The Lonesome Gods by Louis L' Amour

OF HOMERS AND HEROES

(Originally published in Common Place Quarterley's 'Character(s) To Live By' column)

“Homer sang of his ‘wine-dark seas,’ but we, I think, will sing of these. You will find that our Homers will sing of the plains, the deserts, and the mountains. Our Trojans may appear in feathered war bonnets, but none the less noble for them. Our Achilles may be Jim Bowie or some other like him, our Ajax might be Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone.” Louis L’Amour, The Lonesome Gods

L’Amour is one of our Homers, a man who sang of heroes: men and women of virtuous thought and action.

I recently discovered him right after my first trip to America. A friend sent me the link to an article: Louis L’Amour and the Moral Imagination. On reading it, I decided to pull out my copy of L’Amour’s The Lonesome Gods. I dove right in, only giving a moment’s thought to where my interest might lead. With a sense of timelessness, I fell slowly into that deep well of reading, wandering what each turning page would bring.

Journeying alongside Johannes Verne, the protagonist of The Lonesome Gods, I found myself in a large open space, riding along the trails of the Wild West, learning about the lay of the land and the history of its peoples. Memories of my experiences in California accompanied me on this journey: stories of the gold rush, the heady scent of the orange blossoms as I drove by the groves, the awe I felt on viewing El Capitan for the first time, the joy of seeing poppies in San Francisco and snowdrops in Sierra National Forest, and the amazing diversity of people we met.

My "momma heart" leapt at the words of Johannes’s father, Zachary, “I do not know what else I shall leave my son, but if I have left him a love of language, of literature, a taste for Homer, for the poets, the people who have told our story—and by ‘our’ I mean the story of mankind—then he will have legacy enough.” Then, when someone protests at Zachary reading the Iliad to his son, Zachary replies, “How young is too young to begin to discover the power and the beauty of words? Perhaps he will not understand, but there is a clash of shields and a call of trumpets in those lines. One cannot begin too young nor linger too long with learning. “Who knows how much he will remember? Who knows how deep the intellect? In some year yet unborn he may hear those words again, or read them, and find in them something hauntingly familiar, as of something long ago heard and only half-remembered.”

Zachary Verne gave his son Johannes a love of reading. Johannes’s reading lead to right thinking which, like David Hicks says in Norms and Nobility, “…lead [him] to right, if not righteous, acting." Johannes heard the clash of shields and the trumpet’s call and it aroused him to a higher life. I trust that the "power and beauty of words" will do the same for us.

I hope that in this column, we can go on an Odyssey through different cultures and historical eras. May we find ourselves in a wide and spacious places as our interests are sparked. Let's meet and discover new Homers and the heroes they sing the praises of - people whose lives and decisions will feed our imaginations with right thinking and righteous action.

---

When Angelique is not drinking a warm cuppa tea with her nose deep inside a book, she's looking for any excuse to feast with friends and family. She enjoys cooking, gardening, making all sorts of herbal 'potions' and is a lover of words. She is also passionate about building communities that pursue Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

She lives with her husband and three children in Harare, Zimbabwe. Their little homeschool has been privileged to use Ambleside Online for 18 years.

She is currently reading Mama Bear Apologetics (Morgan Ferrer & Davison), In Vital Harmony (Glass), Ruthless Elimination (Comer), Holier Than Thou (Hill Perry), Atomic Habits (Clear), Systematic Theology (Grudem) and Rembrandt is in the Wind (Ramsey).