Education of a Wandering Man

What a guy! So often we put people into a compartment: "Louis L'Amour was a famous Western writer." Well, guess what? He was also a soldier, professional boxer, lumberjack, miner, sailor, world traveler, and among many other things, a voracious reader. Of nonfiction and fiction alike. He may have the most well-rounded knowledge of any person I've ever heard of. It was simply amazing to read his life story, as told by himself: an amazing storyteller on a mission to educate the world about what education should look like. "Our libraries are not cloisters for an elite. They are for the people, and if they are not used, the fault belongs to those who do not take advantage of their wealth. If one does not move on from what merely amuses to what interests, the fault lies in the reader, for everything is there."

He may have convinced me to start reading more than one book at a time, which would be a big change for me. I certainly wish that I had read one of his novels parallel to my reading of this memoir. I highly recommend it to anyone who is considering reading this, and I suggest The Walking Drum, L'Amour's 12th century historical novel. (Other hardcover bestsellers: The Lonesome Gods, Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, The Haunted Mesa, and of course, Education of a Wandering Man : ) Hondo is his first published novel, and his short stories are much talked about in this memoir. I would like to read a collection of them.)

He doesn't think everyone should learn the way he did: on the move, reading here and there whatever he could get his hands on. After sharing about one of his jobs in a sawmill, he says: "It has been years since I have been in a sawmill, and it is probably all done by machinery now, as are most of the jobs I used to do. I feel very sorry indeed for any young man without an education in these days, for there is literally nowhere to go." They certainly can't follow his own footsteps, working around the globe, footloose, and hope to get much of anywhere. While there are some places for such people to go, I think L'Amour regrets the end of the labor force as he knew it, and the end of the lessons he was able to learn while in it.

L'Amour does think that every person should have a broader and a deeper education. "I think the greatest gift anyone can give to another is the desire to know, to understand. Life is not for simply watching spectator sports, or for taking part in them; it is not for simply living from one working day to the next. Life is for delving, discovering, learning."

I think one of his purposes in writing this book was to clear up his intent in writing Western novels. Entertain, yes. But teach too! Record what has been for the generations to come who will never see it again, and may never have known what it was like otherwise. Speaking of his own written works he says: "Woven into their lines is much about how men have lived, fought, and survived." He recognizes a lack of this type of information in the histories of the world and has done his part to record it for the American frontier.

My younger sister is an aspiring author, and it was interesting to me that he targets this audience in his book - he shares a lot of insight and knowledge about the process of becoming a writer. If you fall into that category, you'd learn quite a bit from this read. One bit of wisdom: "Gustave Flaubert said once that "Talent is nothing but long patience."" L'Amour goes on to tell of other aspiring writers he knew who would write things "so brilliant that I envied them their facility with words and ideas..." Yet of those he knew, only one was able to 'make it' and he didn't make it incredibly far. L'Amour suggests that they were "unable or unwilling to take the rejection, and obviously incapable of that long patience of which Flaubert speaks."

"Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value. ... Upon the shelves of our libraries, the world's greatest teachers await our questions."

L'Amour laments the knowledge that dies each time a person dies. We each have so much inside us and lack motivation to record and share it. "A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever." His own personal library contained over 17,000 books, many of them rare.

I'm calling up my father to learn more about how L'Amour's avid readership viewed him. Happy reading!