A Man Called L’Amour
Louis L’Amour was joined by many interesting people as he traveled the west doing his research. In the mid 1970’s as he was working on THE LONESOME GODS, he was joined by Joe Wershba, one of the producers of the popular TV news show 60 Minutes in which Louis appeared in an episode called, A Man Called L’Amour.
On 3/12/83 — LDL writes in his journal: “Joe Wershba called; his an opinion I respect, wonderful things to say about LONESOME GODS, compared the philosphy to Heraclitus and Bacon, mentioned bits on pp. 342–343. I went at once to read them. Not bad. Once in a while I say something bright. Wish it was more often.”
Consulting a first edition hardcover brought us to this excerpt from The Lonesome Gods . . .
“We would be five against at least twelve, going against them on ground of their own choosing. I thought of them then, those four young men who rode with me, four young men carved from the same oak of trouble seasoned by the same winds, yet each as different as could be. They rode forth to battle without a flag except that flown by their own courage, loyal to the last fiber of their being, and strong with the knowledge that if men are to survive upon the earth there must be law, and there must be justice, and all men must stand together against those who would strike at the roots of what men have so carefully built.
It is all very well to say that man is only a casual whim in a mindless universe, that he, too, will pass. We understand that, but disregard it, as we must. Man to himself is the All, the sum and the total. However much he may seem a fragment, a chance object, a bit of flotsam on the waves of time, he is to himself the beginning and the end. And this is just. This is how it must be for him to survive.
Man must deal with himself. It is his reality he must face each morning when he rises. It is his world with which he must deal. Perhaps his end is only years away, or even months, yet he cannot more than acknowledge that, for it is the now with which he must deal, unless like a spoiled child he is to fall on his face and beat his fists against the earth. He mustbe, he must move, he must create. If man is to vanish from the earth, let him vanish in the moment of creation, when he is creating something new, opening a path to the tomorrow he may never see. It is man’s nature to reach out, to grasp for the tangible on the way to the intangible.
We have hedged ourselves round with law, for we know that if man is to survive it must be through cooperative effort.”
NOT BAD AT ALL!
