Wed 20 Feb 2008
Archived Review: LOUIS L’AMOUR – Off the Mangrove Coast.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Crime Fiction IV , Pulp Fiction , Reviews , Western Fiction[19] Comments
LOUIS L’AMOUR – Off the Mangrove Coast.
Bantam hardcover; First Edition, May 2000. [Paperback reprint: Bantam, May 2001.]
Louis L’Amour is likely to be one of the three most well-known western writers of all time. I’d place Zane Grey and Max Brand ahead of him, but you could argue with me. Of the nine stories brought together in this latest collection, however, only one takes place in the old West, and it’s perhaps the only one that could safely be considered “historical.”
There are two boxing stories, one about a private eye, and another about an insurance investigator in a tight spot. None of these, including the western, are worthy of more note than this. A better one is a short little tale about a longshoreman who meets his match at checkers, and a good one is an interesting vignette that takes place in a French café after World War II.
The two best stories are the title story, about diving for treasure in the South China Sea, and a longer one about hunting for diamonds in the jungles of Borneo, infested with headhunters.
The time these stories take place is unclear, perhaps in the 1940s, perhaps as early as the 1920s. L’Amour pulpy, rough-hewn writing style is uneven, sometimes full of cliches and worn-out plot devices, sometime lyrical and imbued with a strong sense of what it takes to be a man. But if he hadn’t written these particular works, they’d have never been published again, I regret to say. The old pulp magazines are filled with stories just like these, gone and mostly forgotten, remembered only by a handful of enthusiasts who still collect them.
POSTSCRIPT: As one of those selfsame enthusiasts, I really would have liked to known where these stories first appeared. There is no bibliographical information provided at all.
— June 2000. This review first appeared in The Historical Novels Review. It may have been very slightly revised since then.
[UPDATE] 02-20-08. The final tagline explains why the emphasis in the review is on the “historical” content, and not so much on the detective stories that happen to be in the collection.
The book is included in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, though, and here’s a list of the stories which (for reasons of space) I didn’t include when I first wrote the review. A couple of the magazines where the stories first appeared are given, and I’ll repeat them here:
The Cross and the Candle
The Diamond of Jeru
Fighters Should Be Hungry, Popular Sports Magazine, February 1949
* It’s Your Move, The Tanager, February 1939
Off the Mangrove Coast
The Rounds Don’t Matter
Secret of Silver Springs
Time of Terror
The Unexpected Corpse, G-Men Detective, November 1948
* This story is not one of those for which CFIV lists the original source. I just came across this one somewhere else myself. My copy of The Louis L’Amour Companion is not handy, I’m sorry to say, and in fact is nowhere to be found. It’s been almost eight years since I wrote this review, so obviously I haven’t been suffering from any unrequited urgency, but if you can fill in the details, I’d certainly appreciate it.
If I were able to rewrite the review for the blog right now, I’d make sure to identify the stories more clearly with the contents, but I didn’t at the time, and I can’t. All I can tell you about the book is what you’ve already just read. L’Amour is not one of my favorite western writers, but in case it wasn’t entirely clear, I enjoyed this collection.
[UPDATE #2] 02-21-08. Robert Teague of the WesternPulps Yahoo group has supplied me with a couple of story sources:
“The Rounds Don’t Matter” was first printed in Thrilling Adventures Feb 42
“Secret of Silver Springs” Range Rider Western Nov 49
Four more to go, keeping in mind, as others have pointed out, that titles may have been changed, and some of the stories may have appeared for the first time in this (much) later collection.
[UPDATE #3] 03-03-08. Excerpted from a pair of email messages sent me by Juri Nummelin:
Hi Steve,
I finally pulled out my copy of Weinberg’s L’Amour Companion, and it does seem that the four stories have been previously unpublished. I can’t find them on the checklist Weinberg provides. Well, of course the titles may have been altered. There are short descriptions of the short stories in Weinberg’s book, so if you have synopses of the stories in the book, I can compare them to Weinberg’s.
I seem to remember that “The Diamond of Jeru” was made into a film in the early 2000’s. Yes, I was right.
From IMDB: http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt0282441/
It says that the film is based on L’Amour’s novel, but you can’t really be sure about what Imdb says. It says however that the screen story was written by Beau L’Amour. Maybe this was an unproduced treatment Beau has found in his father’s archives. In that case it would be only sensible and polite to provide that info on a foreword or some such.
You can add to the info Robert Teague already provided you with: “Secret of Silver Springs,” Range Riders Magazine, as by Jim Mayo, January 1950
By the way, Robert Sampson has a pretty good article on L’Amour’s detective stories in Weinberg’s book. He makes the stories sound good.
— Juri
>>> My reply:
Thanks, Juri, even if Weinberg’s book didn’t supply a lot more information. When I come across my copy of Off the Mangrove Coast again, I’ll see if I can’t supply the synopses you suggested.
I was totally unaware that “The Diamond of Jeru” had been made into a movie. It was made for cable (USA Network) and is available on DVD. So far, though, all of the copies I’ve seen offered online have been very expensive, but I’ll keep looking. The movie starred Billy Zane, Paris Jefferson, and Keith Carradine, with Jackson Raine and Khoa Do. According to IMBD, it’s “the story of an American scientist and his wife who hire an ex-pat war veteran to act as a guide on a journey up an unchartered Borneo river in search of diamonds.” Reviewers on IMDB have mixed opinions about the movie, to say the least.
By the way, there’s one synopsis right there.
As for L’Amour’s detective stories, I enjoyed the one collection of them that I read quite a bit. On the other hand, once again there was nothing in them that knocked my socks off. I’m sure any reader of the detective pulps could come up with a selection of stories from any other pulp writer equally as good, if not better.
February 21st, 2008 at 6:05 am
I have the Companion quite easily locatable, so if you need any info, just ask. (It’s not gonna be an easy feat, but I have a vague idea where the book is.)
I’ve never liked anything I’ve read by L’Amour. That’s quite harshly put, but it’s basically true. He’s a bad plotter and he doesn’t persons well. Some of his action scenes are pretty good, but that’s about it. There are dozens and dozens of better Western writers out there (and, it seems, better pulpster).
February 21st, 2008 at 10:00 am
I have a anthology of boxing stories and one of L’Amour’s stories was in it. I remember it was OK, but not the best compared to the others. I may throw that book on my site one day, because some were excellent in it. As for his westerns, Same story over and over; good guy vs. bad guy, good guy gets girl. For me his best was his first, “Hondo.” But he knew how to live life and was a hell of an adventurer…..
February 21st, 2008 at 11:10 am
Hmm. It looks like I have to stick up for an author who “is not one of my favorite western writers.”
I do not believe that an author can be as popular as Louis L’Amour was — and still is — without a reason. I do not believe that the collective reading audience’s taste can be that bad.
It can’t all be a marketing fluke, can it?
But it’s awfully hard to stick up for an author whose stories you haven’t read. I also trust the judgments of Juri and August and others who say pretty much the same thing about his westerns.
Must be that I’ll have to read a couple more Louis L’Amour’s myself. I know I have a few of his paperbacks around here somewhere.
(That’s a joke. A few hundred is more like it.)
—Steve
February 21st, 2008 at 11:40 am
Yeah, sure there must be some energy to the books, but every time I’ve read one I’ve gotten bored pretty quickly.
Will try to find the book and get those stories for you. I’m going to a bar soon, though, and you might want to try Fictionmags first. Or PulpMags. Someone there must have Weinberg’s book.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Comparisons always tend to be odious — it’s why the phrase is a cliché — but personally I believe many of L’Amour’s pulp contemporaries wrote better westerns. That his later sales success with paperbacks outstripped theirs may not have been a marketing fluke, but I reckon publishers’, and the writer’s, marketing/promotion had a hell of a lot to do with it.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Chap
“Fluke” might not have been exactly the right word to use, but not every marketing campaign is as successful as Bantam’s turned out to be.
I don’t disagree with you at all, but there had to be some product there, or western readers wouldn’t have kept buying his books all these years.
Phenomenons like this — and Dan Brown’s, too — I find fascinating. And in need of explanations, if any!
Best
— Steve
February 21st, 2008 at 5:26 pm
A lot of publishing phenoms are pure comfort food; from the moment they open the book, readers know what they are getting. Others, like Brown, pair an unusual idea (often recycled and not really unusual) with the pacing of an action movie, resulting in a fast read without a lot of thinking. In the self-help/inspirational phenom, the recycled ideas are often even staler chestnuts prettied up for a gullible public. In all fields of publishing, there are also the phenoms who are truly talented and have something important (or at least entertaining) to say.
I’ve only read a couple of L’Amours and wasn’t able to get into at least two others. From what I’ve heard, he had a lot of facts about the old West right, which is more than what some of his contemporaries had done. I don’t read a lot of westerns, but nowadays you can’t go wrong with writers like Gorman, Wheeler or Reasoner.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:17 pm
I hope no one is assuming I don’t think L’Amour was a talented, entertaining writer!I’d add titles like To Tame a Land and The Quick and the Dead (both of which I re-read recently while holidaying) to Hondo as among his best. But that said, other pulp fictioneers’ books are just as worthy of reissue, yet have not been to a similar extent.
The fable of the fiction writer who “lives” his/her books is very persuasive. Every under-assistant promo person learns this.
A strong brand also gives a publishing corporation a better profit per unit for less outlay. Why build up three or four writers of the same kind when you can build up just one? This is also used as an argument for the house-bylined series.
Incidentally, a present-day western writer who much admires the L’Amour books, and has been influenced by them, tells his personal story in the current edition of the online Black Horse Extra.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:33 pm
To Jerry
Yes, sometimes bestsellers are self-perpetuating. Readers, as you say, sometimes need comfort food, and others may need reassurance that they’re reading books that others like and therefore it’s OK to like them too. But as Chap suggests, for every bestseller novel and author, there are loads of other writers and books that are as good or better, and the only problem is that nobody knows about them.
To Chap
Let me add the URL for the Black Horse website, based in the UK: http://www.geocities.com/chapkeith/, and always worth reading.
To everyone who might be wondering, the author Chap is referring to is a British fellow who writes westerns as Walt Masterson, and if I may be allowed to quote him, he says, in part:
“The reason I love Louis L’Amour’s work is that he was a genuine westerner and it shows. Strip out the guns and the horses and what you have in so many of his books is a story which would be interesting in any setting. His heroes are real men, and occasionally make real mistakes. When they get shot — and they frequently do — it hurts them and they bleed. Set afoot in the desert, Hondo Lane doesn’t miraculously come across a straying Indian pony, he humps his saddle and his gear for days before he arrives at an isolated ranch and then he has to buy a horse and break it himself before he can get going with his despatches. And, incidentally, meets the heroine and love of his life.”
February 21st, 2008 at 11:01 pm
As a point of information that everyone reading these comments so far should know about, over on his blog, August West has just reviewed Guns of the Timberlands, a Louis L’Amour novel from 1955, and the discussion continues there as well as (perhaps) here.
The URL: http://vinpulp.blogspot.com/2008/02/guns-of-timberlands-by-louis-lamour.html
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:26 am
I think someone pointed out that there are actually lots of errors in L’Amour’s depiction of the geography and actual places, and furthermore L’Amour was lazy: he described mainly places that weren’t far from the road, say, 20-30 metres or so. I don’t remember who this was, but I think whoever he was, he said he’d checked out the same places L’Amour had been writing about.
It would be really interesting to read more about L’Amour’s pulp work. I don’t remember hearing or reading much about them prior to Steve’s original post and for example his detective short stories don’t show up in good pulp anthologies. (Well, they could be expensive to reprint, but still.) Lots of people are discussing, say, Max Brand more often.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:14 am
Bantam published in 1984,”The Hills of Homicide” which was a collection of L’Amour’s detective pulp short stories. If I remember correctly some stories contained the character Kip Morgan and some had Joe Ragan. They were OK…
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I think August is correct in describing Louis L’Amour’s detective story work as OK.
“C” level, that’s about all. Let me go back to a couple of lines in my original review:
“But if he hadn’t written these particular works, they’d have never been published again, I regret to say. The old pulp magazines are filled with stories just like these, gone and mostly forgotten, remembered only by a handful of enthusiasts who still collect them.”
And then what Chap O’Keefe said:
“But that said, other pulp fictioneers’ books are just as worthy of reissue, yet have not been to a similar extent.”
There’d have been no collection of L’Amour’s pulp fiction work if he hadn’t have been Louis L’Amour. Any collector of Western Story, Black Mask, Dime Detective and Dime Western, Detective Fiction Weekly and dozens of other pulp magazines could name 50 authors as good or better whose works deserve as much distribution (and promotion) as L’Amour’s.
Not to put his work down, but just stating facts. (Or facts as I see them!)
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:24 pm
It’s all so subjective really. Over the years I’ve met alot of collectors who say Max Brand was the greatest western pulp writer. Though I don’t dislike Brand’s work, I’ve never really understood why so many love his stories. He’s ok, but there are alot of other writers that I would put ahead of Max Brand or Louis L’Amour for that matter. A good friend of mine dislikes most westerns but loves the work of J. E. Grinstead and Eugene Cunningham. Both of these writers are alright but there must be a hundred western authors that are better. Despite my many recommendations of other writers, he still swears by Grinstead and Cunningham. Like I said it’s all subjective.
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I can imagine someone working for a polling group taking a survey of Borders browsers, asking them who their favorite western writer is, and coming across your friend who says J. E. Grinstead. That ought to skew the results, but good!
Not to put his work down, but just stating facts. (Or facts as I see them.)
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Subjectivity comes into it. But from a writer’s point of view, it is essential that your work appeals to very large number of “subjectivities”. The only way to set about doing this is to work out, and work to, the standards set by the writers who have been successful in previously achieving the goal of popular appeal.
In westerns, Louis L’Amour is clearly one of those who have been successful. You can follow the patterns of writers you think have reached higher standards — you can set and strive to meet standards of your own — but none of it will guarantee you an audience. Even pure L’Amour pastiche wouldn’t do that, because you wouldn’t have his name and biography.
End of today’s mini lecture on the sad facts of writing life!
May 28th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
[…] movie has come up once before on this blog. It was back here, when I reviewed Off the Mangrove Coast, the Louis L’Amour collection where you can read the […]
July 27th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Hit this blog several years after it was posted while searching for other stuff … interesting to check out people’s comments regardless. While I won’t take a position on the quality of my father’s work (however much you like it or don’t like it is completely up to the reader) I am inspired to go into some truths about the publishing business in response to some of these comments.
The idea of Louis’ publisher giving him some sort of special “build up” or marketing campaign is completely bogus. Even at the end of his career and the height of his popularity Bantam’s promotion of his work FOLLOWED his sales rather than preceding and thus creating them. Did their promotion help? Of course. It helped him sell more books after he was already very popular. Was it ever out of proportion to his sales. No.
In the early days it was a fight to get them to let him publish more than one or two books a year (a single book paid so little it was hard to support a family) and Louis arranged most of his own promotions into the late 1960s without much in the way of help from Bantam. Publishers are fantastically cheap and the amounts that might be spent to promote a run of the mill paperback original start at nothing and go up to very little … for any writer. There is little advantage for a publisher to take one of their stable of writers and promote them to the detriment of equally popular writers … it’s a version of putting all your eggs in one basket, a bad investment strategy.
Most authors of genre fiction in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s made it solely on the readability of their writing, the publishers were barely willing to get their books onto the stands before they washed their hands of them. Like his writing or not (and I, who have worked on an awful lot of it certainly don’t like it all), none of his books have EVER been out of print and NO publisher would ever keep a book in print if it wasn’t financially viable.
I am continually amazed at the response we get. Sales have been up 1% a year for the last 7 years … a time where the publishing industry has posted declines of 35% or so. I don’t know who these readers are but I thank god for them, that’s for sure.
On another note, the film was not from an undisclosed LL treatment, some of the story of the novella/movie is available at http://www.louislamourgreatadventure.com/LiteraryAdventure08-Movie.htm
I doubt any of us ever really thought we were making a classic though it is nice that some of the cast and crew were excited enough about the experience of working on it to have such romantic feelings about their participation. Perhaps there was more of a feeling that we were working on the BUDGET of one of those films from 60 years ago … we had roughly 4 million dollars (a very mid priced TV movie budget) and believe me we put every dollar on the screen!
Best,
Beau L’Amour
July 27th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Thanks, Beau, for stopping by, and taking the time to share all your inside information with us. Very informative, to say the least!
— Steve