Linky Links

 Sr]tuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

= Glenn Reynolds: Cutting off the head of the snake. "To quote author Keith Laumer, 'there's nothing as peaceful as a dead troublemaker.' Khamenei is now peaceful." He makes an excellent point about China too.

- Plugged the book Education of a Wandering Man into the Book Recommendations site and got back 30 title. Of those I've already read 15, have 3 on my reading list, 2 others on bookshelves and will probably be adding the other titles to my wish list.

- Jonathan Turley: Trump can rely on past Democratic President s for authority to attack Iran.

- Super schools for every kid.

Louis L' Amour on Writing

Have a new post up on Substack about some of the writing tips found in Louis L' Amour's memoir Education of a Wandering Man.

I highly recommend this book and personally intend to read much more of his novels of the American West .

Education of a Wandering Man

"...I began with short stories, poetry, and a few articles and essays. My apprenticeship as a writer was not in the field of the short story, however, and my first novel was written only after selling more than a hundred short stories.

My first novel I had published appeared in England and was called Westward the Tide. It did not appear in this country until Bantam Books acquired the rights from me many years later.

Usually I am characterized as a western writer. I do not mind that term, but it is not strictly correct." - Louis L' Amour

Education of a Wandering Man

"That much maligned man General George Armstrong Custer - about whom more nonsense has been written by people who know nothing about him than has been written about any man in history - was another. Secretary of War William Belknap (later dismissed from office) had been appointing political friends of his as Indian agents, and they were robbing the Indians, starving them, and taking every advantage. Custer objected, but a lowly Lieutenant Colonel (Custer's actual rank) got nowhere by complaining to the Secretary of War, and later they contrived an excuse for a court martial.

Custer saw the Indians being mistreated and in his book, My Life on the Plains, said that if he were an Indian he would be fighting.

How many Indians were present at the Little Big Horn we will never know. Their number has been estimated at between two thousand to nine thousand. Logic was completely on Custer's side. The Indians had never been able to field a large force because of the supply problem. When so many Indians came into an area, the game fled the country, so whatever food the Indian had he had to bring with him. For the same reason he could not stay long in the field.

A fact often missed is that just a few miles south and a few days earlier, General George Crook, another of our most successful Indian fighters, had made the same mistake.

In the bitter Battle of the Rosebud, often overlooked because of the drama of the Custer massacre, Crook was fought to a standstill by many of the same Indians. Had it not been for the protests of Frank Grouard, Crook's chief of scouts, and the fact he was down to eight rounds of ammunition per man, Crook may have pursued the Sioux down the canyon of the Rosebud into an even worse trap than Custer's, where he would have lost three times the men.

Knowing the Indian problems with supply, neither Crook on June 17 or Custer on June 25 was willing to believe that such a large force was in the field." - Louis L' Amour

That's a perspective I had not seen before. I bring it up now both because I'm currently reading the book but also because today is Medal of Honor Day and one of the few people who actually won two Medals of Honor was Custer's brother Thomas Custer who also killed at the Little Big Horn. Sadly, like many. my perception of George Armstrong Custer is largely colored by his portrayal in Dustin Hoffman's Little Big Man. 

Education of a Wandering Man

"They are out there by the thousands, wonderful stories. Many have never gotten into the histories, although occasionally told by local newspapers or in privately printed booklets. Stories of wagon-train massacres, buried treasures, gun battles, cattle roundups, border bandit raids - no matter where you go, east, west, north, and south, there are stories. People are forever asking me where I get my ideas, but one has to listen, to look, and to live with awareness. As I have said in several of my stories, all men look, but so few can see. It is all there, waiting for any passerby." - Louis L' Amour

Education of a Wandering Man

"Often, when people hear of my career and the many jobs at which I worked, they believe I did this for writing experience. That's nonsense. I worked at those many jobs because work was hard to get and one took what was available at the time. During the Depression years and immediately before, jobs were scarce and a man had to keep hustling to keep working. A job might last for an hour or two, or perhaps for several days, and weeks went by with no work at all." - Louis L' Amour 

Education of a Wandering Man

"This is a story of an adventure in education, pursued not under the best of conditions. The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume that there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a good post office, or even a newsstand."

"Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. In the one year that I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places. I read on buses, trains, and planes. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that will be with you your life long?" - Louis L'Amour 1939

Education of a Wandering Man

Started Louis L'Amour's memoir Education of a Wandering Man the other day and was pleasantly surprised to find the introduction to the 1939 book by Daniel J. Boorstin who himself was both an author and the Librarian of Congress. To say Boorstin knew a thing or two about books and authors would be an understatement. He wrote, "We are often told that we are what we eat. In our world since the printing press it may be more accurate to say we are what we read." 

L'Amour read everything and though he was a "lone reader but somehow never felt lonely in the company of a book."

Louis L'Amour showed many of the traits of both a wise and happy man to Boorstin:

• "Louis was a modest man, slow to reveal what he really knew."
• "He kept his own values undented."
• "Jealous of any time not spent writing, he luxuriated within the walls of his books."
• "Louis was a good listener, as eager to learn from the spoken as from the printed word."
• "Louis gives us a lesson - too seldom offered by academic or professional critics - in open-mindfulness and literary charity.

Louis L'Amour is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.