In a recent conversation with a friend, they introduced the book they were reading as "one I just KNOW you are not going to like." My initial reaction to this is simple: "There are a few books that anyone reads that I would find fault with." If it is self-indulgent or more fodder for the dreaded cash cows out there - it could be. However, even reading a self-announced "bad" book at least tests your ability to discern exactly what good writing is.
Popular literature (as we will call it) generally receives short shrift in critical circles. Books that sell well and provide hours of enjoyment while slightly moving the needle on increasing reading skills are ignored or lambasted by critics (often competing writers.) An examination of recent best-seller lists does sadly promote a "here today, gone tomorrow" scenario for many of these scribes (in addition to resembling your Netflix queue.) However, it is important to acknowledge that many of these authors remain popular because the pattern of buying leads to consistent purchases (shortly after release) over that calendar year. Finally, to their credit, the best-selling authors are always adding to their canon over time. Authors like Stephen King (77 books/400 million units worldwide) and John Grisham (22 books/250 million units worldwide) continue to sell - not because their books are replaceable by the next release - but moreover seen as adding to the skill set of the writer by not duplicating what has been written about before.
Louis L'Amour composed 101 novels (on average three per year) from 1950-1987. Despite making the aforementioned list of yearly Top 10 best sellers just three times, L'Amour managed to sell 330 million books worldwide. Synonymous with the "Western novel," even after TV and film lost interest in the art form, L'Amour's sweeping novels continued their reign. Peruse his only memoir, 1989's posthumously published "Education of a Wandering Man," and you might find his life more riveting than what he writes. L'Amour was a seaman, a boxer, a cattle skinner, a lumberjack, and a miner. When he discovered writing, he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
After being published as a poet and a boxing writer, L'Amour's adventure tales could barely get published (post-WWII work was found in pulp publications under the nom de plume Jim Mayo.) Eventually, L'Amour's westerns fell into the right hand, John Wayne. After 1953's adaptation of "Hondo," L'Amour became a best seller. Sitting down to write with his beginning, middle, and end firmly in mind, L'Amour would voraciously seek out journals and correspondence to study to make his stories authentic. While critics complain of how "formulaic" his works have become with time, the historical aspects seem to continue to draw in readers.
Perhaps there is no better source for L'Amour's Western/Adventure/Historical Fiction than his chronicle of the Sackett family. Over 19 novels, written out of chronological order, L'Amour has constructed a "family study" of a frontier family. At the outset, let me intimate this is not Cormac McCarthy who draws you in with bitter realism that possesses you. L'Amour's appreciation of these lives is an exploded view of family and friendship as it survives the twin poles of conflict and resolution. In the first Sackett story (in chronological order, actually the 13th out of 19.) "Sackett's Land," L'Amour uses his meticulous research as a foundation to add a degree of gravitas to a thinly-plotted action tale. However, this is escapism at its core. So the familiar tropes are welcome as is his habit of "cliffhanger" style chapter endings.
Given that much of his canon is composed in a more conversational style, L'Amour narrates most of "Sackett's Land" from the great beyond. One can only think this is how his father told him the stories of settling in the Old West and its distant connections to pre-colonial fur trappers and the downtrodden Irish dealing with the constant imposition (and caste system) of the English monarchy.
What is most interesting about L'Amour's writing in this day and age is how even as a relic of the "pocket novel," it still seems as familiar as classic storytelling. In his short declarative sentences, L'Amour is no Hemingway, but he has a gift for action. As mechanical as the "episodes" are structured in "Sackett's Land," L'Amour trades immersion into his characters for two aspects.
First is the "employment of history," which honestly seems to be his payoff. In "Sackett's Land," L'Amour devotes a great amount of attention to characters going to see a play. When they first mention this, it feels foreign and shoehorned in. However, after explaining that they see these plays as a one-in-a-lifetime experience, the fact that an almost destitute character would lay down money to attend "Julius Caesar" at the Globe Theatre is inviting. Then, L'Amour takes it even further by characterizing the famed theatre as a roughhouse and telling the story of how the players moved the entire building across the frozen River Avon.
Second, it is his foresight to either provide the necessary logical turn of his plot or a key piece of dialogue that seeks to transcend time. In a very "The Count of Monte Cristo" like portion of "Sackett's Land," our protagonist Barnabas Sackett is beaten down and thrown into the belly of a ship setting off from port ("There's a sight of deep water betwixt here and America!") After he regains consciousness and confuses the dreaded ship's crew with his enthusiasm, we discover that he is privately planning a mutiny. At the time of Sackett's seizure of the weapon onboard and its all-important power (really, no spoilers here,) he informs that it cannot be mutiny because he was surreptitiously brought aboard against his own will.
The impetus for this journey is the discovery of six gold pieces in a desperately avoided place called Devil's Dyke. Over time, Barnabas makes friends who travel with him, and provide the necessary counterpoint. After taking his mates Jubilain and Corvino to search for an important mound (now, no spoilers,.) Barnabas unknowingly educates them on history leading to a passage that is surprisingly optimistic given where we are in the story - and where L'Amour's modern American is in 1972-73.
"You believe in heroes?" Corvino looked at him thoughtfully.
"I cannot believe in anything else. A man needs heroes. He needs to believe in strength, nobility, and courage. Otherwise, we become sheep to be herded to the slaughterhouse of death. I believe this. I am a soldier. I try to fight for the right cause. Sometimes it is hard to know.
But I do not sit back and sneer in cowardice at those with the courage to fight. The blood of good men makes the earth rich, as it is here. When I die, sword in hand, I hope someone lives to sing of it. I live my life so that when death comes, I may die well. I ask no more."
L'Amour is writing out of pure love for the events of the past, both his and those of civilization at large. Even though some of his prose is a little underdeveloped (again, he wrote three novels a year, sometimes more,) the moments where his life and perhaps the education he received from his father and experience make it stand the test of time. Maybe his unwavering optimism and enthusiasm toward history are the true reason that not one of his works is out of print today.
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Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
NEW MUSIC This Week
SLEATER-KINNEY - Little Rope [BLUE LP/CD] (Loma Vista) • Thirty years of Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker have brought them here. Without longtime member drummer Janet Weiss (who departed amicably in 2019, ) they soldier on with Rock that works hardest to be loud (the wail of "Untidy Creature" is powerful, even if its riff fails to match anything on 2009's still-blistering "The Woods.") However, the point of S-K circa 2024 is a manufactured Art-Pop. "Say It Like You Mean It" surrounds you with synths allowing Brownstein's fuzzy guitar to sound different. With producer John Congleton (St. Vincent) there to guide, the harrowing "Hell" veers from quietly dramatic (some of Tucker's best vocals in years) to raging (the middle-to-end crushing riff from Brownstein.)
DANNY BROWN - Quaranta [RED LP/CD] (Warp) • Danny Brown had quite a year in 2023. With JPEGMafia, Brown released the year's best Hip-Hop album "Scaring The Hoes." That blazing release set a high bar for Brown's long-awaited solo release. "Quaranta" is far more personal and remains a surprising show in places for Brown's vulnerability. Upon first, second, and third listens, one is looking for the dazzling most of all (that would be the still-astonishing "Jenn's Terrific Vacation" with Kassa Overall.) However, the real key of "Quaranta" remains Brown's willingness to hide his most pensive commentary in blocks of noise ("Dark Sword Angel") while purposefully falling behind The Alchemist's beats on the loping weirdness of "Tantor." Still, nothing better demonstrates his devotion to making his songs excellent no matter what than giving his guest MIKE the album's best verse on the brazen honesty of "Celibate." A brave way to come down.
REISSUES OF THE WEEK
Various Artists - NUGGETS 1 & 2 [COLOR LP](Rhino) • Various Artists - PUSHIN' TOO HARD: AMERICAN GARAGE PUNK 1964-1967 [3CD](Strawberry/ Cherry Red UK) • "Nuggets" continues its run as a true game-changer to the method of compilations. Envisioned by writer/musician Lenny Kaye as a full-color portrait of the mid-Sixties Garage Era, "Nuggets" works because of its spiraling pattern of marvelous inclusions. Programmed to deliver hit-after-hit (even though very few were chart successes, 6 Top 20 hits with only The Count Five's classic "Psychotic Reaction" as its lone Top 10) in sequence, it swings mightily from the familiar to what only sounds familiar. Then, when you least expect it, its pristine Pop choices sideline you (Knickerbockers replace The Beatles with "Lies," and Michael & The Messengers' "Romeo and Juliet" is still pure convection.
The second "Nuggets" was produced for the 50th anniversary of the first collection. producing even more hits than before including AM radio standards from The Lovin' Spoonful and Love before indulging in mild Psychedelia (the underrated "A Question of Temperature" from The Balloon Farm") and twin Garage heaters (the squealing 'Action Woman" by The Litter and ur-Punk crusher "Talk Talk" by The Music Machine.) Unlike its predecessor, "Nuggets II" is far more interested in placing the most familiar AM hits ("Laugh Laugh" from The Beau Brummels" in the position of pallet cleanser after drilling you with classics of Garage and Rock.
If these two finally open (or re-open) your interest in Garage from the fertile mid-Sixties, Strawberry/Cherry Red's import collection "Pushin' Too Hard" is 96 songs that also really never miss. Given so much more space than Lenny Kaye circa 1972, "Pushin'" is a dynamically selected series of standards ("Wooly Bully" and The Choir's "It's Cold Outside" fresh from "Nuggets 2") that push you toward the tracks that should have played next to them on the radio all those years ago. Rarities from The Rangers and The Denims fit in so well with classic Captain Beefheart, The Other Half, The Rationals, and (of course) The Seeds. "Pushin' Too Hard" joins the "Nuggets" series (now expanded to cover UK Garage a/k/a Freakbeat, Sunshine Pop, and more) and the lower budget "Pebbles" records as a must for those seeking out music from all the local scenes that came to life in the wake of Beatlemania in 1964.
