A Review of John Enright's Unholy Quest

G. Stolyarov II

A Journal for Western Man-- Issue XXVIII-- November 27, 2004

            Among the new offerings of Objectivist fiction is John Enright’s action/adventure novel, Unholy Quest, a story of a modern mercenary who lives by a code of honor essential to his self-esteem, his designs at avenging a terrible wrong that had been dealt him by his former colleagues, a religious cult into association with which he is drawn and which seeks to subvert his purposes in favor of its own, and a woman who pursues his attention and becomes mortally endangered in the process. Enright’s book is an interesting read, and exhibits abundant mastery of literary structure and intellectual insight. Nevertheless, there also exist certain decisions on his part that I would call into question.

As this is a work of fiction, and the atmosfere of sequential discovery created via its plot is one of its more enticing elements, I shall avoid an extensive elaboration on the plot here, other than to state that it is coherent, integrated, dynamic, and filled with danger and suspense. The life of the protagonist, Thor Johnson, often hangs by a thread, and he is imperiled by the many grotesque possibilities of death that claim most of the lesser characters of the story. His survival is grounded in his autonomy and unwillingness to blindly place his trust in others, his innovative use of the tools of his trade, as well as his immense foresight in planning. The dogs Thor spends an extensive amount of time training at the beginning of the book prove invaluable to him later on; in a similar manner, Enright uses details with clear intentions and consequences, and, while not overwhelming the reader with them, applies well Ayn Rand’s dictum that not one of them ought to be accidental.

Enright’s characterization also deserves praise, as he is able to accurately display the effects of individuals’ value-premises on their personality and actions. The “profet” Arthur Northcut, the leader of the polygamist religious cult on St. Barnabas Island, employs lofty rhetoric regarding “God’s design” for his endeavor in order to sway young individuals to his cause, but, to anyone except the fanatically enthralled, Northcut’s genuine personality and motivations, those of a perverse petty tyrant who is thrilled at having young males die in his name and young females subordinated to him in appalling acts of sexual degradation, are transparent. There is nothing grand, principled, consistent, or respectable about Northcut, a man who holds no genuine ideology, but rather uses words and ideas purely for pragmatic manipulation. 

Northcut is the principal villain of the story, and is rightly portrayed as a despicable entity. However, as pertains to Enright’s description of Thor, it falls short of presenting the moral ideal that a protagonist of Objectivist fiction ought to be. Examples of Thor’s failings include his immediate entry into an affair with one, Wendy Drake, who had been brought onto the island as a concubine of Jonah Whitlock, one of its elite inhabitants. Rushing into a sexual encounter with an individual on the first day of one’s acquaintance with her is hardly a sign of forethought, deliberation, or reservation of intercourse for only that person who confirms one’s highest intellectual values. Moreover, Thor later assists Wendy in fleeing the island so that she would be able to perform an abortion on a pregnancy from Jonah Whitlock. Whatever one may think about the moral legitimacy of abortion (and I personally consider it repugnant and appalling), there is another ethical quarrel that Objectivists should have with such a decision, namely, Wendy’s violation of a contract she had agreed to and Thor’s assistance given to this act. Under that contract, as the book explains it, Wendy had the option to freely leave the island, except in case of her pregnancy, in which event she was obliged to stay behind and give birth to the child. Whether or not she was mistaken in signing the contract is irrelevant to the fact that, in a world of explicit mutual value-trading, reneging on one’s written word is a clear act of fraud and a violation of the Objectivist virtue of Honesty.

Following Wendy’s escape from the island, Thor’s relationship with her becomes severed, and he gives her no further consideration, almost in literal accord with the old proverb, “Out of sight, out of mind.” This illustrates Thor’s lack of the expectation of permanence in his relationships and lack of personal loyalty to one for whom he had previously manifested sentiments of love. Instead, Thor becomes engaged in another affair with Alma, a woman who uses sexual intercourse as a mere weapon to obtain her momentary objectives from males, which, in this case, include passage to the island, access to the island’s infrastructure, and access to Thor. Even if these actions might have been prompted out of a genuine attraction to Thor, the reader is left to wonder whether the dignity and moral virtue lost by Alma in the numerous acts of degradation she voluntarily submits to far outweigh any gains she later receives via a relationship with Thor. Thor becomes further embroiled in crisis when Wendy returns to the island, and he is confronted with the double affair that renders his love-life almost equivalent to that of the polygamists with whom he is in conflict. Thor resolves this contradiction by the end of the story, and Enright skillfully displays the inherent shortcomings of any sort of polygamy, formal or not, which detracts the individual from holding only one other as the image of his highest values. Nevertheless, Thor is no Randian hero in that he does not recognize this truth from the very beginning and allows himself to commit the dreadful mistakes which nearly derail his life toward the end of the novel. 

I am not essentially opposed to a character demonstrating the archetype of the “mistaken man who successfully corrects his errors,” but to have this archetype be the sole one found among the protagonists of the story leaves it lacking in the realm of the heroic, for a true hero, along with his fysical skills and deeds, must also set a pure and incorruptibly inspiring moral example, so that readers may be given, as a role model, the highest state of being accessible to man. Enright’s story would have benefited from having even one such character working alongside Thor and perhaps serving as his filosofical mentor, a consistent counter to Northcut in the search for ethical truth.

 Aside from characterization of the protagonists, my other principal disagreement with Enright’s work concerns his frequent employment of sexually oriented depictions in his work, which are found in almost every chapter. I have no quarrel with the essential intellectual issues the novel explores, which are closely bound with questions on the matter of romantic relationships as well as the necessity of individual autonomy and choice in such undertakings. Nevertheless, I contend that all the core content of the plot and themes of Unholy Quest could have been expressed in less grafic language, shocking the reader less and allowing him to delve into the fundamental issues with neither emotional turbulence nor repulsion (as some of the descriptions Enright includes, especially of actions performed by the villains of the story, are outright disgusting, and meant to be so). Moreover, extensive description of these matters not only renders the story too concrete-bound but detracts from the main action of the plot, which would in their absence have proceeded in a smooth, suspenseful stream.

Whether Objectivists and other rational readers will enjoy Unholy Quest depends on whether they would be willing to look past the protagonists’ flaws and some of the book’s imagery to appreciate those genuinely meritorious facets that the book exhibits. It includes a masterful dissection and analysis of the nature of cults based purportedly on some supernatural ideal, but in reality on personal loyalty to the “profet” and the manipulation of ideology to sate the “profet’s” pragmatic lust for power, a power pursued as an end in itself. The book also provides a skillful refutation to traditional patriarchies’ advocacy of female intellectual inferiority and confinement to the domestic sfere, without making many of the grave intellectual errors committed by modern feminists who advocate a similar viewpoint. The ending of the book is also satisfactory, as it leaves no conflict unresolved, and exhibits a sense of poetic justice that is regrettably absent from most contemporary literature. Whatever its flaws, Enright’s Unholy Quest does demonstrate how value-premises play themselves out consistently, and thus meets the fundamental criterion of an effective work of literature.

Visit the official Unholy Quest website, where you can obtain information on how to order the book.

G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent filosofical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician and composer, contributor to organizations such as Le Quebecois Libre, Enter Stage Right, the Autonomist, and Objective Medicine. Mr. Stolyarov is the Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator. He can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.

Order Mr. Stolyarov's newest science fiction novel, Eden against the Colossus, in eBook form, here. You only pay $10.00, with no shipping and handling fees.

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