Les
Every sixty seconds you spend angry, upset or mad, is a full minute of happiness you'll never get back..

Another writer who was a genre-bender was Robert E. Howard, who went from Conan to Breckinridge Elkins without a hitch. If you can find the Elkins stories or A Gent From Bear Creek, it's definitely worth the time. Escapist humor/fun.

Falcon

And, I think that genres can be blended. In reading "Conaghan" recently, it occurred to me that it almost reads like a romance novel. But, because it was written by Louis L'Amour, it is categorized as a western. And, probably should be. I'm just sayin'...

In the early days of the paperback book industry books were categorized by publisher, this helped the distributors to quickly restock the racks and certain publishers did specialize in different types of books, sometimes different genres.

Then in the early 1960s, in an effort amusingly called "integration", booksellers and publishers combined the placement of all their titles into genres or categories. At that time the pressure for a writer to stick to one genre, or for all of that writer's work to be categorized into the genre they were best known for became enormous. With thousands of paperbacks for sale in even a modestly sized bookstore how else were you going to find the work by your favorite author?

No matter the genre writers work was generally lumped together in the genre they were known for and publishers just stuck the genre designation on the spine of the book to be sure the distributors got them all together.

Which gives me another question. Most of your dad's protagonists were along the heroic lines. But would you consider the Sackett twins to be examples of antiheros? And, if so, are there others of your dad's novels that you would consider to have antiheros as the protagonist?

Here are some of the complex aspects I think of when I look at LL's career --

I see a lot of the discussion of this subject stemming from the division between static and dynamic characters. So, if your story is about a character who is so strong that they are never tempted, never do anything wrong, never make mistakes, how much character is there REALLY? Is the braver person the one who does not experience fear, or the one who continues on even though terrified? Is it a better story if the protagonist knows all he needs to know or learns something along the way?

Many of Dad's characters learn lessons as the story unfolds but fewer of them learn a BIG lesson. Few of them change all that much. Sometimes the small lessons add up powerfully. Think of all the questions relating to community and its purpose in Bendigo Shafter (or read my LT PS in the new addition). Sometimes there is a BIG lesson learned. I like Fallon as an example of this, Fallon is trapped in his own con ... and he learns to like it. Of course, Tom Sunday plays with hero, anti hero and villain. Arthur Fordyce in Unguarded Moment is a CLASSIC anti hero, or maybe even a tragic protagonist (see below).

Anytime I deal with Dad's work I have to confront an issue that I've come to see as AMAZINGLY important in our world today ... INTIMACY, and how much of it an audience actually wants contrasted with AMBIGUITY and how useful it is when relating to the audience's imagination.

Dad is often given credit for writing brilliant descriptions of all sorts of stuff, mostly the Western landscape. My feelings about that is, "Yeah, sort of." Most of his descriptions are actually quite sparse. Not being too specific or only occasionally being specific is actually brilliant story telling. The best imaginary experience is one the reader creates for themselves. If the writer tells too much it ruins the effect. It is much better to tell just enough to spark the imagination. That's creative ambiguity.

Some LL fans shy away from intimacy and therefore some intensity. They don't want to know the details because that might damage the imaginary experience and they have a particular imaginary experience that they do not want trifled with. They don't want the writer, even Louis placing them too uncomfortably close to a story they'd rather imagine from a comfortable distance. So there are fans who dislike the more "personal" Yondering stories or pull back from the very few specific images relating to sex or foul language in Dad's work.

I have received some angry emails relating to No Traveller Returns and other projects I've worked on about these subjects. In reality, I toned down NTR knowing that this stuff was an issue. In other cases I have played it up. There is some immodest language in the Graphic Novel to Law of the Desert Born. It is there because when you break away from pure prose, using the "26 letters of code", to evoke an image in the audience's mind, you have to get more literal in order to deliver the same intensity. Dad's short story Law of the Desert Born actually starts by describing Shad Marone cursing ... it just doesn't say any of the words. And it doesn't have to be cause it is ALL IMAGINARY. As soon as you add pictures (or any additional elements like actors in an Audio Drama) you step away from the imaginary experience and you have to get more "real" or else you end up losing intensity.

So, Dad played around with how close to get to his subject matter, how intimate, how intense. He knew that he could hint and he knew that many in his audience liked it when he did. But it was always a risk. Back off too far and you lose the younger audience which is used to movies where the camera follows characters into the bathroom. That's not a value judgement, doing it might be good or bad. But the more INTIMATE our literature, film and theater get, the more exposed to and expecting of, that sort of intimacy the audience becomes. Back off too far and you turn Film into Theater, and novels into something that is just a vague description of the action, like a treatment. Go read the treatment for the sequel to The Walking Drum in the LT PS of that novel ... it's interesting but you won't feel it's as good as TWD!

A dynamic character who grows and changes is more intimate and vulnerable than a static hero who does not. Dad often designed stories around dynamic characters but then wrote more static heroes. Last of the Breed is a good example and, again, I'm going to refer you to the LT PS. It was originally intended to have a HUGE, DRAMATIC, character transformation as it's center piece. Why didn't he do it? I don't know.

What Dad was particularly good at was creating static characters with enough interesting aspects or conflicts so that he could get away with splitting the difference. Tell Sackett is a great example. Tell is a bit sad, a bit of a loser (especially compared to his two younger brothers). He's never going to get anywhere even slightly impressive in life. He's always going to be a working stiff who comes up a bit short. But that why we love him. He's brave and capable and honest ... all the things contained in the superficially static "hero" model ... but he's also US. Flawed, human, vulnerable, always feeling like an outsider. He is the town, the community, in Bendigo Shafter, an unimpressive little place that serves its purpose and disappears back into the prairie ... but IT SERVES ITS PURPOSE.

One last detail, and the one you really asked about: Anti Heroes. I read a GREAT description of what a tragedy is in Christopher Booker's amazing book The Seven Basic Plots. Simply put tragedy is when the story is told from the point of view of the villain. In Macbeth, Macbeth (and Lady Macbeth) are the villains and the play follows their story closely. He is the protagonist. Macduff is the distant threat to his rule and is a hero ... but the play is not about him. In Breaking Bad, Walter White is a villain and the story follows him but his brother in law Hank (the DEA agent) is the "hero."

So the real scale seems to be between Heroic Protagonist and Tragic Protagonist (a villain who is the focus of the story) and an anti hero is somewhere along that scale, probably closer to the Tragic Protagonist. Hank in Breaking Bad is actually more of an anti hero. He is vain, loud, uncouth and often insensitive. He is also vulnerable, brave, driven, and honest.

Just to make people think about it more, think of the character of Seth Bullock in Deadwood. In this horrifying pit of sin and iniquity he is honest and always tries to do the right thing ... that is VERY difficult and therefore he has a lot of the intensity of a villain. But, in a show known for it's amazingly foul language, I don't remember him ever swearing and he a pillar of morality: he has chastely married his brother's wife so that she will have the standing of a married woman and not a widow and he gives up the love of his life so that he will not embarrass his "wife" when she must come and live with him ... to keep up appearances for her. Yet the burning intensity that drives this man sells him as an "anti hero. Interesting.

How's that for an exhausting answer?

I would love to see a Compendium of Tell Sackett novels and short stories, in order as best as can be guessed. The only mention of him that could be omitted would be Dark Canyon... I don't think he has any dialogue in that novel, just has his name dropped.

(My previous login ceased functioning a couple of months ago, so I reregistered)

If you want to trace Tell's path, I would suggest you start with the short story "Booty for a Badman". It starts Tell's history from when he left home at 14. I would then suggest the short story "The Courting of Griselda". I think both of these take place in Arizona where Tell went to prospect for gold after leaving the army. Then he shows up in "Dark Canyon" which I am pretty sure takes place in Utah.

When he leaves Utah, he shows up in Texas. You could skip "Chancy" but I think he is mentioned in it although not specifically. The reader is told that a Sackett rode through Texas and told the ranchers about a green valley out west just waiting to be settled. And, Chancy lets the reader know that he is a distant relative to the Sacketts. Putting Tell as the Sackett showing up in Texas makes sense because "Sackett" starts with Tell leaving Uvalde, Texas after killing a Bigelow over cheating in a card game.

From there, you can follow Tell in "Sackett", "Mojave Crossing", "The Sackett Brand", "The Lonely Men", "Treasure Mountain" and "Lonely on the Mountain". I put "The Lonely Men" in this sequence because Tell mentions that he is still recovering from injuries that were probably those he received in "The Sackett Brand". Some of this is based on dates given on grave markers in "Sackett" and "The Sackett Brand". The rest is estimated based on their place in the train of events or references made to certain years.

"Lonely on the Mountain" is sort of interesting because it almost comes across as a swan song for Tell, his brothers and Cap Roundtree. At the end, the brothers are all probably in their 30's. Tye is going home to Drusilla. Orrin still can't pick a winner. Tell appears to have a new love. And, even Cap Roundtree looks like he may be ready to settle down with a love from the past.

As for Chancy... there are a few Sacketts to choose from that could fill that bill. Aside from your reference, Lando and the Tinker spent time there, making their way to the border, and Lando was more verbose than Tell. Even my namesake, Falcon Sackett, stayed there for awhile, presumably cementing his relationship with Gin Locklear.

It just seems to fit since we know that LL had Tell leaving Texas around 1873 as indicated on Ange's grandfather's grave marker in "Sackett". And, Tell probably left Utah sometime around 1871 or early 1872 because in Ch 9 Gaylord Riley asks if Tell is related to the Sacketts in Mora but he does not refer to Tye as the Mora Gunfighter which was his reputation after his shootout with Tom Sunday which took place in about 1872 which was five years after Tye and Orrin started west in 1867. 1867 comes from a comment by Tye in Ch 3 of "The Daybreakers" when he says that in 1867 the Santa Fe Trail was an old trail. And, in Ch 14, Tye talks to Tom Sunday on Tom's ranch and comments that they have known each other for 5 years shortly after whick they have their gunfight where Tom dies.

I mean we are really talking about a fictional character but LL seemed to leave a lot of indicators of his timeline by having the characters outright declare the year the story was set in and/or connecting real live characters and events to the story. But, of course, LL could have been using artistic license which would throw a monkey wrench into the timeline of all of this. And, Beau has said something to the effect that we should not get too hung up on a timeline. But, we can still conjecture.

Peter

After I retired in '15, I did something I had said I would do one day and that was read all of LL's books. Along the way, I wondered if there was a chronology to the Sacketts. That question led me to a Wikipedia article, this website and “The Sackett Companion”. I noticed that the each of these three chronologies pretty much mirrored the other two. After this, I once asked Beau a question about the chronology in TSC and, he told me that he thought the chronology in TSC was put together by Bantam editors and not by LL or himself. As you probably know, TSC was published after LL’s death. So, when they were putting that book together, Bantam probably used their own editors for some tasks as LL’s health was probably deteriorating. My personal opinion is that the editors did not do LL or the Sacketts justice.

One thing that struck me was that the chronologies kept the Chantry and Talon novels separate from the Sacketts. I don't understand how you could do that since LL clearly had intended that the three families should be interwoven over time. So, I decided to see what it would look like if you wove the three families together which lead me look at when each story supposedly took place.

To do that, I looked for all the Sackett, Chantry and Talon references in the books. And, tried find a reasonable estimate of the year when each story began in order to weave the Chantrys and Talons into the chronology.

Finding a timeline was interesting. I don’t have the faintest idea how LL did it but, I have the distinct impression that he had some way of maintaining the timeline and, at times, it looks almost like he was making a game of revealing it. LL had various ways of revealing the year the story takes place. It’s also interesting that some of the books likely were set at or near the same time.

I also found what I think are several errors in the chronology in “The Sackett Companion”:

“Sackett’s Land” was set in 1599. You might say it was circa 1600 but Barnabas tells the reader in Ch 1 that the year is 1599.

“To the Far Blue Mountains” likely covered closer to 1600 to 1624.

“The Warrior’s Path” and “Jubal Sackett” could be concurrent tales although I think that Jubal’s story may actually start prior to “The Warrior’s Path”. But TWP was definitely set in 1630. Rin tells you so in Ch 1.

“Ride the River” was set in 1840 and only covered a period of about 4 weeks. That makes it difficult to come near 1850.

“The Daybreakers” covered from 1867 to 1872. Not 1870 to 1872.

“Lando” covered from 1868 to 1875. In Ch 8, he reveals that he was captive in Mexico for about 7 years until 11/19/1875.

“Mustang Man” should be before or concurrent with or right after “Sackett” because he makes no mention of knowing the other Sacketts whom he meets in “Mojave Crossing” and “The Sackett Brand”. I like the way it fits before "Sackett" rather than concurrent or after.

“Sackett” should be after “Lando” and “Mustang Man”. “Sackett” should follow “Lando” because “Sackett” begins in 1873 while “Lando” begins in 1868.

“Mojave Crossing” should follow “Sackett”.

“The Sackett Brand” should be right after “Mojave Crossing”.

“The Skyliners” take up for Flagan and Galloway almost right where “The Sackett Brand” leaves off.

“Galloway”

“The Lonely Men” takes place after “The Sackett Brand” because Tell comments that he is still recovering from injuries previously received. Probably those in “The Sackett Brand”.

“Ride the Dark Trail” and “Treasure Mountain” are probably concurrent stories in the same year.

“Lonely on the Mountain” should be last.

This list doesn’t take into consideration “Booty for a Badman” or “The Courting of Griselda”. These should both be read before “The Daybreakers”. It also does not include a myriad of other stories that include Sacketts or Sackett references. Just not as main characters.

This list also does not include the Chantry or Talon tales. I think the final irony is that a combined timeline begins and ends with a Chantry tale. It starts with “Fair Blows the Wind” set in 1590 and ends with “North to the Rails” set around 1906.

Peter

I read something by some guy once where he referred to all of this as the Sackett Saga. We will probably never know why LL dropped Sacketts into some of these stories. Maybe it was just LL's way of creating a larger tale of the American frontier where a family named Sackett and their kin roamed, explored, and helped to build a nation. And, if you add teacher to all of the things that LL was, it might just be he wanted to create a fictional series based on American history that he hoped might inspire readers to further explore American history in more depth on their own. Who knows? One thing we do know is that he was a master artist and created something that is really interesting and fun to read and explore.

The paperback business was based on the distribution model of the MAGAZINE business. At a magazine stand when the new editions come in, the old ones go in the trash. Never to be seen again.

No paperback writer from the beginnings of the business in the late 1940s to the end of its heyday in the 1990s really expected his or her titles to remain in print or on bookstore shelves ... especially before the advent of the supersized bookstores like Barnes and Noble. It is worth remembering that very very few writers have stayed in print like Louis L'Amour. Most have the MAJORITY of their titles out of print before the end of their lives.

So, that means Dad didn't take the possibility that fans could buy all his books and read them in order until the very end of his life. At that point it was finally becoming obvious that he was something special when it came to titles remaining in print.

Because most of his career was spent thinking that his books would disappear sooner rather than later he did not write his series with the care that authors do now. He didn't expect them to be carefully compared to one another.

There wasn't much planning to it all until near the end. Some sequences, like The Daybreakers through The Sackett Brand hold up pretty well others raise a few questions. His putting Sackett characters into books like Dark Canyon was probably more marketing (and personal amusement) than anything else. He wanted fans to know that he was going to do more in the future and to keep buying books to find discover additional stories about their favorite characters. He had started in magazines, he knew how to play the game of the "cameo appearance."

So I think the answer is that there was a grand plan but some of it didn't exist in the fictional universe of the stories.

I can remember reading an author’s note in several of his novels where you dad claimed that the places he wrote about were actual places. If he wrote about a town or a water hole or stream or river or a trail, it was a real place. If he referred to a historical event, it was real. And, his stories seemed to respect the dates when those events took place and, he built his stories respecting those dates. As you know, he often gave a specific year and sometimes a date (Like the date that Lando escaped from his capture – November 19, 1875). And though I have not really researched it to any great degree, I suspect that the weapons his characters used were truly available at the time he was describing. And, the women’s fashions? How did he become such a fashionista? In other words, his stories had an integrity that other writers never achieve.
As for a chronology or timeline, he may not have had anything formal. He may not have had anything at all. Or, it may have been as simple as asking himself where a new story would fit without overlapping and conflicting with another story with the same characters in it. And then, dropping something into the story to indicate whether it should precede or follow another story. In other words, he may have tried to bring that same personal integrity to the order of the stories. Otherwise, it would strike me as an incredibly amazing coincidence that the stories do seem to follow such a neat logical order based on the dates he gave, the historical events he referenced, references made to things in other books, and comments/conversations by the characters in the stories with almost no conflicts. The only one I still cannot figure is “Lonely on the Mountain”. His reference to Louis Riel and Ft Garrity do not quite fit. Otherwise, as before, I’m just sayin’….

Again dealing with the practical aspects of writing: until the mid 1970s we had a solidly middle-class lifestyle if Dad wrote 4 books a year. No private schools. One car. One TV. One phone line. Typical of that era yet kind of minimalist when you think of a quite successful writer today. Dad didn't get 4 books written by spending a lot of his time mired down in double checking details. He wrote. He moved on.

Of more general note: "Westerns" until the 1970s were darn near always set in that "generic western period" of 1865 to 1890. That's how you knew it was a western. Sometimes writers would pretend that period somehow lasted longer, sometimes setting multigenerational stories in that 25 year window. Dad was one of the writers who worked to break people's expectations that "all westerns would be the same" ... but he also played the game when he wasn't specifically trying to break the rules by branching out to other time periods. The typical western from before 1970 existed in a special universe where "the west" was separate from the historical flow of time and from the rest of the world. That concept bugged Dad but that doesn't mean he was trying to fight it with every story he wrote.

The first few Sackett stories (meaning starting with the Daybreakers) are quite carefully set out in time. Then he stopped calling attention to it. He MAY have realized that he was crowding era with stories that might start to overlap. Lonely on the Mountain contained the reference to Riel because he was interested in Riel. He probably forgot the fact that it overlapped or he thought it didn't matter. When he wanted to believe it was all one perfect continuum then that's what he believed ... when he wanted to make an exception to it, well it was his imaginary universe.

You know my opinion: if you sweat it, you are complicating the entertainment experience for yourself. But I'll also say this: If you sweat the "everything single LL said about history is perfect and everything he said about the landscape is there" aspects it will lead to disappointment. He liked to be right but he wasn't going to let it slow him down when he was writing and if reality conflicted with entertainment he allowed himself to choose entertainment if he needed to. There's a term used in the fiction business: "Willing suspension of disbelief" ... basically, a writer owes it to his audience to offer enough "reality" so that they don't waste energy on picking out erroneous details. It means make it believable enough so that the audience can relax and enjoy. That's what Dad did. Accuracy was a trend not a crusade. Occasionally he spoke about it as if it was a crusade but in those instances he was doing himself a disservice. It's always better to under promise and then over deliver.

As for “Lonely on the Mountain”, I think the story was set when both Riel and Ft Garry would have been there. It would have been after the First Resistance and before the Second Resistance when Riel was hanged in 1885. It would have also been before the military began to demolish Ft Garry in 1881. “Lonely on the Mountain” could not take place before Riel’s First Resistance because it took place from 1869 to 1870 which would be well before Tell could be there. It could not be after 1881 because Historical records indicate Ft Garry was demolished between 1881 and 1884. So, Riel would have been around between 1870 and 1880. And, Ft Garry would have been around until 1881. They could fit together when I think the story takes place in 1879 or 1880.

My impression of the Sackett stories is that they all fit neatly into the “generic western period” you refer to. Tell’s short stories begin shortly after 1865 and right after the Civil War. I estimate they ended with “Lonely on the Mountain” which I think was set around 1879 or 1880. That would mean your dad squeezed a lot of action into a 15 year window.

As for the overlap problem, my impression is that there is not much, if any, overlap in the stories he completed. They fit pretty neatly in a sequence. The only overlap I see are stories that involved different characters in different locations at the same time. It looks like he managed to avoid having any character in two places at once.

As for digging into the details, when you are retired and have time on your hands, digging into details can in itself be entertaining and speculating on a chronology can be entertaining. Indeed, there appears to be such interest in a chronology that one is included as a recommended sequence on this website and for Bantam to have included a chronology in “The Sackett Companion”. It’s just that, when I look at the one in TSC, I come away with the opinion (and it’s just my opinion) that very little thought was given to it and that it appears that whoever put it together had not really taken or been given the time to give it any real thought. Maybe they were under pressure to meet some publishing deadline. The reason I say this is that they give circa periods when your dad gave very specific years for several stories. Then, TSC throws nine novels under a generic period of circa 1875 to 1879 in a weird order. One of these is “The Sackett Brand” which your dad very specifically wrote to start on April 25, 1877 which was the date that he had Ange murdered. This book is listed next to last in this list. At least five of the novels listed in the 1875 to 1879 period took place after the events in “The Sackett Brand” in 1877. The list is just sort of disappointing.

You also mention that the first few Sackett stories were set in time but that your dad quit calling attention to it. He may have done so because a character calling attention to it in every book would have become too predictable and boring which your dad was not. Instead, it looks like he used other means like referring to a date on a grave stone or referring to a specific historic event like the year that Wild Bill Hickock was marshal of Abilene or referring to prior events in other books where he had established a date. I think he kept prior events in mind because there were some stories that likely would have all appeared to take place in the same year but never overlapped because of references to events in the prior stories that kept them in a specific order.

I really did try to keep it short.

If there is a chronology, then your father deserves the credit for it. He created a series of related novels before it was a thing. While he wrote novels about the Sacketts/Talons/Chantrys that were actually a connected series, at the same time, each novel was, as you say, a story that could stand alone and leave the reader satisfied. (At least, until we had read enough to realize they were really all part of a bigger story.) I can understand your explanation of it being risky to create such a series in that time but, I think he was a risk taker. However, at the same time, he was a smart risk taker by allowing each story to stand on its own.

And, the chronology perhaps should include the Talons and Chantrys. In the Introduction to TSC, LL included a comment that the stories of the Sacketts, Talons, and Chantrys would eventually become “one story”.

As you know, I dislike the chronology in TSC. but, the Introduction by your dad is a really good discussion of the Sacketts and your dad’s views of history and the settlement of the American West.