>From what I have read by and about Louis L'Amour, I get the
>sense that he was someone who loved life and didn't have to
>deal with a lot of existential angst. Is the second part of
>this assumption correct? If so, am I also correct in assuming
>that this outlook informed most of the fiction that he wrote?

You're basically right. You might also take the times he lived in into consideration. They could be hard but from 1908 to 1988 life in America was always getting better ... as long as you were the right age. If he'd been an unhealthy 67 at the beginning of the depression or WWII he might have had a different disposition.