda in Esquire, was "his attention to authenticity and detail…. His books are full of geographical and historical information."

Because of what People contributor Joseph Pilcher called L'Amour's "painstaking respect for detail," a typical L'Amour novel often seemed to contain as many factual elements as fictional ones. Writing in Arizona and the West about L'Amour's novel, Lando, Michael T. Marsden noted that in that book alone the writer "in-struct[ed] his readers on the historical and cultural importance of Madeira wine, the nature of longhorn cattle, the Great Hurricane of 1844, and the several cultural functions of a Western saloon, all the while providing them with an entertaining romance." In other L'Amour works readers learned such things as how native Americans made moccasins, how to pan for gold, and the finer points of Elizabethan decor.

Some critics felt that all the factual material in L'Amour's novels detracted from their narrative continuity. They also felt that L'Amour's energies might have been better spent developing his characters or varying his plots rather than on research. New York Times Book Review contributor Richard Nalley, for example, wrote: "There is wonderful information [in L'Amour's novel, The Walking Drum,] … but the author's historical research is presented textbook style, in great, undigested chunks. Although the adventure plot is at times gripping, the uneasy integration of Mathurin [the protagonist] with his surroundings prevents the reader from being entirely swept up in the romance."

In Western American Literature John D. Nesbitt observed a similar flaw in L'Amour's Over on the Dry Side. According to Nesbitt, in the novel "entertaining narrative effect is lost in favor of flat introduction of historical details and moral speeches." Despite such criticism, L'Amour had an enormous following of readers. In the Lone Star Review Steve Berner wrote: "It [was], in fact, pointless to discuss the merits or weaknesses of L'Amour's writings … since it [had] little or no effect on either author or his public." According to the Washington Post's Richard Pearson, despite what he called "plots [that] could be predictable" and a technique of narrating that was "wooden," L'Amour was a skilled story teller. L'Amour's agent, C. Stuart Applebaum, observed in a Detroit News interview: "For many of his readers, he was the living embodiment of the frontier because of the authenticity of his stories and characters. His readers felt L'Amour walked the land his characters had walked. That was one of the major reasons of his enduring popularity."

L'Amour identified himself as a storyteller in the tradition of Geoffrey Chaucer (fourteenth-century author of The Canterbury Tales). Barron cited L'Amour's comment, "I don't travel and tell stories, because that's not the way these days…. But I write my books to be read aloud and I think of myself in that oral tradition."

One story that L'Amour seemed not to want to stop telling was the story of the Sackett family, continued in more than a dozen novels. These books explore the lives of the two branches of the Sackett clan and, to a lesser extent, two other frontier families, the Chantrys and the Talons, across three hundred years of history. In a North Dakota Quarterly article, Marsden commented that L'Amour's "formal family groupings may well constitute the most ambitious and complex attempt to date to create a Faulknerian series of interrelated characters and events in the popular Western tradition."

The publication of L'Amour's 1984 novel, The Walking Drum, caused a stir in literary circles because L'Amour had written a saga of medieval life in Europe instead of a Western. Apparently L'Amour's change of locale did not intimidate his readers, for the book appeared on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list five days before its official publication date. In People L'Amour explained to Pilcher that he was irritated that most books about the twelfth century dealt only with the Crusades and so, the novelist "decided to tell a swashbuckling adventure story about the period which would also show the history of the times—how people lived and how they worked."

According to Los Angeles Times writer Garry Abrams, L'Amour saw the publication of this non-Western novel as "a turning point" in his development as a writer. "From now on, he said, he want[ed] to concentrate less on promotion and more on 'improving my writing. I know how to write and I write fairly well. But you can never learn enough about writing.'" L'Amour concentrated on his writing by branching out in several directions. In 1987, he published The Haunted Mesa, which Washington Post Book World contributor Tony Hillerman referred to as "part western, part adventure, [and] part fantasy." He wrote The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels, which includes a Sackett family tree as well as background information on the sources behind the novels in the series, and completed his long-planned autobiography, The Education of a Wandering Man.

Explaining his approach to fiction writing to Clarence Petersen in the Chicago Tribune, L'Amour remarked: "A reader of my books expects to get an entertaining story, and he expects a little bit more. I've got to give him something of the real quality of the West, and I can do that because I'm a storyteller, and I don't have to imagine what happened in the Old West—I know what happened." Descended from pioneers who fought with the Sioux Indians and in the Civil War, L'Amour spent much of his early life traveling the West, working alongside the cattlemen and homesteaders who knew the most about the local history.

L'Amour's informers included one of his employers, a man who had been raised as an Apache Indian, who taught him much about the Indian experience of the American West. The novelist's characters also know much about Indian life, but the claims of their own culture exert a stronger hold. Pearson observed in the Washington Post, "Though Mr. L'Amour was often faulted by critics for cardboard, simplistic characters, his western heroes often fought an inner struggle against admiration for the Indian and his way of life on one hand and the need to advance 'civilization' on the other. His were often stories of culture in conflict." The title character of Bendigo Shafter describes the conflict felt by many of L'Amour's frontier heroes: "I could have lived the Indian way and loved it. I could feel his spirits move upon the air, hear them in the still forest and the chuckling water of the mountain streams, but other voices were calling me, too, the voices of my own people and their ways. For it was our way to go onward; to go forward and to try to shape our world into something that would make our lives easier, even if more complicated."

L'Amour wrote three novels a year for his publisher for more than thirty years. Even so, by the late 1980s, he had come nowhere near to exhausting the store of research he had gathered as a connoisseur of historical details. At the time of his death in 1988, he had developed outlines for fifty more novels. A year before he died, L'Amour noted: "There's a lot of Western material out there that's very fresh. And the Western novel is not dying, it's doing very well. It's selling every place but in the movies…. There seem to be some misconceptions about me and my type of writing, which have been perpetuated by several articles that weren't written too well…. Too often people start with a cliched idea of a Western writer. That automatically eliminates an awful lot of things that interest me. There's no difference in the Western novel and any other novel, as I said earlier. A Western starts with a beginning and it goes to an end. It's a story about people, and that's the important thing to always remember. Every story is about people—people against the canvas of their times."

The material was so plentiful, in fact, that more than a dozen new L'Amour short story volumes have been published since his death, several of which reached best-seller status. Reviewing the 2003 anthology, The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: The Frontier Stories, Volume 1, Wes Lukowsky of Booklist summed up not only the stories of that collection, but also the entire oeuvre of this American original: "L'Amour wrote about the big themes—love, courage, loyalty, honor—but he grounded them firmly in the context of daily struggles in an unforgiving land." L'Amour was, as the People contributor noted, "a magnificent chronicler of the American epic, Homer on the range."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors in the News, Volume 2, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 25, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1983.

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1980, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1981.

Hall, Halbert W. with Boden Clarke, The Work of Louis L'Amour: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide, Borgo Press (San Bernadino, CA), 1995.

L'Amour, Louis, Bendigo Shafter, Dutton (New York, NY), 1978.

Pilkington, William T., editor, Critical Essays on the Western American Novel, G.K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1980.

St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.

PERIODICALS

American Way, April, 1976.

Arizona and the West, autumn, 1978.

Book, May-June, 2002, Michael Phillips, review of With These Hands, p. 78.

Booklist, March 15, 1994, p. 1302; May 1, 1997, Wes Lukowsky, review of End of the Drive, p. 1480; June 1, 1998, Wes Lukowsky, review of Monument Rock, p. 1725; April 1, 1999, Budd Arthur, review of Beyond the Great Snow Mountains, p. 1385; March 15, 2000, Budd Arthur, review of Off the Mangrove Coast, p. 1328; May 1, 2001, Wes Lukowsky, review of May There Be a Road, p. 1666; April 15, 2002, Wes Lukowsky, review of With These Hands, p. 1383; April 1, 2003, Wes Lukowsky, review of From the Listening Hills, p. 1378; September 15, 2003, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, p. 210.

Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1984; June 23, 1985; February 25, 1987.

Chicago Tribune Book World, September 9, 1984.

Detroit News, March 31, 1978; June 30, 1985.

Entertainment Weekly, May 4, 2001, Karen Valby, "Tome Raiders," p. 20.

Esquire, March 13, 1979.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada), May 19, 1984; October 17, 1987.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2002, review of With These Hands, p. 211; March 1, 2003, review of From the Listening Hills, p. 337; August 1, 2003, review of The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, p. 993.

Library Journal, March 1, 2000, review of Off the Mangrove Coast, p. 82; October 1, 2003, Ken St. Andre, review of The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, p. 119.

Lone Star Review, May, 1981.

Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1983; May 30, 1984; August 3, 1986; November 17, 1989.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 20, 1983; August 25, 1985; April 3, 1986; August 3, 1986.

Newsweek, November 10, 1975; July 14, 1986.

New Yorker, May 16, 1983.

New York Times, October 21, 1971; September 23, 1983.

New York Times Book Review, November 24, 1974; April 6, 1975; November 30, 1975; January 2, 1977; March 22, 1981; April 24, 1983; July 1, 1984; June 2, 1985; July 6, 1986.

North Dakota Quarterly, summer, 1978.

People, June 9, 1975; July 23, 1984.

Playboy, January, 1994, p. 41.

Publishers Weekly, October 8, 1973; November 27, 1978; November 4, 1978; May 5, 1997, review of End of the Drive, p. 198; March 2, 1998, review of Monument Rock, p. 57; June 29, 1998, Daisy Maryles, "Monumental Longevity," p. 19; May 8, 1999, review of Beyond the Great Snow Mountains, p. 46; March 13, 2000, review of Off the Mangrove Coast, p. 61; April 9, 2001, review of May There Be a Road, p. 49; April 8, 2002, review of With These Hands, p. 206; April 7, 2003, review of From the Listening Hills, p. 44.

Southwest Review, winter, 1984.

Time, April 29, 1974; December 1, 1980; August 19, 1985; July 21, 1986; August 4, 1986.

Times Literary Supplement, August 26, 1977.

Us, July 25, 1978.

USA Weekend, May 30-June 1, 1986.

Washington Post, March 20, 1981; June 23, 1983; November 30, 1989.

Washington Post Book World, December 12, 1976; March 1, 1981; April 17, 1983; December 2, 1984; June 16, 1985; July 6, 1986; June 14, 1987.

West Coast Review of Books, November, 1978.

Western American Literature, May, 1978; February, 1982.