<\/p>\n
Posthumous publishing isn\u2019t uncommon when it comes to writers who were as prolific as Louis L\u2019Amour. Sometimes, the volume of unpublished work is big enough that what comes after their deaths ends up being as intriguing as when they were alive.<\/p>\n
Beau L\u2019Amour, son of the iconic Western writer, knows this well. The title of his father\u2019s new book, Louis L\u2019Amour\u2019s Lost Treasures, Volume 1, explains what the author\u2019s son has undertaken since Louis died in 1988.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he passed away, we had all this stuff \u2013 my dad was a dynamo at creating the new thing, but he was not very attentive to organizing all the old things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The organizing took on a life of its own.<\/p>\n
\u201cLouis L\u2019Amour\u2019s Lost Treasures is the story behind the stories,\u201d Beau said. \u201cIt is like Louis\u2019 professional biography, except that instead of a play-by-play account, the pieces of his work are in the stories that they pertain to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beau will discuss Lost Treasures at the Cortez Public Library on Monday, Jan. 8 at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n
Along with the new book, which is the first of a two-volume series, there are also new postscripts included in four of Louis\u2019 books, Bendigo Shafter, How the West was Won, Callaghen and Down the Long Hills this year. Beau plans to publish at least half a dozen, maybe more, next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat these (postscripts) are is everything I know that\u2019s interesting about my dad\u2019s novels,\u201d Beau said. \u201cBendigo Shafter is very much about how he started it and ran into certain problems and put it aside for a while and then restarted it. It\u2019s the story of how his focus on it ebbed and flowed over about 10 or 12 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lost Treasures is not only full of stories that were not published, it also includes previously unfinished chapters of a Western horror novel Louis was writing. Though Louis was best known as a Western writer, Beau said he didn\u2019t limit himself to that genre.<\/p>\n
Putting the pieces of his father\u2019s life and work together helped Beau learn more about his father.<\/p>\n
There were some surprises, including \u201cthe fact that he was so bad off in the eight or nine months before he sold the story \u2018The Gift of Cochise\u2019 that became \u2018Hondo,\u2019 and then the fact that within just a really short period of time \u2013 like that summer \u2013 his entire career turned around,\u201d Beau said. \u201cHe went from going to the park so that he wouldn\u2019t be caught not eating breakfast to having deals with three publishers. His life turned around as hard as you could ever imagine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew all of those things happened in sort of separate chunks, but I had never gotten them in order, and I had never pinned them right down to the calendar,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I had never seen how dramatic the shift was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Louis took that dramatic shift in lifestyle completely in stride, Beau said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. He was ready for it (laughing). He was so ready for it, it was unbelievable. By that point, it was do or die,\u201d he said. \u201cUp until he went to work for the Writers Project of the WPA in Oklahoma, he had been a prize fighter and a miner and a merchant seaman. Even though he had educated himself relatively well, he was a completely blue-collar guy, but with no trade affiliation, no union, no standing in any business, no real skills. He had to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Beau, who has also been working on a biography about Louis for a long time, the project has been a way to stay close to the father he misses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m connected with his life every day,\u201d he said. \u201cIn some ways, it\u2019s a little bit like he\u2019s here.\u201d<\/p>\n