Education of a Wandering Man

 Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L'Amour

This wasn't a book I'd have picked up on my own but it was on our book club schedule this year and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I'd only known the name Louis L'Amour as a writer of old westerns, not my thing at all, and I wondered if I might find it boring. Instead I discovered a good writer with a wild personal story and wise thoughts on reading and education. 

For years L'Amour wandered the world getting work wherever he found it. At various times he was a seaman, mine caretaker, soldier, boxer, reviewer of books, and teacher. Upon marrying and starting a family he stopped wandering and settled down to a full time writing career, publishing over 100 books. He was a voracious reader of books of all genres. At the back he lists those he read from 1930-1935, and then in 1937. From Voltaire and Homer to H.G. Wells and Ellery Queen - history, plays, philosophy, fiction, poetry, science - there was nothing he wasn't interested in. He left school early, but had no lack of education. 

He makes it clear he's not writing an autobiography but a book about education - both his own and his theories on what education should be. I have to admit that those sections were the best part of the book for me, and when several consecutive pages were about his shipboard experiences or how the American west was settled, I'd be flipping ahead to see when he'd get back to the good stuff. But that's on me, not the author, and I recommend it as a book with much in it to appeal to most readers.   

A few quotes:

"Education should provide the tools for a widening and deepening of life, for increased appreciation of all one sees or experiences. It should equip a person to live life well, to understand what is happening about him, for to live life well one must live with awareness. No one can "get" an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process."

 "I suppose I was lonely. I know that often I longed for someone with whom I could talk of books, writers, and things of the mind."

"He expresses dissenting ideas, and it is no matter whether they are important, simply that they offer a different viewpoint and so are an incentive to thinking."