Customer Reviews

Hondo (L Amour, Louis)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've really got a thing for these Louis L'amour books at the moment. They hardly take a moment to read, but they are well-crafted and excellent reads. Hondo seems to be the ultimate Western man - he has lived at least part of his life with Apache, is a scout for the Army, and comes up against the Apache both as friend and foe.

Hondo comes across a farm run by a woman and her son, she lies to him and tells her that her husband is away in the hills rounding cattle - Hondo knows that isn't true as there are no tracks leaving the place. He tries to convince her to come with him to the safety of the fort but she refuses. She has always been friends with the Apache and wants to remain on the property even though her husband has gone and is probably dead.

Returning to the fort Hondo realises that things are bad and the woman and boy out there alone will probably die so he returns against orders, but not without the tacit consent of the fort's commander.

He is tracked from the fort by two men intent on killing him - one of them is Ed Lowe, the woman's husband. Unfortunately for them group of Apache track them to the springs and the two men die trying to ambush Hondo - Hondo manages to kill two of the indians along with Ed Lowe. HOwever one indian has escaped to raise the alarm - and now Hondo is in danger, tracked by one of the vicious roaming Apache bands.

This is very much the story of a man who knows his own code of justice and righteousness and is prepared to live and die by that code. His dog, Sam, is like him. A loner, but one who is loyal and trustworthy.

What I really liked about this book is that most of the characters in it were shades of black and white rather than all good or all bad - for instance Vittoro, the Apache cheif - he was not all bad - as was Hondo. Both respected one another because theirs was a code of fairness rather than hatred. The characters who simply hated got their come-uppance.

It moves along at a cracking pace, and although I like some of the later more humourous heros, I still really enjoyed this book - a great read.

The events of this very solid and compelling story are clearly based on, or at least loosely inspired by, real events in Arizona in 1861. There are many parallels with the Boscom affair and the kidnapping of Mickey Free, events that led to the Apache Wars and the campaigns of Cochise. It's L'Amour's comprehensive knowledge of the history and landscape of Arizona that helps to make this book special. The writing is consistently good, occasionally sublime; "...the tips of the cottonwoods turned gold, like the sun-tipped lances of a moving army." L'Amour is particularly good with dialogue, a skill which is sadly lacking among most Western writers, making Zane Grey for example, almost unreadable. The only thing preventing "Hondo" from being great literature is the paper-thin characterization. Hondo Lane is an idealized, 'Hollywooden' hero and the villains lack any redeeming features that would make them credible. The depiction of the Apache is sympathetic, even to the extent that they too are often idealized ("No Apache ever hit his child"). The author's attempts to describe the developing feelings of the hero and heroine for each other are particularly gauche. L'Amour, it seems, cannot write l'amour. But, so what? If we want profound insights into human nature, we read Jane Austen. If we want the romance and drama of the Old West, we read Louis L'Amour.

The best Western novel I have ever read. -John Wayne

Hey look, I'm not about to argue with the Duke. Louis L'Amour is probably the best-selling Western writer of all time and Hondo his first big, and perhaps his best, novel. It is reminiscent of Shane (see Orrin's review) and Riders of the Purple Sage (see Orrin's review), but with Apaches on the warpath taking the place of hostile cattle ranchers or intolerant Mormons. Hondo Lane is the gun fighter, Army dispatch rider, hero who, along with his feral but loyal dog Sam, meets Angie Lowe and her young son Johnny who are homesteading in Apache territory in late 1800's Arizona. Angie has been abandoned by her low down snake of a husband, but refuses to leave her land. Hondo must ride back to the Fort to warn the Cavalry that the Apache chief Vittoro is on the move, but then returns to help defend woman and child.

If the story does not quite reach the lofty literary heights of Shane--perhaps because the focus is so much on what Hondo needs from Angie and Johnny, as opposed to the way in which Shane was the object of the Starrett family's affection--it is still quite enjoyable. Three elements that really stand out and offer a contrast to the easy caricature of the genre are the respectful portrayal of the Apaches, the centrality of the romance angle to the story and the blithe depiction of the difficulty and brutality of frontier life. Even in so formulaic a tale as this one, the American Western demonstrates a level of maturity and nuance that critics seem bent on denying.

With the possible exception of the romance novel, there is perhaps no other genre of fiction which the critics and academia take less seriously than the Western. But consider the fact that by the time of his death L'Amour had sold over 200 million books and among his avid legion of readers were two of the most decent men ever to become U.S. Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. It seems to me that the failure of the intelligentsia to reckon with Western reflects poorly on themselves, rather than on the literature. L'Amour says at one point:

No man knows the hour of his ending, nor can he choose the place or the manner of his going. To each it is given to die proudly, to die well, and this is, indeed, the final measure of the man.

It is easy, too easy, to dismiss the ethos of the Western as a kind of macho posturing. But those lines and the general "code of the West", however much it may be a fictional construct, reflect a concern with reputation which, when observed, has had a salutary effect on men. In an excellent essay on "The Greatness of George Washington" (Virginia Quarterly Review, Volume 68, Number 2) historian Gordon S. Wood traces Washington's greatness and his stature among his peers to what our generation would perceive as an overweening concern for his own reputation. But this same zealous regard for his own name and place in history motivated Washington to lead a life of exemplary moral rectitude and he created in himself the ideal man to lead a nascent and fragile democracy, a man capable of resisting the temptations of power because reputation was more important to him. It is no surprise then to find that two of the only other presidents we've had who can even approach him in stature immersed themselves in this idealistic and rigidly moralistic fiction. God knows what Bill Clinton reads (actually one book we know he enjoyed is Vox by Nicholson Baker, see Orrin's review), but rest assured, it ain't Louis L'Amour

GRADE: A-

As my Louis L'Amour library grows I find that there are stories there that rank among some of the best American fiction readers can find. Okay, I can just hear you. "Louis L'Amour! Isn't he just the leading purveyor of Western pulp fiction that there is? Not a serious author after all!"

Not hardly! Let's face it, L'Amour's Western stories rank right up there with those of Larry McMurtry, Vardis Fisher and Zane Grey.

And HONDO is one of L'Amour's best ever! My book includes an endorsement by John Wayne, the star of the movie based on L'Amour's classic. I won't say that it's my absolute L'Amour favorite. But it ranks right up there with other favorites of mine like HAUNTED MESA and LAST OF THE BREED. Over fifty years old and still a great book!

THE HORSEMAN

Hello, folks, I'm James Drury. I used to play the Virginian on television. I say this only to add a little authority to this review. If you haven't read Louis L'Amour, and particularly this book, you ought to build up the fire, sit down on your couch, and kick back. You are in for a treat. John Wayne brought Hondo to life, but he couldn't have done it without this book to build from. Wayne said this was his favorite Western novel, and in the world of Westerns we all trust the Duke! Make sure you read this book if you get the chance, and if you haven't read L'Amour and you take a liking to him you might also want to try Elmore Leonard, Elmer Kelton, Mike Blakely or Kirby Jonas.

It is perhaps one of those fortunate turns of kismet that Bantam's Louis L'Amour's Legacy Editions series should be launched at roughly the same time as the premiere of "Deadwood," HBO's new original western series. It is doubtful that it was planned that way, given that such matters are usually scheduled a year or so in advance. However, the interest in "Deadwood," a graphic and gritty presentation that is not your daddy's "Bonanza," will hopefully rekindle interest in the Western genre in general and L'Amour in particular.

While L'Amour's name is known and revered to fans of the Western genre, he was in the somewhat unenviable position of having his work better known than he was to the general public. This was due primarily to the adaptation of his fine novels to epic films, such as How The West Was Won, The Shadow Riders and, of course, Hondo.

L'Amour's HONDO is inexorably intertwined with John Wayne, who played the lead role of Hondo Lane in the 1953 film. It is hard to believe that the book of the same name was L'Amour's first full-length novel. L'Amour had confined himself to the magazine market up until then, honing his craft by refusing to sacrifice quality at the expense of quantity, writing for reliable publications such as Argosy (recently and brilliantly revived) and creating word paintings on a huge, adventurous canvas. The quality of HONDO demonstrates this for all time. Though over fifty years has passed since its publication, L'Amour's prose sparkles and shines with a brilliance that transcends time, place and fashion.

Hondo is a mystery man, a loner, whose background is only roughly sketched throughout the novel in a passage here, a sentence there. He is a dispatch rider for General Crook, traveling through an Arizona desert that he knows as well as his own name. In his lifetime, he has lived among the Apache and the white man, usually uncomfortably. Hondo is a legend among both, a roughhewed individual who will live in peace if he is permitted but who will kill without hesitation if he is attacked or disturbed. As the novel begins the Apache are leaving the reservation, beginning a rebellion that will ultimately lead to their inevitable destruction.

Hondo is on his way back to General Crook to bring him word of the uprising when he stumbles across a small ranch in the desert worked and defended by Angie Lowe and Johnny, her young son. Angie Lowe has been deserted by her husband but is not about to desert the land and small ranch that her father left to her. Lowe and Hondo find themselves attracted to each other following their brief meeting, and after Hondo completes his mission he is compelled to return to Lowe in an attempt to persuade her to leave the ranch in the face of the deadly Apache uprising.

Vittorio, the chief of the Apaches, is also aware of Lowe, and respects her courage and that of Johnny. He desires to bring them into his tribe of Apache warriors. While he respects Hondo as well, there are those in his tribe who do not. One is Silva, who is motivated by hatred rather than nobility, and who has set his sight upon Lowe and her son in order to wreak a terrible vengeance. L'Amour painstakingly but quickly draws these disparate people and elements together, and if one anticipates the conclusion it is only because it is a classic one that L'Amour had a hand in creating.

The ending of HONDO, in its way, is perfect: one is left wanting more, to learn what happened to Hondo Lane and to Angie Lowe, and yet what is revealed is enough. And while HONDO is firmly and finely steeped in the Western genre, its subject matter, and L'Amour's resounding skill as a wordsmith, transcends classification. HONDO is ultimately a necessity for any bookshelf, published in the edition that it has earned and deserves.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

This was the first full-length novel by L'Amour (1910-1988) and it was voted in 1977 as one of the top twenty-five western novels by the Western Writers of America. It was also made into a classic film starring John Wayne. Hondo Lane, always accompanied by the dog Sam, is an Army scout in Arizona in the late 1800s. During an Apache uprising, he comes across a remote farm in which a woman, Angie Lowe, and her six-year-old son have been isolated for some time, her husband having abandoned them. Hondo tries to convince them to return with him to the Fort but she insists on staying. While at the Fort he has an altercation with the delinquent husband at the same time that the woman and her son meet and are befriended by the Apache chief, Vittorio.

Hondo: only Louis L'Amour could have written it; and only the Duke could have played him. The greatest Western writer and the greatest Western star, combine for the greatest Western ever.

I've always liked Westerns better in the movies than in fiction. What makes for good mythic archetypes on the silver screen often makes for something less than that on the printed page. Still, Louis L'Amour's Hondo worked for me. It's a tale of the tall silent loner, hard on the outside and a sensitive soul deep within, the kind of archetype first given us by James Fenimore Cooper's Hawkeye character in Last of the Mohicans. Since then writers of Westerns have reworked the character again and again. And L'Amour does it, as well, with Hondo Lane. He creates a supremely likeable loner who is equally at home with the Apache Indians as with the white settlers, and who is suddenly thrust into a situation in which he must worry about a lone settler woman and her six year old son living in Indian country as the Apaches rise up in rebellion at the broken treaty foisted on them by the white man. Vittoro, the old and implacable Apache chief, takes a shine to the woman's son when he shows unexpected pluck and extends his protection over the boy and his mother. But another Apache, Silva, balks at this, even as Hondo is heading to the homestead to rescue the mom and her son, the woman's ne'er-do-well husband hot on his heels, intent on murder and mayhem. Hondo must fight his way back to the woman and boy, despite the harsh enmity of the Apaches, and balance the demands of his army employers with the needs of the little family he has decided to adopt. It's a good, fast moving story though it hasn't much depth to it. Nor are the characters, who are mostly well drawn, very deeply portrayed. In the end its the drive of the narrative and the rich evocation of the Arizona desert that carry this one. L'Amour worked the Western myth as well in print as many contemporary filmmakers sometimes managed to do in celluloid. -- SWM

Hondo Lane has led a hard life, and it has made him a hard man. But, while acting as a dispatch rider for the cavalry in Arizona, during an Apache uprising, he is surprised to find a small ranch, run solely by a woman and her son. Hondo soon realizes that the woman has been abandoned by her worthless husband, but it is not his way to force anyone, and he will not force her to leave her ranch. But, the fate of the woman and boy preys upon his mind, and Hondo realizes that he must do whatever he can to protect them, no matter what it might cost him.

This was Louis L'Amour's first full-length novel, and it helped solidify his reputation as the king of the Western novel. Hondo is the classic strong, silent type, but he is far from cold and indifferent. In fact, Hondo is shocked by how often his thoughts return Angie Lowe and her son. I found Hondo to be an interesting mix - part tough guy, but also needing a home and family to call his own. I also liked Angie Lowe, a woman of exceptionally strong fiber, trying to protect the people and the things that she loves, reliant on no one, but needing her loved ones nonetheless.

This is an excellent Western, one that well warrants the reputation that it has gathered over the years. If you like a good story, then you will like Hondo. And, if you like a good Western, then you will love it!