High Lonesome: A Novel

This story of a badman going straight is not only a different take on Lamours' plots, but it is very well written and engaging. I am uplifted by the characters who were the outlaws and it was very refreshing and hopeful.

My book club selected genres for this year. When Barry Hannah died our local newspaper ran an obituary in the editorial section with glowing priase of his writing ability and the fact that he was a Southern writer and teacher on the college level. I cut out the article and saved it to recommend his book for our short story genre.
I am sorry he is dead and I can't write to him. He is not a story teller. He can't use punctuation. His sentences don't make sense. His stories don't have a point. I really want my money back. I can't believe he was allowed to teach anything.
Reading reviews of his books lead one to believe he can write and his works are fit to read. They are juvenile, vulgar, sickening trash. The stories border on porn, but aren't that good.

The most boring, over-padded, tedious L'Amour book I've ever read, and I've read a lot. They're usually good, dependable leisure reading, between Ok and very good. But now and then he has a dud, and this is a major splat. It's one of his short stories (In Victorio's Country) expanded to a novel by adding page after page of pitiful romance magazine day-dreaming by both the "tough" outlaw hero and a young girl. There is a good, long cowboys and Indian action scene if you make it to the end, but it's not worth the tedium getting there. I have nothing against romance - I also enjoy Jane Austen - but it's always a weakness for L'Amour, and here it goes on and on in the mind of the two lovebirds to make a novel out of very little plot. Let me pause to say I listened to the Audible version of this novel, and the only reasons I kept going are that Oscar-nominated actor David Strathairn is such a fine reader and that I was on a long road trip. No one would accuse L'Amour of being a literary writer - we read his western fantasies for the color and action and manly daring. And of course, because we know the good guy wins. He often re-uses basic plots, but usually keeps the stories lean and moving, with some rugged scenery thrown in. There's nothing lean or moving here, with the hero (an indecisive outlaw who wants to be good but can't seem to figure out that means not robbing other people of their money) dreaming of the gal he left behind. Other characters in the story also do considerable wool-gathering, until you want to scream "just do something, anything". It's a romance novel on horses for pre-teens, with a couple of fights thrown in. Pick a different western.

L Amour had good knowledge of the old west along with words to describe his stories. Once you start reading, you cant put it down until its finished. Plan on reading all of the novels which amount to 200. He makes you feel your in the story while reading.

"High Lonesome" is flecked with dread. There's a ray of hope at the bitter end but there's a lot of bitter before you get there. This is 90 percent straight-up action and still manages to pack in plenty of life-choice situations for this band of (mostly) bad guys. Or bad guys with a touch of heart here and there. "High Lonesome" is about last chances, big choices and dreams. Even bad guys have dreams and Considine's hopes are clear. He even wants to rob the bank in Obaro his own way. "There must be no killing. He would like to rob the bank of Obaro to get the money and to taunt them, but he wanted no killing. Aside from the fact that he hated no one there, there was a practical side. Take their money and they might come after you; but kill a friend of theirs and they would follow you through hell." Yes, there's a woman and plenty of bullets and knives. Bad guys, more bad guys and some shades of gray. Dreams interrupted. "Whatever a man does leaves a trail behind, and to his passing he leaves indications of the manner of man he is, of his character, and even something of his plans. It requires only the observant and understanding eye to read what the trail can show." That's about as good a summary as any. A quick, energetic and still thoughtful read.

The blurb on the older editions of this book--the one I have--always stated that Louis L'Amour writes stories that "take off like a bullet". And they do; that is no lie. This ones does that. Considine robs a bank on the second page of the book and hurries toward the Mexican border. But he has seen this girl and when he sees her agains he knows she is the one for him. Only she is surrounded by Apaches. He does the right thing and drops the gold and sets out to rescue her. Behind him of course is a posse. He has few chances in succeeding in either saving the girl or getting away with the money. A typical L'Amour product worthy of being read.

L'Amour's only consistent weakness as a novelist was that he was never any good at suspense. He knew it, and he struggled against it with all the bitter stubbornness of one of his own heroes, but only rarely did he overcome it. In High Lonesome, though, L'Amour took the opposite tack: he decided to try to turn his weakness into a strength, and he succeeded astonishingly. High Lonesome is utterly lacking in suspense or surprise. Almost from Chapter One, everything points toward the brutal climax atop the titular mountain. But this predictability is not at all boring; instead, L'Amour invests the plot with the solemn, majestic grandeur of inevitability.

Of the 27 L'Amours I've read, this is the only one where the main characters are badmen. Not occasional lawbreakers like Nolan Sackett, but hardcore, professional criminals. The four man band of bank robbers are among the most memorable characters L'Amour ever wrote - the haunted Considine, the calm professional safecracker Dutch, the headstrong young Hardy, and best of all, the silent and enigmatic Kiowa. They could not be more different, and yet they are bound together by a subtle, undefinable ethos that leads them inescapably down the same trail, to the same doom. And then there is Pete Runyon, the man whom you would expect L'Amour to cast in the lead, whose complex relationship with Considine is intertwined through the whole length of the plot. Even though Considine and Runyon only meet twice in the whole novel, the first time not until the halfway point, they are so intimately connected that Considine can sense a change in his old rival merely from a glance at Runyon's empty parlor.

The story of these five men's journey through friendship, through shared success, through death and, ultimately, to redemption is one of the most gratifying that L'Amour ever wrote. If you've never read L'Amour, or even if you've tried him and don't like him, read High Lonesome before you give up on him.

Riding the outlaw trail, Considine, Dutch, Hardy, and The Kiowa rob the bank at Obaro, where Runyon, an old partner of Considine's, is sheriff. With the posse hot on their trail, the fugitives encounter Spanyer, the tough old frontiersman, and his daughter, Lennie. Sparks fly between Lennie and Considine, much to Spanyer's dismay. To further complicate things, marauding Apaches stalk the area. Finally, outnumbered and outgunned, the motley crew makes a heroic stand up on High Lonesome. As the rifles fire, the ground is covered with the dead.
This is a good action-adventure story from Louis L'Amour. It's always troublesome to make heroes of killers and thieves, of course, but don't let good taste get in the way of a rousing Western story. The writing is fast-paced and lean. Character development is evident, but limited by the brief 150+ page length, and the emphasis on action. Louis L'Amour breathes new life into the familiar Western cliches. This is good escapism for down time reading. Recommended. ;-)

One of many Mississippi writers to achieve high respect (at least by critics and peers) is Barry Hannah, author of eleven titles. His latest, High Lonesome, finds him reasserting himself as a master of the short story. The thirteen tragic and oddly funny tales range from "Get Some Young", in which an old shopkeeper and his wife become more than friends with an "almost too good-looking" boy, to "The Agony of T. Bandini", where the main trouble-maker is possibly a closeted homosexual and insists that "Everybody is just a collision." Hannah's style is as flashy as ever if not less brutal as his past work. His subject matter circles around eccentric oldsters, drunks, wannabe musicians, war vets, and wimpy geeks. At times it's like a southern Tom Robbins, which can sometimes not work, but mostly does. Barry Hannah does it again. And again. And again...

Hannah's got a pretty stellar reputation, and yet, whenever I've browsed his books in the library or bookstore, they never quite grabbed me. However, lately, I've been getting a lot more satisfaction from short story collections than novels, especially when it comes to American authors. So when a friend lent me this collection of 13 Mississippi-set stories from Hannah, I dived right in instead of waiting my usual 6-12 months to start it. Once I pick a book up, it's 95% likely I'll finish it -- unfortunately this one fell into the 5%... I read five of the stories and started two others before finally putting it aside to return to my friends.

For whatever reason, my browsing instinct was dead-on -- I'm simply not in synch with Hannah's style at all. He's certainly got a certain distinctive mood all his own, kind of a grotesque minimalist Southern thing, but it never really hung together or engaged me. There are some great lines here and there, but the hunt just wasn't worth the effort. The characters tend to be the kind of eccentrics one often finds in such collections, but the stories they inhabit simply never got off the ground for me. Some of the characters traverse stories, and when this happens, there's a bit more texture, a bit more depth, but not much. Stories like "Snerd and Niggero", which reviewers all seem to love, just fell flat for me. Two men, a woman, some bawdy prose, she dies, they cope together. Blah. "The Ice Storm" left my consciousness the second I finished it. The one story I did like was "A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis", which is a nice little epic about a boy's fishing adventure. My guess is that it's purely a matter of stylistic preferences, and that like a bad blind date, Hannah and I just weren't meant to click.

High Lonesome was a incredible, fast paced, action paced book. I finished this book in less than a day and didn't want the story to end. Everything a true western fan could want including outlaws, bank robberies, gun fights, fist fights and a damesal in distress.

High Lonesome takes the cake, for me, as Barry Hannah's most invigorating publication (although I have not yet read three or four of his others). What would normally be an incoherent collection of short stories. Some are so brief they might seem like afterthoughts if read for the first time, perhaps, on the floor of the bookstore fiction section. However, after reading the entire collection it is clear the special place each story holds, big or small.

The book is a true southern shotgun shack. The longer stories are the rooms, the short stories are pictures on the wall. I can always go back to it for more.

The solidarity of men of the "frontier" to save a woman at risk is the central node of this magnificent history. Faced with the danger expressed by Apaches, a band of outlaws will sacrifice and forget his loot. A very beautiful story.

Somehow, this book is special. It has some great shoot-out scenes and the title becomes highly significant once you read along. It is a good western read and although I am fairly new at the genre and even Lamour (have read 9 LL books)this is definitely a dusty trail you will want to follow un into the canyon.

I've thoroughly enjoyed almost every L'Amour book I've ever picked up (and there are only a couple that I haven't read), But High Lonesome is one of my all time favorites. It's got an even better story and characters than most of his books.