The Lonesome Gods by Jesse Edwards

I loved being able to take a break and read a book that was a lighter read.  The main theme of the book that I related to, perhaps because of homeschool, was the focus on education.  It must have been rare in the set time period to have a focus on education.  I love how Johannes' father is such a wise man.  You see that from a child's perspective which is so on point.  The son idolizing the father, and in this case, the father seeming worthy of it.  I love that we are given that view of him since Johannes is so certain of his father's awesomeness.  

It led me to wonder, if I knew that I was going to die, what would be my message to my children.  If I knew I was going to die, and that perhaps they would be completely alone in the world, what wisdom would I impart?  I love that Johannes learned that he was to soak up whatever information he could from whomever he came in contact with.  That everyone has something valuable to give.  Everyone knows something you don't.  The hard part is sometimes letting go of pride to be able to open yourself to see other's greatness and knowledge, even when it appears that they might not have any thing to offer.  

That reminds me of the story of Nathaniel Ayers.  A homeless man who had been attending Julliard for cello.  He would play in the Lincoln Tunnel for acoustics, when a reporter found him and tried to help him.  He found that he had an incredible gift, it was just a matter of reaching it.  

That is the main thing I would love to take away from the book.  A genuine reaching to try and absorb all the information I can from others around me and acknowledging their greatness.  

In the book Johannes had a life that seemed to be filled to overflowing with inescapable adversity.  He had people wanting to kill him simply because they disagreed with him, or because his father was who he was, or he was heir to an inheritance.  It is a great story of overcoming adversity.  And not just overcoming, but meeting it head on.  He tried to evade it until finally he confronted it and won.  In the end can we be courageous enough to stare down our demons, fight, and come out victorious.  I think it is in all of us to succeed and win out over any trial we are faced with.  Head on.

Legacy Enough

"I don't 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."

A Tapestry

“How young is too young to begin to discover the power and the beauty of words?” Louis L’Amour answers his self-posed question time and again in The Lonesome Gods. Such discovery, he asserts, has no beginning. Nor has it an end. L’Amour’s bold assertion is that learning is eternal. Further reading exposes his demand that each be responsible for his own education. Thus The Lonesome Gods awakens in us a sense of tradition—a continuous thread, unbroken, keeping the tapestry of time from unraveling. What the past understood, L’Amour desires us to foster; for without nurture, it will fray. Each generation is called to keep it vibrant and whole, then to add its own unique hue to the tapestry.
L’Amour’s favored character, Johannes Verne, lost his mother at age five and his father at seven. Many would declare he had not enough time with his parents to learn much. Yet Johannes reveals as a teenager, “My father had prepared me for marvels.” Pondering the timeline of my own children, I found it impossible to pinpoint the exact time their education began. Generations ago, parents ingrained principles into their children that have since found their way into me. Consequently, even before conception, my choices, formed by those endless principles, affected each of my children. Their formal education began the first time I smiled and said, “I love you,” to the warm bundle handed me. Children learn more from what we as parents are than from what we profess to teach them.
Johannes learned from his father’s words as well as his example. He shared, “My father always said that was the wonderful thing about learning, that there was no end to it.” Speaking of the desert, Johannes’s father, Zachary Verne, said, “[It] is a book of many pages, and just when you believe you know all there is to know it will surprise you with the unexpected.” Does this hold true for the desert only? No, but for marriage, parenting, industry, business, art, language, people. And of those things that seem concrete, tangible, or quantifiable, L’Amour teaches, “Nothing remains the same. Things are forever changing, and one must understand the changes and change with them, or be lost by the way.” This lesson, no doubt, was one learned by the author himself as he lived through the final stages of the change from the agricultural age to the industrial age, and then saw the birth of another change—one from the industrial age to the information age. We can learn the same lesson if we choose, as we are living to see that change come to full fruition.
Who can see to it that we keep up with the changes? L’Amour holds us accountable. He simply stated, “All education is self-education.” Once read, the words award ownership to the reader. Awareness and responsibility are instantaneous. He continues, “A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you an education.” The obvious point is that we are responsible to initiate the search for truth. The secondary point is that education comes in diverse forms. In addition to books, examples from mentors, living and long gone, are a precious resource for the hungry. L’Amour entreats us, “Do not be like the oyster who rests on the sea bottom waiting for the good things to come by. Search for them and find them.” We are our children’s first mentors, and our parents were ours. To find additional mentors who can stretch us and challenge us is a worthy goal.
Of his young son’s education, Zachary Verne confided, “Perhaps he will not understand, but there is a clash of shields and a call of trumpets in those lines. . .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.” In my personal search for wisdom, I find both comfort and determination in L’Amour’s The Lonesome Gods—comfort in knowing that all of humanity has been or will be where I am now—in search of truth, goodness, and mercy—and determination to push through the deserts, Fletchers and Isidro’s of my own. I do not think I can phrase my feelings any better than this very author who wrote, “What I am to be is something I must become. I must create myself from this that I have. We are nothing until we make ourselves something.” To own my future is my gift, my strand in the tapestry.

Human Nature

My quote was taken from Louis L’Amour’s book, Lonesome Gods found on page, 251. “Yet no doubt the Indians thought all white men strange, for our ways and different from theirs and each people is apt to consider their own ways as ‘human nature,’ not realizing they were merely a pattern imposed upon them by rearing, by education, by the behavior of those with whom they associated.” Because Don Isidro was caught up by his own “human nature” he led a very unhappy, destructive, and lonely life. Miss Nesselrode chose to break away from her “human nature” and found happiness and enjoyed a very fulfilling life.

“Don Isidro had fierce pride in a name whose reputation had been won by others and to which he had contributed nothing. He had fled to this country to keep from his peers a knowledge he deemed disgraceful (the birth of a giant son, Alfredo, who would be his natural heir,) and he had driven his daughter (son-in-law, and grandson, Johannes) from his door for the same reason. Now a lonely and embittered man, he was left with nothing.”(pg 372) Don Federico (a distant relative that could inherit Isidro’s estate) sensed Don Isidro’s passionate weakness of pride and preyed upon it. In the end, Dona Elena explains to her brother that, “He has been your evil genius, always at your elbow, advising or suggesting. I think you would have relented long ago had it not been for Federico.” (pg 515) It was Don Federico who had wanted to kill Johannes in the desert instead of just leaving him there, as his grandfather insisted. This event will haunt Don Isidro for the rest of his life. If Don Isidro had not surrounded himself with such an evil associate as Don Federico, he may have chosen to break away from his upbringing (human nature) and instead, accepted, loved and cherished his grandson. “The little one” he muttered. “He called me grandpa.”

Miss Nesselrode was a woman whose “heart was made of iron.” She fled her country to ours as a felon. Her crime stemmed from being raised by a family who were deemed traitors that were banished and then almost executed. As the sole survivor of her family, she decides to break away from her “human nature” and start a new life in California. Miss Nesselrode listens and watches for opportunities to contribute to the growing community of Los Angeles by opening a bookshop that allows the business men to come and relax and talk in her presences, where she may not have otherwise heard their schemes. She surrounds herself with good friends and associates. She opens her heart and home to Johannes where his grandfather does not. She lives a very successful, rich and happy life.

They main difference between these two characters is whom they choose to associate with after they move to California. Both have chosen to come here for a chance at a new life. But whom they surround themselves with shapes their destinies for them. Therefore, we may not have a choice about our past upbringing that determines our “human nature,” but each of us has a choice about what our future will become by whom we collaborate ourselves with. Thus we can always change our future “human nature.”