Education Of A Wandering Man (1990) - Plot & Excerpts
No choicer gift can any man give to another than his spirit’s intimate converse with itself. Schleiermacher I would bet that Louis L’Amour would not be in the list of the first forty authors you might guess used a Schleiermacher quote as an epigraph for a chapter deep in his education autobiography. And it wasn’t a quote he grabbed from A Speaker’s Treasury of Quotes and Anecdotes, either. L’Amour read it, among thousands of other works ranging from Homer to Aeschylus to Gogol to Marcian of Heracles to Montesquieu to Ssu-ma Ch’ien to Blackstone to Somadeva. He read deeply in literature of the frontier on every continent, but of course most deeply on the American west. Like anyone of his time, he read some works that are best forgotten or have been superceded by subsequent scholarship. But mostly he read to understand from people who lived in the time what everyday life was like, so some of his more obscure reading will always be valuable for that purpose.L’Amour was a tough, amazing man. He left school at fifteen and spent many years knocking about the world working in mines, on ships, on docks, in lumber camps, and anywhere else a strong body and determination were useful. He also boxed, and boxing is a recurring theme in this book.But he didn’t resemble very many other men in these environments. He meant to be a writer from a very young age. His father was a vet, the house was well stocked with books and conversation centered around reading and boxing. Throughout his traveling years he read voraciously, in every spare second. Sometimes he took breaks and lived on next to nothing so he could indulge in a spell of reading. He also started writing poems and short stories. Here the determination paid off, as there were many years of rejections as he learned his craft.This is a tale of the education he provided for himself through reading, and the accidental education he obtained through life lessons. Not a full autobiography by any means, it still includes episodes of near-death in Death Valley, fights in various tough spots, riding the rails, periods of persistent hunger during depression days between jobs and more trials merely hinted at. He kept his eyes open, and tried to use every bit of experience to his benefit. (He is not romantic about his tough road; he wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. ) But on every page there are notes on what he was reading, why, and what he remembers of that author. And he remembers a lot; the man had a prodigious memory. (He set books in places he had traveled from southeast Asia to Europe during WWII to every inch of the American West.) I put sticky notes at all of the places I thought I might want a quote for this review or to mark a book I want to investigate, and the volume now has a very thick fringe of yellow ‘feelers’ that I can’t begin to squeeze in here.Many of the books I highlighted are listed in the chapters L’Amour uses to emphasize the stories and accomplishments of civilizations on continents that fall outside the usual education of Americans, even today. (L’Amour died in 1988, and this book was copyrighted in 1989; I suspect he meant to edit it so can forgive some jump-about chapters.) Even with my interest in literature in translation and the wide reading of my GR friends there were so many ideas to follow up on in these chapters. For example, Fifty years in both hemispheres, or, Reminiscences of the Life of a Former Merchantby Vincent Nolte who appears in Anthony Adverse, The Travels of Lao Ts’an, books about sea-faring and markets of the Indian Ocean, Black Sparta and other works by Naomi Mitchison. There are lists of works he read while on the road from 1930 to 1937 (except 1936) in the back of the book, which are daunting.And the amazing thing is that he found many of these books lying about as he went from foc’sle to bunkhouse. He comments that at least some of the men out there were thoughtful and well-educated. In addition, he cites the Little Blue Books that were short, small classic works a man could buy for a few cents and carry in his pocket. He also haunted many libraries.Eventually L’Amour accumulated a library of 10,000 books. In the days before internet bookselling. It included many very obscure works that he went to some trouble to obtain. The introduction to Education is by Daniel J. Boorstin, L’Amour’s friend of many years who should know a well-read man when he sees one.L’Amour cannot put sophisticated arguments into such a book, which is mostly aimed at persuading others to adopt his voracious curiosity and devotion to reading in every spare second. But he does periodically detour into ardent essays on why he believes Shakespeare, not Marlowe, wrote the plays, why Custer is maligned at least to some extent, and so forth. There are also many chapters devoted to his love of the West: its land and its people.L’Amour says that he was not a writer of westerns but of books about the frontier, wherever it was or is. He set books in Appalachia, Asia, and Arizona, but always on the frontier. He looks forward to the frontier of space, and is optimistic about man’s future. Mostly, he shares his passion for learning about everything one possible can during one’s time on earth, either by listening carefully to people who were there during interesting times, or by reading about them. I truly enjoyed it.
I got this for free out of a wheelbarrow of books a neighbor put out, so technically I didn't break my (loosely) self-imposed ban on buying more books before I reduced my TBR pile. L'Amour says this isn't really an autobiography, but is supposed to focus on how he educated himself. He wanders enough to make it a pretty good, if incomplete autobiography. The byways are often more interesting than the main story. His education was mostly from reading, wandering, & talking to people, but he places an emphasis on the first. I'd love to see a list of all the books he mentions, but a Google search didn't bring up such a thing. There is one in the back of the book.While most of his books were pretty simple, he went to some pains to be historically accurate in some ways, although he certainly bent the rules a lot with all the gun fights & show downs. Still, they're fun books & there are some that are fairly profound. Two that come to mind are Bendigo Shafter: A Novel & The Lonesome Gods, favorites of mine. Both these protagonists grow up learning much the way L'Amour did & he uses phrases in those novels often in this book.I didn't enjoy the last 1/3 - 1/4 as much as the first. He repeated himself & lectured more. I didn't care for that tone, but still found interesting facts. Too many of the books are just mentioned by title at times. It would have been nice to know a bit more about them. I have read or attempted to read some that he mentioned. His ability to read dry, complex texts obviously exceeds my own.The Wikipedia article on himhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_L%... is technically accurate, but lends a different slant than what I'm getting from this book. It says, "...eight years, they skinned cattle..." making it sound like Louis was with all or part of his family. According to him, he wasn't. He left home at 15 & did come back to help his parents move from OR to OK, but was otherwise out on his own. Apparently he grew big early & easily passed for several years older than he was.An interesting tidbit from the move with his parents. They stopped at a ranch where Louis had worked to spend the night & he mentioned something about Butch Cassidy. The ranch owner replied that Butch had dropped by a couple of days ago to swap a couple of tires for a saddle. L'Amour explains that while the world thought that Cassidy had died down in Bolivia, many folks in WY, CO, & UT knew better & that. Except for the Pinkertons, everyone liked him since his holdups never killed anyone. (I'll take that with a large grain of salt.) I read the bit through several times, but could never decide if either L'Amour or the rancher were joking or serious. There is very little evidence either way for the life or death of Cassidy.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_ca...I've read both theories in other books, too.On the way home I was listening to the second section of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. A character says that one of the best things about books is that you can shut them when you need to think, unlike the TV & advertising of the book's world. I got home & read some of this book. The epigraph to one of the chapters I read was "A book is a friend that will do what no friend does - be silent when we wish to think." - Will Durant, the author of Story of CivilizationKind of neat getting the same sentiment from two such different sources within an hour of each other.I'd love to give this 5 stars, but it was a bit too uneven for that. It was a good book & I'm glad I read it. I'm fairly sure I'm not going to keep it, though.
What do You think about Education Of A Wandering Man (1990)?
Warning: These reviews are to help me process my reading and improve my writing. They may be useful to other readers, too; just don't be turned off by their personal nature. Who is Louis L'Amour?He read over 100 books a year. He worked hard labor and starved throughout 1930's America. He was a boxer. He wrote novels about the American West. And I learned all this from Louis L'Amour's memoir, The Education of a Wandering Man. I did not intend to read it. That's exactly why I carefully assembled a "Prioritized Reading List" on Google Docs: so I wouldn't waste any time on random books. Just the best stuff. Still, when I noticed the title at the library in Willow, Alaska, I was intrigued. "Education"--big interest of mine; "wandering"--I think I believe in serendipity, but I need more practice. Also, there's a good-looking dude on the cover. This sounds like someone I want to be. Here's the book in one sentence:"I educated myself despite hunger and poverty by consuming every book I could get," remarked Dakotan Louis L'Amour thoughtfully. His opinions emerge. Louis is a great spokesman for the subject of history. To write a novel, he absorbs multiple diaries from the time period, reads a few histories. For Westerns, he relies on conversations with old cowboys in country bars. Louis also holds a deep faith in learning. How can I criticize that? I think I believe in learning basically for its own sake, too. But this troubles me. I can't neatly define why I believe in education, and I suspect I believe in it simply because it's been culturally instilled in me. Hasn't anybody written an article on "The Disadvantages of Education," or "Why Learning is Bad"? I'm fairly serious. I guess they wouldn't use published words as their medium if they were anti-learning. Fine, just a tape-recorded interview, then. Just give me SOME alternative viewpoint! Before I move on, I captured a few insightful statements on education from Louis's memoir. Here they are:ON COLLEGE:"No university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself."ON ARROGANCE AND SELF-ABSORPTION:"Young men are inclined to be full of themselves--their desires, goals, and ambitions--yet often they are talking when they should be listening."ON BEING ARTICULATE AND PUBLIC SPEAKING:You should be able to have an original idea and "be able, in a few brief spoken words, to deliver that idea orally."I promised myself always to be critical of what I read, to avoid becoming a naive, delusional crackpot. So this review will round up with some criticisms, plus a surprise!Louis claims that reading about adventures and world travel is better than the real thing, since he's done both. I disagree. This isn't deep, but of course the rough circumstances of his own travels informed that opinion: Louis missed many meals, worked strings of menial hard jobs, lived in perpetual poverty; these were his constant travel companions. Many people are luckier. For them, just armchair reading can't satisfy, especially if they share L'Amour's intensely self-starting personality. As for education through reading...L'Amour admits that he never partook in most "youthful activities." He never drank. Hard to criticize. He was too busy reading nonstop, or earning his daily bread. But most people, myself included, have the good fortune of being a little less austere than Louis. We want to enjoy life. And unlike Louis, we have the luxury of programmed reading, that is, carefully selecting what we read. He was forced to read at random for many years. And that concludes the criticisms. The problem is, I agree too much with Louis to criticize effectively. I admire too much. Like Malcolm X (I sense the flames coming - look, it's not an ideal analogy, but let me run with it, yeah?), he had an intense drive to educate himself any way he could, and that drive overcame some intimidating circumstances. William Upski Wimsatt shares that drive, but his circumstances were self-imposed (dropping out of Oberlin). Like Malcolm X, Louis has an anachronistic respect for Asian and Middle Eastern cultures. I suspect their shared method of self-education via eclectic reading encouraged these beliefs. Where's the surprise? Oh, it's a letdown. The surprise is just that, despite my criticisms, this is a great book! If it sounds intriguing, you can definitely quickly skim it. And I'll construct a better surprise next time, I promise. Cheers,Chris
—Chris Frederick
The Title is to be taken literally, Education quite simply means: all of the books Mr. L'Amour read, even complete with bibliography/lists of books read. Only avid readers that could not become bored by a non-stop list of titles could appreciate most of this. On the other hand, it is a bit of a memoir, and the author very likeable. This is the ratio and proportion of the book, one line book title and clipped review, two lines memoir and background, one line humble writerly advice, and then repeat all with book title again. I liked it all well enough, Louis really is a very admirable person.** I think I had read the vast majority of L'Amour's work before I was 13-14 (my Dad's hand-me-downs). All of those stories of Frontiersman and Westerners always rang true, but I never realized THEY WERE BASED ON ACTUAL HISTORICAL EVENTS. Louis L'Amour always started with an actual event and fleshed out the stories in his own simple style. I was quite amazed to learn this.
—Kirk Smith
This was a very strange read. I probably should have looked into some of the background of this book before starting it. This is, in a sense, an autobiographical account of certain elements of Mr. L'Amour's reading and some of his experiences that contributed to his education. As he states early in the book, he left formal schooling at 15 for two reasons - economic necessity, and it interfered with his education. The remainder of the book seems to start to tell some of his more defining moments, but his experiences are intertwined with lists of books that he read along with an explanation about why he felt some were critically important. I'll admit I was a bit disappointed in that, given his incredibly rich life experiences, we see but a glimpse of everything that Mr. L'Amour went through to become who he is.I have little doubt this is by design as much of the book discusses the need for people to go and do, but there is a fair amount about how the written word is the largest monument we will leave behind for future generations. Yet, Mr. L'Amour leaves many of his experiences simply hinted at, without sufficient explanation so as to leave behind his monument. Still, it was a quick read that gave me an appreciation for the mind of a writer and an incredibly active writer at that. Mr. L'Amour remains one of my favorite authors for his ability to paint pictures with words in such a way that transports me to the location written about. He and Jack London both excel at this and make reading their stories thoroughly enjoyable. I was disappointed that this book did not contain more of that writing, but I understand that this was not the purpose behind the book.
—Micahb
