Recently I shared with someone that it was my solid opinion that Leif Enger, Marilynne Robinson, and Wendell Berry were among the greatest living American writers.
That was said while I was in the middle of reading Enger’s mesmerizing I Cheerfully Refuse, his most recently published book. I have been so pleased with his previous books, that I felt overjoyed with the chance to read another. To me that’s the mark of a great writer—I look forward to reading and even re-reading their books.
I Cheerfully Refuse has some of the same characteristics that Enger uses to drive the plot of his other novels. Engaging characters, an important journey to regain something lost, moments of despair when the character’s situation seems impossible to overcome, and joy in the resolution. Enger doesn’t wallow in the despair but eventually points to a slightly reimagined joy. This is not shallow or condescending—Enger has just set his eyes higher upon things he believes to be true. He is not post-modern and certainly is the opposite of nihilist.
Revising The Road by McCarthy
Throughout this book, my mind returned to the dystopian future of post-destruction spelled out in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (find my review HERE). Though many reviewers have clearly gotten trapped in the futility and despair that McCarthy paints, he is careful to outline small but detectable glimmers of hope. In I Cheerfully Refuse, Enger presents the same sorts of dysfunction that McCarthy portrays so ruthlessly, but has a much stronger intention to portray the hope that lies behind.
The Errant Knight and Protector
A frequent reference is Don Quixote, the hopeful errant knight who is called to courage and loyalty and the slaying of dragons. The main character, Rainy, who often presents as a type of Quixote in this book is nevertheless, well aware of the unromantic end of Quixote after his defeat by the Knight of the White Moon:
A romantic fears romance is not enough. It wasn’t enough for Quixote—did you know that? I wish I’d never finished that book. Romance was a trapdoor for him and finally gave way, for the old knight lost his bold lunacy and belief in giants—without which who would’ve read his thousand pages?—and used his last moments to denounce all tales and frivolity, and died like any fretful pensioner, his concluding mission in this world ensuring his stupid will got notarized. In the end it was all churchmen and attorneys, even for Quixote. That’s what made my mouth go dry. That’s what kept me up till dawn, and I’m sorry to lay it off on you, if you didn’t know, or had managed to forget.
– Enger, Leif. I Cheerfully Refuse
At the point that Rainy makes this statement, he has yet to realize that he IS the romantic Don Quixote, because life will deal him many blows that he will adapt to and overcome. He will seek to protect above all, and sometimes fail and other times succeed. He notes early on in the book with reference to a bullied music student:
It’s taken all my life to learn protection is the promise you can’t make. It sounds absolute, and you mean it and believe it, but that vow is provisional and makeshift and no god ever lived who could keep it half the time.
– Enger, Leif. I Cheerfully Refuse
Throughout, though he is often tempted by the world which has fallen around him into chaos and horror, his true self sneaks through and reminds him of who he is. I sum this up with his thought that refocuses himself out of deep grief onto his mission: “Maybe now and then the windmill IS a giant.” Maybe it is, and probably we all need to remember this as well.
Surrounded by Inhumanity
The world Rainy is navigating is truly fallen and unfair. There has been a devastating event, that seems to have been associated with a comet. Many towns have lost their organizational structures altogether. Rainy becomes the guardian of one of the best characters in any book I’ve read recently, Sol, a nine year old whirlwind girl, but the place he finds her matches in its hopelessness anything that McCarthy presented in the worst places of The Road. She is orphaned and has somehow been passed around—most likely sold—and is now the ward of an illiterate version of the modern Skinhead. Wrapped up in far-right ideology, carrying the image of the Bible and the cross without any knowledge or interest in what they may really symbolize. Obsessed with power, self-preservation, and wealth. Rainy trades his beloved Fender bass guitar to take away Sol to a better place and the “guardian” agrees quickly. Sol becomes the daughter he was never able to have and the light of his life.
But the theme of abject inhumanity rears up frequently in their journey to go to some far off island chain in Lake Superior on Rainy’s sailboat. It is there that a mystical experience might happen. Or it might not, but Rainy has hope. Plenty of others exist to steal that hope: a heartless drawbridge operator who charges such a high toll to cross under or over the bridge that it devastates a whole island, a sleepless pursuer who seeks to draw Rainy into his medical experimentation community anchored in a remote location on the lake, “astronauts”—the uber-rich who live in ways and places that seem like outer space to most normal people and who treat humanity as their own possession.
Despite the theme of inhumanity to humans, there are bright points, such as when Sol reveals to Rainy that she stole the money of her abusive “guardian” before he traded her for the guitar. Rainy’s response is legendary:
I fell silent then, and Sol sulked and wouldn’t look at me, because at the age of nine, with years of abuse already behind her, she had the flair and velocity to steal more of Richard’s money than Richard could apparently count, and I didn’t treat her like a hero for it, though she obviously was.
– Enger, Leif. I Cheerfully Refuse
Closing
One theme that persists, though, is the notion of leaving something that remains. Much of this is tied up in books and bookstores and the author Molly Thorn, the title of whose rare, beloved book becomes this title of this novel. Molly Thorn has left many important things behind her and these have encouraged Rainy, his wife Lark, Sol, and even the villain in the book. Her words do not pick and choose who they will encourage. But Rainy learns that words are important. Rainy teaches Sol to write and instructs her on the importance of words:
“Words are one way we leave tracks in the world, Sol. Maybe one day you will write a book, like Olaus did, or Molly Thorn. And people will read it, like I’ve been reading to you. And they will know that you were here, and a little about what you were like.” Sol’s face remained far away. Her cheeks were white and hollow, but her eyes shone a bit, I was fairly sure.
Enger, Leif. I Cheerfully Refuse
And so we see the humanity and its effort to overcome the unfairness the only way possible. By giving back and encouraging and providing hope—even in a place where hope is scorned and rarely visible. But it’s there, and words can bring it back.