Westerns

I have always blamed my uncle and his stash of Louis L'amour books for my love of westerns and the west. I just assumed that everyone had heard about Louis L'amour and he was the best and only writer of the West. Seems very much like I thought he was God! Only, now that I am in California, which is as west as you can get, I have come to the realisation that there are other out there who also write westerns and about the wild west.

I have scoured the Berkeley public library for a few and got my hands on two writers this week.
One was Zane Grey who claims to have lived the lives of the people he writes about. I tried reading a paperback with his legendary short stories. It was about romance, relationships and stuff in the West. Terrible. I don't read westerns to learn about love, angst and relationships. I read westerns to read about MEN! of course, where there are men, there must be women, lust, love, feelings and all that mush. But, the plots of all good westerns are simple.

Man against the elements, or his enemies saving himself, or his family, friends or chance acquaintances along the way. Nothing else. Most importantly, he must remember that he is always going to die in the harsh country and his every move must be to prevent it.

Anyway, Zane Grey is going to be given one more shot and then its over.

The second author I read was Ed Gorman. He was far better. He does write about the modern west and his language is unable to disguise that he wrote the book about twenty years ago. He uses "F&*&" which I doubt was used at that time in the west. There were better ways to curse someone. Also, he often falters into language and makes historical mistakes in both his language and often the setting. I believe he writes his book with a modern plot set in the West, which is probably not the best way to write.

He at least gets a pleasurable second chance. The book was decent even if it was like a detective novel.

LL is still the best and now back to optimisation of dose of vaccination regimes.