So Brave, Young and Handsome

I really liked Enger's first book, Peace Like a River, not least because there's some Pentecostalism in it and lots of sensibilities that are familiar to me.

His second, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, did not disappoint.

First point, I really have no idea how the title of the novel refers to the novel itself. If anyone has read this/has any insight, I'm curious as to what I'm missing.

Ever since Dr. Potter mentioned in passing the mystical theory that knowing someone's name gives you power over them, I've been fascinated. The references to naming and the power of names in this novel are intriguing. The narrator's son, Redstart (with his own odd name) communicates this to his father, Monte. The narrator renames himself in order to hide from the law at one point, this marks an important development in the narrator's ability to act in the world (previous to his adventure, he's a washed up author, unable to write his second book).

This leads to the often-noticed parallel between Leif Enger and his narrator--Monte, after a surprised best-selling first book, is struggling with how to write a second. His friendship with an old railroad robber, Glendon Hale, is what pulls him out of his funk and teaches him to act and not shy away from embracing adventures. This raises questions of the relationship between art and life--Monte ends up as a boat maker in Mexico, which makes his life as an author in Minnesota look silly. Susannah, his wife, is an artist, and she continues to paint even after she joins him in Mexico; however, her art is most strikingly put to use when it's used as a label for the oranges that they're helping to grow. Enger's Midwestern sensibility articulates in fiction the primacy of practical experience.

Glendon Hale is an old criminal, but he's actually the most admirable character in the novel--he refuses to kill an old snapping turtle by just roasting it slowly in the fire (he thinks it's more civilized, although also much more difficult to kill it first); the primary action of the novel is his and Monte's trip to Mexico so that Glendon can apologize to his long-estranged wife, Blue, for leaving her; in the end of the novel, he forces Monte to baptize him (and throughout the novel, you find him praying). In contrast, the detective chasing him, Charles Siringo, is a man without character--he befriends and betrays the men he is attempting to catch. This subverts typical categories of right and wrong. Siringo is an impostor detective. At times it's unclear whether he's dead or alive, such is the man attempting to overcome death.

This introduces one aspect of the novel. In one sense it's a western, and it's romantic. It also sometimes has a dream-like quality--the adventure to Mexico steps our of Martin Bly's (Monte's) normal, respectable life. The author attributes this to the fact that he's writing a western, but he's not a westerner, so it's a bit detached through his own inexperience and through the fact that he's writing in the voice of a narrator from Minnesota (I think--or at least somewhere in the top of the West). Enger calls the novel a "post-western."

The novel is certainly picaresque--it reminds me of Huckleberry Finn in the way that it strings together various episodes into one long adventure trip.