MovieChat Forums > The Sacketts (1979) Discussion > Louis L'Amour as an author.

Louis L'Amour as an author.


As a teenager I was very fond of LL as an author of Westerns- I read all I could find. "Flint", "Fallon", "Hondo", "The Daybreakers", "Catlow", "Sackett", "Reilly's Luck" and "Lando" were among my favorites. After reading probably a hundred of these books I moved on to something else and several decades passed. About 10 years ago I revisited LL's body of work, and I made an interesting discovery- LL didn't actually write 200 or so books. He wrote about 10 or 15 books- OVER AND OVER AGAIN. The characters are cookie-cutter similar, the plots are direct knock-offs of each other- it's hard to believe. The reason the above-named books were my favorites is a simple one- they are among the truely original works that LL later cloned and resold dozens of times. I conclude that LL is very good where he bothers to be original, but when you read the third or forth retelling of the same story,it really starts to wear on you.
Just my .02 worth.

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You have to remember that when he was writing those stories back in the day, he was writing what would sell and provide him with an income. So yes, when you find a method that works and people buy it, you stick with it. I have read many interviews where he had mentioned this. What put him on a much higher plateau than any other writers of that genre was the incredible amount of research he did, which came through in his stories, making you feel like you were right there. The fact that you could go to a location and find the creeks and streams etc that he describes, that is amazing.

He knew that western men didn't wear their six guns in low slung holsters and tied them down. But this was what sold stories, so that's what his character did. The underlying theme, I think, of his stories was simply to illustrate just how tough it really was back then and what kind of characters it took to settle that land, instead of just sticking with the gunfights and cattle drives that Hollywood portrays.

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well said, good rebuttal

i don't fault lamour for what he did. it was a type he was working for. and i have yet to be bored by one of his stories, so that must mean something!

also, i love the inner side of the characters he portrayed. i could feel their thoughts as my thoughts. i like their character and integrity.



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I can see where you're coming from but I think some of his latter work was different: Walking Drum, last of the breed, lonesome Gods, the californios, and that one I can't remember that had parallel universe fantasy elements to it.

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The Haunted Mesa. Let us not forget his other non-western stories. Private Eyes, boxers and hard boiled cops all made interesting reading.

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I loved the Ponga Jim Mayo and Hills of Homicide short stories.


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I've heard stories the he got a lot of material from guys in the Ohio Prison.

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