Hondo (Louis L'Amour)

Rating:
Summary: Based on a screenplay
Review: Louis L'amour wrote a short story that was made into the movie "Hondo". The movie was based on a screenplay ,not written by L'amour, that was quite a bit different from L'amour's short story, for instance the screen writer is the one who came up with Hondo Lane and the dog Sam. When L'amour wrote the novel Hondo he worked from the screenplay. According to Robert Weinberger's book "The Louis L'amour Companion" John Wayne told him he had never read the novel Hondo and didn't remember ever meeting L'amour, his endorsement was just for the screenplay. That being cleared up this is a pretty good western. There is a couple of laugh out loud parts in this novel. One is when one of the Apaches is telling his chief that Hondo knows their language and how much he had been insulted by Hondo in Apache. The other is when Sam his dog has been killed, to help get over it he is telling how ugly and mean the dog was he says he almost had to eat him up on the powder river once and he had

not looked forward to it or something to that effect, you have to read it to see the humor. Classic western.

Rating:
Summary: I'm not about to argue with the Duke
Review: The best Western novel I have ever read. -John Wayne

Hey look, I'm not about to argue with the Duke. Louis L'Amour is probably the best-selling Western writer of all time and Hondo his first big, and perhaps his best, novel. It is reminiscent of Shane (see Orrin's review) and Riders of the Purple Sage (see Orrin's review), but with Apaches on the warpath taking the place of hostile cattle ranchers or intolerant Mormons. Hondo Lane is the gun fighter, Army dispatch rider, hero who, along with his feral but loyal dog Sam, meets Angie Lowe and her young son Johnny who are homesteading in Apache territory in late 1800's Arizona. Angie has been abandoned by her low down snake of a husband, but refuses to leave her land. Hondo must ride back to the Fort to warn the Cavalry that the Apache chief Vittoro is on the move, but then returns to help defend woman and child.

If the story does not quite reach the lofty literary heights of Shane--perhaps because the focus is so much on what Hondo needs from Angie and Johnny, as opposed to the way in which Shane was the object of the Starrett family's affection--it is still quite enjoyable. Three elements that really stand out and offer a contrast to the easy caricature of the genre are the respectful portrayal of the Apaches, the centrality of the romance angle to the story and the blithe depiction of the difficulty and brutality of frontier life. Even in so formulaic a tale as this one, the American Western demonstrates a level of maturity and nuance that critics seem bent on denying.

With the possible exception of the romance novel, there is perhaps no other genre of fiction which the critics and academia take less seriously than the Western. But consider the fact that by the time of his death L'Amour had sold over 200 million books and among his avid legion of readers were two of the most decent men ever to become U.S. Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. It seems to me that the failure of the intelligentsia to reckon with Western reflects poorly on themselves, rather than on the literature. L'Amour says at one point:

No man knows the hour of his ending, nor can he choose the place or the manner of his going. To each it is given to die proudly, to die well, and this is, indeed, the final measure of the man.

It is easy, too easy, to dismiss the ethos of the Western as a kind of macho posturing. But those lines and the general "code of the West", however much it may be a fictional construct, reflect a concern with reputation which, when observed, has had a salutary effect on men. In an excellent essay on "The Greatness of George Washington" (Virginia Quarterly Review, Volume 68, Number 2) historian Gordon S. Wood traces Washington's greatness and his stature among his peers to what our generation would perceive as an overweening concern for his own reputation. But this same zealous regard for his own name and place in history motivated Washington to lead a life of exemplary moral rectitude and he created in himself the ideal man to lead a nascent and fragile democracy, a man capable of resisting the temptations of power because reputation was more important to him. It is no surprise then to find that two of the only other presidents we've had who can even approach him in stature immersed themselves in this idealistic and rigidly moralistic fiction. God knows what Bill Clinton reads (actually one book we know he enjoyed is Vox by Nicholson Baker, see Orrin's review), but rest assured, it ain't Louis L'Amour

GRADE: A-

Rating:
Summary: Always a good read.
Review: The events of this very solid and compelling story are clearly based on, or at least loosely inspired by, real events in Arizona in 1861. There are many parallels with the Boscom affair and the kidnapping of Mickey Free, events that led to the Apache Wars and the campaigns of Cochise. It's L'Amour's comprehensive knowledge of the history and landscape of Arizona that helps to make this book special. The writing is consistently good, occasionally sublime; "...the tips of the cottonwoods turned gold, like the sun-tipped lances of a moving army." L'Amour is particularly good with dialogue, a skill which is sadly lacking among most Western writers, making Zane Grey for example, almost unreadable. The only thing preventing "Hondo" from being great literature is the paper-thin characterization. Hondo Lane is an idealized, 'Hollywooden' hero and the villains lack any redeeming features that would make them credible. The depiction of the Apache is sympathetic, even to the extent that they too are often idealized ("No Apache ever hit his child"). The author's attempts to describe the developing feelings of the hero and heroine for each other are particularly gauche. L'Amour, it seems, cannot write l'amour. But, so what? If we want profound insights into human nature, we read Jane Austen. If we want the romance and drama of the Old West, we read Louis L'Amour.