Valgard Jonsson, a Post-Dispatch reader, picked up a copy of Leif Enger’s new book, “So Brave, Young and Handsome.” He also went to see Enger at the St. Louis County Library headquarters. Although Jonsson was a bit disappointed with the book, he took some great notes on Enger’s comments while he was in town.  Here is his report:

I met Leif Enger, the author of “So Brave, Young and Handsome,”  June 11, at the St. Louis County Library and listened to him read a few pages from his book. After the reading he took questions from the audience.  The space was limited in the Authors Nook of the Library but I’m guessing that there were more than 60 persons present at the reading and signing, with an audience of predominantly women.

The author is very personable and pleasant and Enger is blessed with a good speaking voice.  He told us that he has all his life been enamored with cowboys and the West and that the title of his book came from the song: “The Cowboy’s Lament.” 

                          “We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly,

                            And bitterly wept as we bore him along;

                            For we all loved our comrade, so brave, young, and handsome;

                            We all loved our comrade, although he’d done wrong.*”

 Enger said that when he was 6 or 7 years old and didn’t want to go to sleep his parents gave him a choice that he could go to sleep listening to a record of Mozart or one of the Norman Luboff Choir (Songs of the West) and that he always choose the Norman Luboff Choir record because the song “The Cowboy’s Lament” was there and he loved it and never tired of listening to it.  And he brought to his adult life his love of the west and cowboys.

I’m wondering whether Enger’s selection of the name Glendon Hale came from the surname name of the author of “The Cowboy’s Lament,” Troy Hale?  The use of the name of Charles Siringo was deliberate as Enger needed a strong western character to carry the story and Siringo had the credentials having been a cowboy, Pinkerton’s detective and a writer and because Siringo was dead he could use him as the part of the story he was writing.  Enger mentioned that he thought strong characters or good strong characterization were the most important part of any story and more important than the development of the plot of the story.  Enger mentioned that he tried to use an authentic western voice but he soon understood that he couldn’t write with a true western voice because he was simply a Midwesterner, so he developed the ploy of using Charles Siringo to represent the West as it was in his mind because of Siringo multifaceted life in the west as a cowboy, detective and writer.

Enger mentioned that he selected the title of ”So Brave, Young, and Handsome” before beginning to write the book. Essentially it was his first step in writing the book. Enger spoke at length of the need for a good title of a book and mentioned that the title of his previous book came from a hymn that he heard one Sunday morning while attending his church: “Peace Like a River”  (the movie based on the book and with Billy Bob Thornton, is scheduled to be released next year). 

 It seems that getting the title is an important first step for Enger in his writing process.  Enger begins his writing after breakfast, 8:30 or 9 o’clock in the morning and works until five in the afternoon with a lunch break at noon everyday in the hayloft of a converted horse barn at his place.  He joked about the aroma of the horse manure sifting up through the floor of his studio adding an ambience of essence to the work space.

Enger told us that he writes slowly, he uses a computer for his writing, and looks closely at each word and sentence and tries different word combinations to feel whether the word or words are suitable to use and the sound of the sentence is important to him and he reads what he has written out loud and listens carefully to the sound and the rhythm of the words of the sentence he has written.  So writing is a slow process for Enger but mostly it was a fear of failure that kept him from not publishing another book for seven years.  He wanted the book, he said, to be good or did he say perfect or as good as he could make it?

I was disappointed in “So Brave, Young, and Handsome” because I thought it could have been so much better by better direction or flow and more fleshing out of the characters of the story.  I guess that even in fiction that crime doesn’t pay so Glendon Hale, the old boatwright turned train robber had to eventually pay his societal dues.  

Enger told us that his book “Peace Like a River” was not his first writing endeavor and that he and his older brother, Lin Enger, had written several mystery novels together but unfortunately the books didn’t do well so they decided to stop writing the books.  Lin Enger has just written a book: “An Undiscovered Country” published by Little, Brown and Company (to be released July 3, 2008).

St. Louis, Missouri, June 13, 2008

**”When peace like a river, attendeth my way;

      When sorrows like sea billows roll;

      Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,

      It is well, it is well with my soul.”