So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel
by Leif Enger
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The story of an aging train robber on a quest to reconcile the claims of love and judgment on his life, and the failed writer who goes with him.Tags
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Member Reviews
What makes this book really good is all the layers - the West and cowboys and outlaws and writing and the pursuit and love and redemption. It's all mixed in there and told with a deft hand. The story is told in a curious mix of formality and preciseness and unique turn of phrase ("been shot to moist rags" was one that caught my imagination). I particularly liked the journey Monte makes - caught up in events, he continues on - risking everything to figure out who exactly he is when measured in a different kind of life.
If one makes bad decisions that somehow lead to a wonderful result — such as a bad marriage that results in a good child — were they actually bad decisions?
Leif Enger's 2008 novel “So Brave, Young, and Handsome” leads the reader to think such thoughts. The title comes from “The Cowboy's Lament,” which places that dilemma in this couplet: "For we loved our comrade, so brave, young, and handsome/We all loved our comrade, although he'd done wrong."
Enger's novel is narrated by a frustrated writer, Monte Becket, who after one successful novel seems unable to write anything of value. He, his wife and son become fascinated by a boat-building neighbor named Glendon. When Glendon decides to go West to try to find his Mexican wife, show more whom he abandoned years before, Becket decides to go with him, a decision his wife, Susannah, somehow approves of.
Along the way, Becket learns that abandoning his wife is the least of Glendon's sins. He is also a train robber and murderer being pursued by an aging, former Pinkerton agent named Siringo, who never gives up.
Instead of returning to his family in Minnesota, Becket decides to stick with Glendon, even when this makes himself a fugitive pursued by Siringo.
The consequences of Becket's decisions go from bad to worse, yet somehow it all works out in the end. And Becket, who tells his wild story, proves he can still write after all. show less
Leif Enger's 2008 novel “So Brave, Young, and Handsome” leads the reader to think such thoughts. The title comes from “The Cowboy's Lament,” which places that dilemma in this couplet: "For we loved our comrade, so brave, young, and handsome/We all loved our comrade, although he'd done wrong."
Enger's novel is narrated by a frustrated writer, Monte Becket, who after one successful novel seems unable to write anything of value. He, his wife and son become fascinated by a boat-building neighbor named Glendon. When Glendon decides to go West to try to find his Mexican wife, show more whom he abandoned years before, Becket decides to go with him, a decision his wife, Susannah, somehow approves of.
Along the way, Becket learns that abandoning his wife is the least of Glendon's sins. He is also a train robber and murderer being pursued by an aging, former Pinkerton agent named Siringo, who never gives up.
Instead of returning to his family in Minnesota, Becket decides to stick with Glendon, even when this makes himself a fugitive pursued by Siringo.
The consequences of Becket's decisions go from bad to worse, yet somehow it all works out in the end. And Becket, who tells his wild story, proves he can still write after all. show less
I started this book annoyed. I did NOT like the pseudoformal English that the author posits regular people used a century ago, felt it was such a cutesy way of making the story feel "authentic" and so contrived as to make me want to smack the perpetrator.
I got over it. Glendon the train robber completely seduced me, just like he did the narrator, the narrator's wife, the narrator's son, and so many, many others along his twisty path.
This is a tale about Truth, not truth, and the author shows us that from the get-go with the very narrative voice I found so irksome at first. There is Truth in the world, often to be found shoved behind elaborate scrims of lies, where the facts that tell the truth are woven into the most fantastical beasts show more of falsehood it's amazing.
Leif Enger knows this, and tells us this amazing and important and underappreciated piece of knowledge in the voice of a man whose grasp of the facts is imperfect but whose knowledge of the Truth guides him and saves him from a wasted, useless life.
Very, very worth reading. I say grit your teeth at the narrative voice and charge into the story full tilt. You will be very glad you got to know these characters. They do remain characters, though; some essential *oomph* is missing that's necessary to launch them into full personhood. Still, they're good readin'. Go to it, unfettered by fear of disappointment. show less
I got over it. Glendon the train robber completely seduced me, just like he did the narrator, the narrator's wife, the narrator's son, and so many, many others along his twisty path.
This is a tale about Truth, not truth, and the author shows us that from the get-go with the very narrative voice I found so irksome at first. There is Truth in the world, often to be found shoved behind elaborate scrims of lies, where the facts that tell the truth are woven into the most fantastical beasts show more of falsehood it's amazing.
Leif Enger knows this, and tells us this amazing and important and underappreciated piece of knowledge in the voice of a man whose grasp of the facts is imperfect but whose knowledge of the Truth guides him and saves him from a wasted, useless life.
Very, very worth reading. I say grit your teeth at the narrative voice and charge into the story full tilt. You will be very glad you got to know these characters. They do remain characters, though; some essential *oomph* is missing that's necessary to launch them into full personhood. Still, they're good readin'. Go to it, unfettered by fear of disappointment. show less
For his second novel, [So Brave, Young, and Handsome], Leif Enger chose one of the oldest and most hallowed tropes – the road trip. As far back as [The Canterbury Tales] or [The Odyssey], quests have been used as a metaphor for life, perhaps because the metaphor quickens within us all the desire to strike out and change ourselves.
In [So Brave, Young, and Handsome] Monte Beckett is stuck. After writing a wildly successful western adventure, he can no longer find the words or the story. He sits on the porch, scribbling unpublishable tripe and burning the pages. The porch affords him a view of the river, constantly moving and alive – a vital reminder of how stagnant he has become. Then, the river produces his salvation, a strange, show more spritely man rowing through the mist, mumbling and laughing to himself. Glendon Hale – which might be his real name or might be another in a long line of aliases designed to help elude a violent and vulgar past – breathes new life into Monte. Glen convinces Monte to leave with accompany him on a journey to Mexico to find a long lost love. The trip transforms the two men.
Early in the novel, a lawman chastises Monte that authors make the world too much of a romance. Monte takes exception to the argument, declaring, “violent and doomed as this world might be, a romance it certainly is.” This notion is one that Monte must recapture in his journey, as his life has become too much of a a forced march – he has lost the ability to see the romance in the world around him and, with that loss, the ability to live life instead of work at it. Not until Monte has regained the romance of the world is he able to write again.
What thrums with life in the novel is also its greatest weakness. The eccentric and quirky cast of characters Monte encounters on his journey is fascinating but by the time we get to the Annie Oakley shooting girl and the midget horse salesman, the circus has one too many clowns. Enger reaches too far to make these minor characters colorful when the real interest is in the main characters; the ones whose angst looks a little more like our own. Monte – a tragic figure, stagnant and moored too firmly by his fears of failure – and Glen – the drunk trying to recapture his past in the same breath as absolution for it – are the real interest. Or Monte’s wife, holding her family together delicately, like grasping at a group of eggs just larger than her hands. These are the truly provocative characters in the novel and they are featured far too little while Enger chases the quirky.
The best example of Enger’s misguided path is Charlie Siringo. Just as Monte and Glen’s journey has begun, they are separated and Monte is left in the custody of Charlie Siringo, a retired Pinkerton who cannot quit his prey. Perhaps because Siringo was a real and terribly interesting person, Enger seems devoted to creating some space to tell the man’s story. Sirigno, both in the novel and in real life, went undercover to infiltrate Butch Cassidy’s gang during its train-robbing phase. A renowned lawman, for his exploits and the books that he wrote about them, Siringo cast a more professional and intellectual shadow than the gunslingers of the time. But with Siringo, Enger’s novel goes off the rails. While Siringo pursues Glen with Monte in custody, Enger loses sight of the tone and character of his story. Almost immediately, the description of place and time falls by the wayside. Traveling over the Kansas flatlands and into the Oklahoma hills with Monte and Glen, the country is vivid and alive, bounding off the page. But Siringo carries the story into a void that is bland and featureless, opaque to everything but Siringo’s own narrative. And some of Monte’s most uncharacteristic and unbelievable moments are with Siringo. The lengths that Enger goes in keeping Monte in Siringo’s custody strain the bounds of believability. Even Monte, a fearful and stagnant man, should have been able to elude a man who is suffering the ill effects of age, gunshot wounds, and the onset of a paralyzing stroke.
Enger is clearly setting Siringo up as the anti-thesis of Glen and Monte’s pursuit of change and growth – as Siringo stands for all things unchanging. He is unable to lay down his obsession, ceaselessly chasing glory in the same way over and over again. But this is a comparison that would have been best suited to tell from afar. Remember that scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – the two outlaws perched on rocky crag, peering out over the reflective desert sand at the ever plume dust kicked up by their dogged pursuers. “Who are those guys?” Butch says. Siringo from afar, obsessed and persistent, would have made the same point across without derailing Monte and Glen’s story.
Bottom Line: A transformative quest tale – derailed in the middle but set aright in the end.
3 bones!!!!! show less
In [So Brave, Young, and Handsome] Monte Beckett is stuck. After writing a wildly successful western adventure, he can no longer find the words or the story. He sits on the porch, scribbling unpublishable tripe and burning the pages. The porch affords him a view of the river, constantly moving and alive – a vital reminder of how stagnant he has become. Then, the river produces his salvation, a strange, show more spritely man rowing through the mist, mumbling and laughing to himself. Glendon Hale – which might be his real name or might be another in a long line of aliases designed to help elude a violent and vulgar past – breathes new life into Monte. Glen convinces Monte to leave with accompany him on a journey to Mexico to find a long lost love. The trip transforms the two men.
Early in the novel, a lawman chastises Monte that authors make the world too much of a romance. Monte takes exception to the argument, declaring, “violent and doomed as this world might be, a romance it certainly is.” This notion is one that Monte must recapture in his journey, as his life has become too much of a a forced march – he has lost the ability to see the romance in the world around him and, with that loss, the ability to live life instead of work at it. Not until Monte has regained the romance of the world is he able to write again.
What thrums with life in the novel is also its greatest weakness. The eccentric and quirky cast of characters Monte encounters on his journey is fascinating but by the time we get to the Annie Oakley shooting girl and the midget horse salesman, the circus has one too many clowns. Enger reaches too far to make these minor characters colorful when the real interest is in the main characters; the ones whose angst looks a little more like our own. Monte – a tragic figure, stagnant and moored too firmly by his fears of failure – and Glen – the drunk trying to recapture his past in the same breath as absolution for it – are the real interest. Or Monte’s wife, holding her family together delicately, like grasping at a group of eggs just larger than her hands. These are the truly provocative characters in the novel and they are featured far too little while Enger chases the quirky.
The best example of Enger’s misguided path is Charlie Siringo. Just as Monte and Glen’s journey has begun, they are separated and Monte is left in the custody of Charlie Siringo, a retired Pinkerton who cannot quit his prey. Perhaps because Siringo was a real and terribly interesting person, Enger seems devoted to creating some space to tell the man’s story. Sirigno, both in the novel and in real life, went undercover to infiltrate Butch Cassidy’s gang during its train-robbing phase. A renowned lawman, for his exploits and the books that he wrote about them, Siringo cast a more professional and intellectual shadow than the gunslingers of the time. But with Siringo, Enger’s novel goes off the rails. While Siringo pursues Glen with Monte in custody, Enger loses sight of the tone and character of his story. Almost immediately, the description of place and time falls by the wayside. Traveling over the Kansas flatlands and into the Oklahoma hills with Monte and Glen, the country is vivid and alive, bounding off the page. But Siringo carries the story into a void that is bland and featureless, opaque to everything but Siringo’s own narrative. And some of Monte’s most uncharacteristic and unbelievable moments are with Siringo. The lengths that Enger goes in keeping Monte in Siringo’s custody strain the bounds of believability. Even Monte, a fearful and stagnant man, should have been able to elude a man who is suffering the ill effects of age, gunshot wounds, and the onset of a paralyzing stroke.
Enger is clearly setting Siringo up as the anti-thesis of Glen and Monte’s pursuit of change and growth – as Siringo stands for all things unchanging. He is unable to lay down his obsession, ceaselessly chasing glory in the same way over and over again. But this is a comparison that would have been best suited to tell from afar. Remember that scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – the two outlaws perched on rocky crag, peering out over the reflective desert sand at the ever plume dust kicked up by their dogged pursuers. “Who are those guys?” Butch says. Siringo from afar, obsessed and persistent, would have made the same point across without derailing Monte and Glen’s story.
Bottom Line: A transformative quest tale – derailed in the middle but set aright in the end.
3 bones!!!!! show less
Enger's second novel gracefully tells a very American tale of identify and redemption, uncoiling with an almost Homeric, profound cadence, but in the end telling us less than I'd like. Sometimes what you look for in a book are the slight edges of imperfection. Sometimes when reading something classic, something fully planed flat and careful, we lose our way and are unable to feel enough. Perhaps that's what happened to me here. No little burrs of emotion snagged into my soul.
It's 1915. Monte Becket, a flailing, possibly dilettante writer with a rather too-lovely, whipsmart little family up in Minnesota (and obvious latent wanderlust), decides to tail along with Glendon, a fugitive felon whose crimes include...well, pretty much show more everything. But Glendon is good at making boats. And drinking.
What follows is an adventure tale that has that heavy, attractive feel of that underpinning of adventure stories that has been with us since prehistory. And it echoes the masters who have wielded the brush of this kind of adventure. Sections of river travel smack of Mark Twain. High plains and western happenings have shadows of (softer) Cormac McCarthy, Kent Haruf, Ivan Doig. Even the occasional burp of Steinbeck, especially towards the end of the novel.
Parts are downright appealing. The river-floating and turtle-catching center of the country now lost to modernity. Cowboys with depravities. Floods and shooting. It is a fun read, full of crisp and hearty language.
Characters speak in off-the-cuff, just-then-coined, beautiful proverbs. The countryside is dashed off in a few words or sentences that leave no doubt, and leave the reader room to roam the textures of the characters and the plots.
But some things--the bigger pieces--don't deliver fully. There's a pattering, heavily thumping sub-current of redemption. Glendon's nearsightedness and other characters' various types of blindness are emphasized. Without giving away plot points, I can say that the way these themes are handled and wrapped up left me cold. I found it hard to reconcile the motives of Becket in a few places, about two-thirds through the book--he left me exasperated. Additionally, the excitement and clarity of the structure and language in the book leave one expecting a swelling, memorable resolution and instead I feel blank.
But! I think someone of different temperament, at a different emotional point than I am right at the moment, might find this book deeply moving. I can imagine it filling a particular shape of personal void. And, for Enger's admitted firm grasp on the language, and the enjoyability of the story, it still gets high marks. show less
It's 1915. Monte Becket, a flailing, possibly dilettante writer with a rather too-lovely, whipsmart little family up in Minnesota (and obvious latent wanderlust), decides to tail along with Glendon, a fugitive felon whose crimes include...well, pretty much show more everything. But Glendon is good at making boats. And drinking.
What follows is an adventure tale that has that heavy, attractive feel of that underpinning of adventure stories that has been with us since prehistory. And it echoes the masters who have wielded the brush of this kind of adventure. Sections of river travel smack of Mark Twain. High plains and western happenings have shadows of (softer) Cormac McCarthy, Kent Haruf, Ivan Doig. Even the occasional burp of Steinbeck, especially towards the end of the novel.
Parts are downright appealing. The river-floating and turtle-catching center of the country now lost to modernity. Cowboys with depravities. Floods and shooting. It is a fun read, full of crisp and hearty language.
Characters speak in off-the-cuff, just-then-coined, beautiful proverbs. The countryside is dashed off in a few words or sentences that leave no doubt, and leave the reader room to roam the textures of the characters and the plots.
But some things--the bigger pieces--don't deliver fully. There's a pattering, heavily thumping sub-current of redemption. Glendon's nearsightedness and other characters' various types of blindness are emphasized. Without giving away plot points, I can say that the way these themes are handled and wrapped up left me cold. I found it hard to reconcile the motives of Becket in a few places, about two-thirds through the book--he left me exasperated. Additionally, the excitement and clarity of the structure and language in the book leave one expecting a swelling, memorable resolution and instead I feel blank.
But! I think someone of different temperament, at a different emotional point than I am right at the moment, might find this book deeply moving. I can imagine it filling a particular shape of personal void. And, for Enger's admitted firm grasp on the language, and the enjoyability of the story, it still gets high marks. show less
[a:Leif Enger|13591|Leif Enger|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1534287991p2/13591.jpg] stole my heart with [b:Peace Like a River|227571|Peace Like a River|Leif Enger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436139976l/227571._SY75_.jpg|3332231], holding me captive from the first page to the last. I was afraid he could not pull off that trick again, but he did. After the first few chapters, in which I was beginning to doubt, this book took off and sailed, dragging me along in its wake. It is not serious or wrenching like [b:Peace Like a River|227571|Peace Like a River|Leif Enger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436139976l/227571._SY75_.jpg|3332231], but it is show more endlessly entertaining, and who wants an author to write the same book twice?
There are three superb characters, offered up for our enjoyment. They populate the dying West, where the desperados are old, as are the lawmen chasing them. Monte Becket, a man who knows nothing of the West except the imaginings he has put into his surprisingly successful novel; Glendon Hale, a man with a past that he wants to atone for; and Charlie Siringo, a less than scrupulous Pinkerton man, find themselves locked into each other's lives and swept across the rapidly changing 1915 landscape from Minnesota to California . The book is a wild ride, with these three reminding me of the lost art of bronco busting, where winning or losing is always determined by who hangs on the longest.
The West here is a dying culture, where the only cowboys are in wild west shows, and names like Butch Cassidy are beginning to fade with the memories of the men who knew him. It is, also, a tale about redemption; a tale about finding out who you are, or who you can be, before it is too late.
You can’t explain grace, anyway, especially when it arrives almost despite yourself. I didn’t even ask for it, yet somehow it breached and began to work. I suppose grace was pouring over Glendon, who had sought it so hard, and some spilled down on me.
Many of the events of the book would seem ludicrous in isolation and perhaps even in afterthought, but I believed this story and every event in the reading. I was there. I saw it, vividly. I pictured Hale and Siringo with weathered faces and western drawls that identified them as different, as relics, but with a kind of magical character that would be missed in the future from which they would shortly be missing.
I am so glad I took the time out of my planned reading to work in this delightful book. I was sad to relinquish these characters in the end, but I have no problem imagining where they are now, beyond the confines of the book, because the end is never truly the end in this one. show less
There are three superb characters, offered up for our enjoyment. They populate the dying West, where the desperados are old, as are the lawmen chasing them. Monte Becket, a man who knows nothing of the West except the imaginings he has put into his surprisingly successful novel; Glendon Hale, a man with a past that he wants to atone for; and Charlie Siringo, a less than scrupulous Pinkerton man, find themselves locked into each other's lives and swept across the rapidly changing 1915 landscape from Minnesota to California . The book is a wild ride, with these three reminding me of the lost art of bronco busting, where winning or losing is always determined by who hangs on the longest.
The West here is a dying culture, where the only cowboys are in wild west shows, and names like Butch Cassidy are beginning to fade with the memories of the men who knew him. It is, also, a tale about redemption; a tale about finding out who you are, or who you can be, before it is too late.
You can’t explain grace, anyway, especially when it arrives almost despite yourself. I didn’t even ask for it, yet somehow it breached and began to work. I suppose grace was pouring over Glendon, who had sought it so hard, and some spilled down on me.
Many of the events of the book would seem ludicrous in isolation and perhaps even in afterthought, but I believed this story and every event in the reading. I was there. I saw it, vividly. I pictured Hale and Siringo with weathered faces and western drawls that identified them as different, as relics, but with a kind of magical character that would be missed in the future from which they would shortly be missing.
I am so glad I took the time out of my planned reading to work in this delightful book. I was sad to relinquish these characters in the end, but I have no problem imagining where they are now, beyond the confines of the book, because the end is never truly the end in this one. show less
If a book doesn’t grab you by page 50, you shouldn’t feel bad for abandoning it. But SO BRAVE, YOUNG, AND HANDSOME should grab you right away with Leif Enger's typical writing style. However, I found that this book doesn’t live up to its promise.
Monte Becket is an author. He has written a bestseller, and everyone is anticipating what comes next. But he doesn’t have it in him, whatever “it” is. So he leaves his ever loving wife and child to join his neighbor, Glendon Hale, who is headed for Mexico. Glendon wants to apologize to the wife he left there many years before, and Monte wants to find "it."
What follows are chapter upon chapter upon chapter of unlikely events. This is how Monte gets from here to there, and the heck show more with his wife and child, who want him home. He ends up in California, where Glendon‘s wife has remarried and settled with her new husband. (It doesn’t spoil the story to tell you that.)
The book bored me to tears. I did not care about any one character. The whole thing is just plain silly. It felt like reading a comic book. show less
Monte Becket is an author. He has written a bestseller, and everyone is anticipating what comes next. But he doesn’t have it in him, whatever “it” is. So he leaves his ever loving wife and child to join his neighbor, Glendon Hale, who is headed for Mexico. Glendon wants to apologize to the wife he left there many years before, and Monte wants to find "it."
What follows are chapter upon chapter upon chapter of unlikely events. This is how Monte gets from here to there, and the heck show more with his wife and child, who want him home. He ends up in California, where Glendon‘s wife has remarried and settled with her new husband. (It doesn’t spoil the story to tell you that.)
The book bored me to tears. I did not care about any one character. The whole thing is just plain silly. It felt like reading a comic book. show less
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- Original publication date
- 2008-04-22
- People/Characters
- Monte Becket; Susannah Becket; Redstart Becket; Glendon Hale; Arandano 'Blue' Soto; Claudio Soto (show all 7); Charles Siringo
- Important places
- Minnesota, USA; California, USA
- First words
- Not to disappoint you, but my troubles are nothing – not for an author, at least.
- Quotations
- I looked at my son, the lover of mysteries. You could never guess what Redstart might say, for his mind was made of stories; he’d gathered all manner of splendid facts about gunpowder and deserts of the world and the ancho... (show all)ring of lighthouses against the furious sea; he knew which members of the James gang had once ridden into our town to knock over a bank and been shot to moist rags for their trouble; and about me he knew some things not even his mother knew, such as the exact number of novels I had abandoned on that porch.
Then letters began to arrive. I was still employed at the P.O. and was startled in the sorting room when envelopes bearing my name began crossing the desk. I rarely received mail – when I did it was apt to be from my moth... (show all)er, whose letters were straightforward offerings of gained wisdom. These on the other hand were praise from strangers who had read my little tale. … The daunting and completely unforeseen fact was this: They had mistaken me for a person of substance! I blushed but kept the letters. When I did hear from my mother, sometime later, she suggested I cling to my place at the post office and not let publication make me biggity. Fine advice, you will agree, yet vanity is a devious monkey.
“Jack London sets down a thousand a day before breakfast,” said I. Why do the foolish insist? But I was thinking of the modest dimensions a thousand words actually describe – a tiny essay, a fragment of conversation. ... (show all) “How hard can it be?” concluded your idiot narrator, lifting his glass to the future.
He was formal in the way of men grown apart, yet energy teemed behind his eyes and in some ways he seemed a boy himself. He might laugh abruptly at one of Redstart’s childish jokes; he was pleased by the simplest plays on ... (show all)language; and, like a boy, he kept eating rolls as long as there were rolls to be eaten. To Susannah he gave all possible deference, rising whenever she got up for more coffee or frosting, saying thank you in reverent tones and with averted eyes. These manners endeared him to Susannah straightaway, so that she looked round the table to make sure Redstart and I were noticing how a gentleman acts. He gave his story in bright shards.
She was a refined woman. It was disturbing to imagine her slinging my manuscript, goaded by my weak idioms. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)“What are you writing?” asked Susannah. She was painting something, I couldn’t see what. “Just a sentence.” She lifted her head, a daub of orange below her lip. “Read it to me,” she said.
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