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09-14-2010, 11:41 PM
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Louis L'Amour's "Haunted Mesa"
Anyone else read this? It was L'Amour's last novel and the closest he ever came to sci-fi. Of interest to us gunny types, the main character carries a .357 and, as a backup, an H&K P7.
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09-15-2010, 03:29 AM
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Sure did! And everything else he put out except for the poetry.
An interesting read, TACC1.
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09-15-2010, 04:26 AM
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I've got probably one to two hundred of his books from when I was a kid ( had a couple of older people pass them on to me, multiple copies of some) and that's one I never got around to. Last of the Breed was as modern as I got.
His stories are filled with the typical western cliches, but I still like 'em.
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09-15-2010, 08:57 AM
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Great book, but then again, I haven't read anything of his that I didn't like. Lots of people don't know that he wrote something besides westerns.
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09-15-2010, 09:01 AM
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"Last of the Breed" was one of my favorites. I think my step-father has all of the books he wrote, some multiple copies, hardcover and soft.
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09-15-2010, 09:45 AM
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I have a couple autographed hard copies I picked up over the years when he did book signings. As a young, arrogant kid I would write Mr. L'Amour and point out discrepancies in the descriptions of firearms themselves or of their handling characteristics. He must have found my letters amusing because he usually wrote back. His first book that I read was The Ferguson Rifle, which caught my eye because in 1973 or so when the book was published I considered myself one of the few people to have handled an original. Like I said, I was young and arrogant.
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09-15-2010, 10:47 AM
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Great story walnutred. Can't imagine Louis L'amour thoughts when he opened your letters. Ha Suprised he even opened it, and more suprised he wrote back. Hope you still have the letters. Side note on authographs. My step-father used to run a breakfast restaurant in Lovell, ME where Stephen King has a home (or 2) and he would come in and get breakfast from time-to-time, and even gave a few signed copies of books. Strangely enough my step-father is part of the reason Stephen King is still alive today, cause he was right there when the crazy person hit him with a car back, in '99 I believe, and helped take care of him until the ambulance arrived.
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09-15-2010, 04:42 PM
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A great read, late at night, all alone, with one light on in the whole house.
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09-15-2010, 05:49 PM
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I've been thru 3 separate paperback collections of his. Donated a set each time I moved.
I think the only books I didn't like, were his 'non' westerns.
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09-15-2010, 07:31 PM
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It's not like we had an ongoing correspondence, we're talking two letters. I'm sure I have the letters filed away somewhere but with 30 years of hindsight I wish I'd saved copies of my letters to him as well. It was probably the childish, handwritten form of the letters that he found humorous.
My kids read Last of the Breed in High School American Lit. He probably would have fallen down laughing to think he had reached American Classic Literature status, for a non-western.
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09-15-2010, 10:05 PM
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What hooked me on his stuff, oddly enough, was when they made a TV mini-series out of the Sacketts. That led me to his books and I was hooked. Dittos for Last of the Breed. I also really enjoyed The Californios.
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09-15-2010, 10:23 PM
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Read it, loved it. Try "last of the breed" its even better!
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09-16-2010, 01:24 AM
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Haunted Mesa is the one book he wrote that I just couldn't get into.EVERYTHING else I've read is great.
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09-16-2010, 09:04 AM
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Haunted Mesa is for me his weirdest book. I am sure that he wanted to go with the ideas that we really don't know all we think we know. It is an expansion of his thoughts in The Californios.
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09-16-2010, 09:52 AM
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Being from New Mexico and having made many trips to the area Haunted Mesa has been one my favorites of his. read it several times.
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09-18-2010, 04:23 PM
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Last year when the family traveled out West & encountered a kiva, I thought of L'Amour's Haunted Mesa.
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09-18-2010, 05:55 PM
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I discovered L'Amour with "Last of the Breed" then rapidly went through about a dozen more until I came to "Haunted Mesa", which I didn't care for. I did read his bio..."Education of a Wandering Man" and it was very good. He was a high school drop-out who found and followed his passion.
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09-18-2010, 07:23 PM
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I recall reading someone's interview with LL. His response to the interviewer's question regarding the source of Louis L'Amours ideas for stories was something along the lines of, "All my stories have four things in common: The good guy, the bad guy, the girl, and the deed to the ranch."
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09-18-2010, 08:23 PM
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I read an interview with him, in Grit, back in the mid 70s. The interviewer asked why he never had sex in his books. He said it wasn't necessary to his stories. "But sex is part of life."
"So is going to the toilet, but I don't put that in my stories either."
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09-18-2010, 09:01 PM
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It was a hard read for me. I was disappointed in it.
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09-18-2010, 09:17 PM
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My favorite L'amour book is Hondo. Crossfire Trai is a favorite, as is the Movie with Selleck. I love the scene where Selleck's character comes tearing into town with his crew, pistols blazing, pulls his horse up in a corral, breaks open his S&W Schofield and loads it two at the time.
L'amour's books are pretty well written, fun to read, and probably fairly historically accurate. There are several Western writers who wrote better books, with a whole lot better character development and plot development, though. A. B. Guthrie and Ernest Haycox come to mind immediately Alan Lemay (The Searchers--The Unforgiven, is another.
I didn't particularly like Haunted Mesa.
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