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The Daily Dose/December 17, 2008
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
Notes from around the Human Experience...Pics will return...We had a long day!
CAPSULE BOOK REVIEW: Last of the Breed, By Louis L'Amour: As some may recall, we are fairly new to Louis L'Amour, one of the best selling writers in the English language.
History Lesson: We're not entirely sure why because we've been avid readers since we were five, and you would have thought our paths might have crossed somewhere along the line, but no. Perhaps we thought when we passed his books in the bookstore (and the drug store and the grocery store because his books were everywhere) we dismissed him as a mass-market paperback writer, which is rich coming from people who really enjoy writers such as Robert B. Parker, Dick Francis and W.E.B. Griffin.
This is an argument for which there is a modest amount of merit, though. L'Amour is not a great writer. He is a good writer, but amongst the writers we read regularly here at the Writer's Shack, he is a notch below Gore Vidal, J.R.R. Tolkein, David Halberstam, David McCullough and a few others we could mention, though he is, of course, head and shoulders above the crap we produce here on a more or less daily basis.
Overall, though, passing on L'Amour all these years was our loss because L'Amour is a man and a writer of substance, which became clear in the first book of his we read, Education of a Wandering Man, a book which chronicles his almost completely self-taught education. The second book of his we read, The Walking Drum, was not only a great story well told, but full of insights to the human experience that 1) you know L'Amour experienced first hand and, 2) were typical of observations you would expect from a man who describes himself as "by no means a scholar, simply an interested reader with nothing to do but live and learn".
FunFact: To our knowledge Louis L'Amour never claimed to be a great writer; all he has ever claimed to be - as far as we can tell - is a storyteller.
Can We Get To The Point? And this he does very well. Last of the Breed centers around Air Force Major Joe Mack, an Indian from Idaho whose plane is shot down (under circumstances never entirely explained, though this isn't a complaint) and is captured by the Soviets and sent to a prison camp in Siberia, from which he promptly escapes.
Here is one flaw with L'Amour. Both The Walking Drum and Last of the Breed depend on a fair amount of luck - both good and bad - to move the story along. Not as much in this book as the other, but Mack's escape, while reasonably plausible, does depend on more luck than a person might reasonably expect under the circumstances. As fictional prison escapes go, this is not in the same league with Edmond Dantes' brilliant escape from prison in The Count of Monte Cristo.
But this is a minor detail, pointed out mainly to show off how well read we think we are. Mack escapes and begins a trek across Siberia towards the Bering Strait, the same route his ancestors took to America in generations past.
Dry, Technical Matter: About three-quarters of the way through we noticed a couple of things.
One, most chapters ended about halfway through an odd-numbered page. We did some minor, non-definitive research and found a lot of chapters were seven pages long.
Two, we also started to notice there wasn't much book left and there appeared to be a lot of ground left to cover.
And, indeed, there are unresolved questions at the end, including an unresolved love interest (yes, it is possible to meet chicks while on escape in Siberia). But the ending is very satisfying, and we found ourselves enjoying considering the various options and circumstances open to Joe Mack, and it was rather flattering to find that L'Amour trusted us enough to form our own conclusions.
We Interrupt This Column For A Word From The Ratings Department: Following is the Official Writer's Shack rating scale:
EX - Excellent; as good as the medium can produce in every respect.
VG - Very Good. Well worth your time.
GD - Good. Worth your time.
AR - All Right. Not completely without merit.
SP - Nothing of substance; a steaming pile, utterly without merit.
Final Ranking: GD. The Walking Drum completely enthralled us, and we gave it a VG rating. We greatly enjoyed Last of the Breed, but we're giving it a GD because we feel it's a small notch below. There were no shortage of lines that made it into our personal quote collection, though there were significantly fewer than The Walking Drum. Still though, Last of the Breed is worth the time of any serious reader who enjoys books of this type.
GOOD RIDDANCE: On this date, in 1538, Pope Paul III excommunicated King Henry VIII from the Roman Catholic Church.
Great Moments In Race Relations: On this date, in 1864, US Army General Ulysses S. Grant issues an order expelling Jews from military districts in Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi. It was done in an attempt to curtail the black market in southern cotton and would be repealed by President Abraham Lincoln a few weeks later.
Up, Up And Away…For Real: On this date, in 1903, and a few days after history's first crash landing, Orville and Wilbur Wright first flight in a powered airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville made history's first flight, flying for 120 feet in 12 seconds. Wilbur then flew 175 feet and Orville followed that up by breaking the distance record with a flight of 200 feet. Wilbur made the last flight of the day, at about noon, going about 850 feet in 59 seconds.
Thought For The Day: If we did the things we were capable of, we would astound ourselves. - Thomas Edison
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: NASCAR's top racing series, now known as the Sprint Cup, was originally known as the Strictly Stock Series.
Today's Stumper: Following their first flight in 1903, how long did it take the Wright brothers to begin selling aircraft to the US Army? - Answer next time!
Comments? Recipes? Complaints? Email the Writer's Shack here!
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