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One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder
From a "born storyteller" ( Seattle Times ), this playful and moving bestselling book of essays invites us into the miraculous and transcendent moments of everyday life.
When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the twenty-first century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.
At a moment when the world can sometimes feel darker than ever, Doyle's writing, which constantly evokes the humor and even bliss that life affords, is a balm. His essays manage to find, again and again, exquisite beauty in the quotidian, whether it's the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, or a husband's whiskers that a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every morning. Through Doyle's eyes, nothing is dull.
David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to quiet glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size, renown, or commercial value, and he brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." A life's work, One Long River of Song invites readers to experience joy and wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle's rapturous and exuberant gaze, extraordinary.
When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the twenty-first century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.
At a moment when the world can sometimes feel darker than ever, Doyle's writing, which constantly evokes the humor and even bliss that life affords, is a balm. His essays manage to find, again and again, exquisite beauty in the quotidian, whether it's the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, or a husband's whiskers that a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every morning. Through Doyle's eyes, nothing is dull.
David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to quiet glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size, renown, or commercial value, and he brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." A life's work, One Long River of Song invites readers to experience joy and wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle's rapturous and exuberant gaze, extraordinary.
250 pages, Hardcover
First published December 3, 2019
About the author
Brian Doyle
70 books662 followersDoyle's essays and poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The American Scholar, Orion, Commonweal, and The Georgia Review, among other magazines and journals, and in The Times of London, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Kansas City Star, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Ottawa Citizen, and Newsday, among other newspapers. He was a book reviewer for The Oregonian and a contributing essayist to both Eureka Street magazine and The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia.
Doyle's essays have also been reprinted in:
* the Best American Essays anthologies of 1998, 1999, 2003, and 2005;
* in Best Spiritual Writing 1999, 2001, 2002, and 2005; and
* in Best Essays Northwest (2003);
* and in a dozen other anthologies and writing textbooks.
As for awards and honors, he had three startling children, an incomprehensible and fascinating marriage, and he was named to the 1983 Newton (Massachusetts) Men's Basketball League all-star team, and that was a really tough league.
Doyle delivered many dozens of peculiar and muttered speeches and lectures and rants about writing and stuttering grace at a variety of venues, among them Australian Catholic University and Xavier College (both in Melbourne, Australia), Aquinas Academy (in Sydney, Australia); Washington State, Seattle Pacific, Oregon, Utah State, Concordia, and Marylhurst universities; Boston, Lewis & Clark, and Linfield colleges; the universities of Utah, Oregon, Pittsburgh, and Portland; KBOO radio (Portland), ABC and 3AW radio (Australia); the College Theology Society; National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation," and in the PBS film Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero (2002).
Doyle was a native of New York, was fitfully educated at the University of Notre Dame, and was a magazine and newspaper journalist in Portland, Boston, and Chicago for more than twenty years. He was living in Portland, Oregon, with his family when died at age 60 from complications related to a brain tumor.
Doyle's essays have also been reprinted in:
* the Best American Essays anthologies of 1998, 1999, 2003, and 2005;
* in Best Spiritual Writing 1999, 2001, 2002, and 2005; and
* in Best Essays Northwest (2003);
* and in a dozen other anthologies and writing textbooks.
As for awards and honors, he had three startling children, an incomprehensible and fascinating marriage, and he was named to the 1983 Newton (Massachusetts) Men's Basketball League all-star team, and that was a really tough league.
Doyle delivered many dozens of peculiar and muttered speeches and lectures and rants about writing and stuttering grace at a variety of venues, among them Australian Catholic University and Xavier College (both in Melbourne, Australia), Aquinas Academy (in Sydney, Australia); Washington State, Seattle Pacific, Oregon, Utah State, Concordia, and Marylhurst universities; Boston, Lewis & Clark, and Linfield colleges; the universities of Utah, Oregon, Pittsburgh, and Portland; KBOO radio (Portland), ABC and 3AW radio (Australia); the College Theology Society; National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation," and in the PBS film Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero (2002).
Doyle was a native of New York, was fitfully educated at the University of Notre Dame, and was a magazine and newspaper journalist in Portland, Boston, and Chicago for more than twenty years. He was living in Portland, Oregon, with his family when died at age 60 from complications related to a brain tumor.
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February 11, 2020
Like petty and shorts stories, I love essays because they allow one to dip in and out of reading whenever one wants. This one though I read even more slowly and with a certain amount of sadness, knowing this wonderful author passed on at the early age of sixty.
These essays are written with a sense of wonder, and grace. There is humor and sadness, wonder and delight. Stories of the last, when his wife gave birth to twin boys, one who would need more than one surgery. The difference in the boys as they grew, at night one held on tons stuffed animals, the other clung to a can of sardines. His young daughter and his observations of her younger days. Wonder at the things in the natural world. So beautifully done, poignant, the many things that make of a life.
"What do we really know well about any creature, including most of all ourselves, and how it is that even though we know painfully little about anything, we often manage world-wrenching hubris about our wisdom."
This author is another that will be missed.
ARC from Netgalley.
These essays are written with a sense of wonder, and grace. There is humor and sadness, wonder and delight. Stories of the last, when his wife gave birth to twin boys, one who would need more than one surgery. The difference in the boys as they grew, at night one held on tons stuffed animals, the other clung to a can of sardines. His young daughter and his observations of her younger days. Wonder at the things in the natural world. So beautifully done, poignant, the many things that make of a life.
"What do we really know well about any creature, including most of all ourselves, and how it is that even though we know painfully little about anything, we often manage world-wrenching hubris about our wisdom."
This author is another that will be missed.
ARC from Netgalley.
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January 31, 2022First and foremost, we can agree that it was a terrible loss for the literary world when Brian Doyle died of a brain tumor last year. Only 60, too. And one thing that particularly struck me was an essay in this collection where he wrote about his older brother's death at the tender age of 64. The funeral and wake included the Doyle brothers' parents, both in their 80s and, at the time, hale and hearty (I do not know if both are still alive today, however).
Reading this, I said to myself, "Whatever happened to each generation enjoying a longer life span than the one before?" Statistics seem to support this notion, but anecdotal and personal evidence goes the other way, as if our parents, living mostly in a pre-chemically and pre-technologically polluted world, are enjoying longer lives than we are. Consider what's in our food, water, air, houses, furniture, clothing, cars, etc.! Consider radiation from all of our favorite binkies (wi-fi, cell phones, etc.)!
OK. Stop considering all that. It's Christmas season, a time for cheer---even if you have to work at it.
Anyway, the book. More nonspiritual than spiritual. Unbeknownst to me (a fan of his novels The Plover and Mink River), Doyle was an essayist first and foremost. Most of these are short, as in 2-4 pages only. They vary in strength, too, but certainly showcase Doyle's love of two rhetorical devices in particular: anaphora and polysyndeton. Repetition Man, call him! And there are many ways to repeat yourself elegantly.
Themes you'll see: religion (RC, in this case), family (very important to Brian), humor (he has a good sense of one), politics (he didn't live on the Left Coast for nothing), nature (he's a huge fan of raptors, for instance), and, of course, his own life and past (memoir-like).
Enjoyable, overall, especially the voice, which becomes best-buddy like after awhile. Still, I kidded myself in thinking this would be mostly all new when in fact it was mostly all old. I also thought the "spiritual" part hinted at essays, at least toward the end, dealing on the topic of his terminal illness. Not so much.
But that's OK. I'll take the happy, before-the-bad-news stuff, too.
If you are interested in an example of Doyle's work and voice, I have shared one of his short essays on my website.
Reading this, I said to myself, "Whatever happened to each generation enjoying a longer life span than the one before?" Statistics seem to support this notion, but anecdotal and personal evidence goes the other way, as if our parents, living mostly in a pre-chemically and pre-technologically polluted world, are enjoying longer lives than we are. Consider what's in our food, water, air, houses, furniture, clothing, cars, etc.! Consider radiation from all of our favorite binkies (wi-fi, cell phones, etc.)!
OK. Stop considering all that. It's Christmas season, a time for cheer---even if you have to work at it.
Anyway, the book. More nonspiritual than spiritual. Unbeknownst to me (a fan of his novels The Plover and Mink River), Doyle was an essayist first and foremost. Most of these are short, as in 2-4 pages only. They vary in strength, too, but certainly showcase Doyle's love of two rhetorical devices in particular: anaphora and polysyndeton. Repetition Man, call him! And there are many ways to repeat yourself elegantly.
Themes you'll see: religion (RC, in this case), family (very important to Brian), humor (he has a good sense of one), politics (he didn't live on the Left Coast for nothing), nature (he's a huge fan of raptors, for instance), and, of course, his own life and past (memoir-like).
Enjoyable, overall, especially the voice, which becomes best-buddy like after awhile. Still, I kidded myself in thinking this would be mostly all new when in fact it was mostly all old. I also thought the "spiritual" part hinted at essays, at least toward the end, dealing on the topic of his terminal illness. Not so much.
But that's OK. I'll take the happy, before-the-bad-news stuff, too.
If you are interested in an example of Doyle's work and voice, I have shared one of his short essays on my website.
January 5, 2020
Brian Doyle seems to have been a person who was in love with life, all aspects of life. And he seems to have lived his life fully. Doyle wrote novels and stories but essays, published in a variety of outlets, were his mainstay. Before his death in 2017, he agreed to having his friend David Duncan create this final collection of some of his essays.
The focus of many, if not most, of of his essays, here and elsewhere, is the spiritual realm and the natural world. For me, it appears that Doyle viewed the world through a spiritual lens so that even essays not overtly spiritual take on that tone. Not in any “heavy” or preaching manner, but more that of a constantly seeking, thankful and inquiring man.
Doyle loved the natural world, was especially fond of raptors and wrote about his interactions with glaring owls and swooping hawks. His sense of humor infiltrates his writing constantly, as does his love of family. All generations become subjects, lovingly. There is no meanness here, none at all. There may be unhappy or negative moments, but Doyle doesn’t deal in petty or repressive as so many do.
Brian Doyle is a man I wish I had known, a man I would have loved to talk with. Not at all sanctimonious, rather a man who appears to have had many of my questions of life but to have thought (and perhaps prayed) more on answers.
Highly recommended to all.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
The focus of many, if not most, of of his essays, here and elsewhere, is the spiritual realm and the natural world. For me, it appears that Doyle viewed the world through a spiritual lens so that even essays not overtly spiritual take on that tone. Not in any “heavy” or preaching manner, but more that of a constantly seeking, thankful and inquiring man.
Doyle loved the natural world, was especially fond of raptors and wrote about his interactions with glaring owls and swooping hawks. His sense of humor infiltrates his writing constantly, as does his love of family. All generations become subjects, lovingly. There is no meanness here, none at all. There may be unhappy or negative moments, but Doyle doesn’t deal in petty or repressive as so many do.
Brian Doyle is a man I wish I had known, a man I would have loved to talk with. Not at all sanctimonious, rather a man who appears to have had many of my questions of life but to have thought (and perhaps prayed) more on answers.
Highly recommended to all.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
January 10, 2020
A lot of people don't like reading essays for the same reason they don't really like reading short stories; they're too brief, they end abruptly, you don't have time to get "invested" in the piece. That's the very reason I do love them though, because sometimes I don't have the time or energy to give, but I still want to be mentally enriched by the printed word.
These essays have enriched my bedtime reading for a couple of weeks now, because each one of them is a perfect little nugget of perfection. Doyle is so positive, so funny, so real, and he knows how to put words and paragraphs together in the best way to make his point, which is that life is good no matter what it hands you. We all need to hear more of that.
I'm going to miss hearing his voice in my head every night, but not for long. I've read his novel "The Plover" which made me a lifelong fan. Next up is "Mink River", another novel, then more essays, because he was a prolific writer, thank goodness. Brian Doyle died in 2017 of a brain tumor, at the young age of 60, but he left behind an amazing body of work, and I plan to make my way through all of it.
These essays have enriched my bedtime reading for a couple of weeks now, because each one of them is a perfect little nugget of perfection. Doyle is so positive, so funny, so real, and he knows how to put words and paragraphs together in the best way to make his point, which is that life is good no matter what it hands you. We all need to hear more of that.
I'm going to miss hearing his voice in my head every night, but not for long. I've read his novel "The Plover" which made me a lifelong fan. Next up is "Mink River", another novel, then more essays, because he was a prolific writer, thank goodness. Brian Doyle died in 2017 of a brain tumor, at the young age of 60, but he left behind an amazing body of work, and I plan to make my way through all of it.
December 20, 2019
To an introverted librarian like myself, finding yourself in a situation where you must talk to a total stranger for one hour is normally pretty excruciating. But that was not the case when the stranger I got to talk to for an hour was author, Brian Doyle.
It was September 14, 2014 and I had scheduled Brian to speak at the Pacific City Library, one of the little libraries I manage on the Oregon coast. With the program scheduled at 1:00 pm, I arrived at 11:30 am to set up chairs...and was surprised to see a man with little round glasses and a thick beard showing up at the very same time. Brian Doyle was here...very early.
Somehow his datebook ended up showing noon as the program time, so we had an hour and a half to kill before his program began. After he insisted on helping me set up chairs for the presentation, I began to list some options for him to fill up the time by getting some lunch in his belly. But he said, no, he had eaten a sandwich in his car..."so how would it be if you and I just sat down for a little chat? Get to know each other..."
So now I must confess, I was fairly new to Oregon and I SHOULD have read his books since he was considered an important Oregon author...but sadly, I had not. And perhaps, in hindsight, that worked to my advantage. Instead of the normal interview questions he is accustomed to fielding, we talked about our families. He began to interview me as if I was the one person he really wanted to spend time with. We discussed real moments. We talked about people we loved. We talked about the wonder of nature. He talked about his trials as a father of a young child born with a defective heart. I talked about a medical experience I had with my daughter born with a genetic abnormality that resulted in having her aorta replaced. Never in my life has an hour gone so quickly. And never have I had such an honest and true and caring conversation with another human I did not know. It was as though we had been friends all our life.
Of course, my private sixty minutes with a literary celebrity made me an instant fan of his work. When he published a new book, the catalogers at my library instinctively knew to immediately put me on the hold list. I think I am such a fan because he wrote much in the way he spoke. As a friend speaking to a friend. I was pleased to read a quote of Brian's in David James Duncan's forward in this book that states that very concept. "I want to write to you like I'm speaking to you. I would sing my books if I could."
He has such a unique style and voice. Reading his writing makes me feel as though he is sitting at the table with me at the Pacific City Library and he's simply telling me his story. His critics had a field day pointing out his lack of punctuation and Brian used to smile at those critiques. But really, who worries about punctuation when they are talking to a friend?
His last book, One Long River of Song, is my most favorite of all. A posthumous collection of short stories and observations, is heartbreaking, wonderful and the very best book I read this entire decade. It is Brian at his best, filled with reminders to take notice of nature and family and "tender next minutes" that make up this short time we have on this earth.
Having downsized my home in recent years, I don't buy books any longer. I just check them out from the library I work at. But One Long River of Song must be an exception to that rule. I will keep it by my bedside so that when life and work get crazy, I can open it up and continue the conversation I had with my friend, Brian Doyle.
It was September 14, 2014 and I had scheduled Brian to speak at the Pacific City Library, one of the little libraries I manage on the Oregon coast. With the program scheduled at 1:00 pm, I arrived at 11:30 am to set up chairs...and was surprised to see a man with little round glasses and a thick beard showing up at the very same time. Brian Doyle was here...very early.
Somehow his datebook ended up showing noon as the program time, so we had an hour and a half to kill before his program began. After he insisted on helping me set up chairs for the presentation, I began to list some options for him to fill up the time by getting some lunch in his belly. But he said, no, he had eaten a sandwich in his car..."so how would it be if you and I just sat down for a little chat? Get to know each other..."
So now I must confess, I was fairly new to Oregon and I SHOULD have read his books since he was considered an important Oregon author...but sadly, I had not. And perhaps, in hindsight, that worked to my advantage. Instead of the normal interview questions he is accustomed to fielding, we talked about our families. He began to interview me as if I was the one person he really wanted to spend time with. We discussed real moments. We talked about people we loved. We talked about the wonder of nature. He talked about his trials as a father of a young child born with a defective heart. I talked about a medical experience I had with my daughter born with a genetic abnormality that resulted in having her aorta replaced. Never in my life has an hour gone so quickly. And never have I had such an honest and true and caring conversation with another human I did not know. It was as though we had been friends all our life.
Of course, my private sixty minutes with a literary celebrity made me an instant fan of his work. When he published a new book, the catalogers at my library instinctively knew to immediately put me on the hold list. I think I am such a fan because he wrote much in the way he spoke. As a friend speaking to a friend. I was pleased to read a quote of Brian's in David James Duncan's forward in this book that states that very concept. "I want to write to you like I'm speaking to you. I would sing my books if I could."
He has such a unique style and voice. Reading his writing makes me feel as though he is sitting at the table with me at the Pacific City Library and he's simply telling me his story. His critics had a field day pointing out his lack of punctuation and Brian used to smile at those critiques. But really, who worries about punctuation when they are talking to a friend?
His last book, One Long River of Song, is my most favorite of all. A posthumous collection of short stories and observations, is heartbreaking, wonderful and the very best book I read this entire decade. It is Brian at his best, filled with reminders to take notice of nature and family and "tender next minutes" that make up this short time we have on this earth.
Having downsized my home in recent years, I don't buy books any longer. I just check them out from the library I work at. But One Long River of Song must be an exception to that rule. I will keep it by my bedside so that when life and work get crazy, I can open it up and continue the conversation I had with my friend, Brian Doyle.
July 20, 2021
I'm not sure I've ever read a book that felt so much like a peek into the author's soul. Brian Doyle's collected writings, aptly referred to as Notes on Wonder in the subtitle, are short essays from across his career curated into a beautiful glimpse into one man's heart and mind. Whether or not you are spiritual, you can find solace and inspiration in Doyle's writing. I don't have much more to say because this book speaks so well for itself. It was a lovely gift from a friend and I think Doyle would like that a lot.
August 28, 2019
I came across a question in a book group on social media the other day: If you were stranded on a desert island, which author's work would you wish you had? The answer bubbled up immediately for me, but I wasn't surprised: Brian Doyle. Has ever a human written such a glorious body of work? His ability to capture the human condition, with the enormous spectrum of emotions we all feel, is almost otherworldly. While you sit in awe of that talent, he'll have you giggling until your stomach hurts; then you'll sit in awe of that talent as well. The world lost a giant of a man: giant heart, giant sense of the absurd, giant worshipper of language, giant wit. Reading One Long River of Song, a book I never expected to hold, was such a comfort. A long, delicious, beautiful book of essays, observations, and wit, rendered in the way only Brian Doyle can, was such a gift. Brian, you are so loved and so missed, and thank you for allowing us the luxury of experiencing your particular magic one more time.
May 4, 2024
If you've yet to 'dip your toe' into the creative waters of Brian Doyle, this remarkable collection of essays, 'poems' and shorts offer his unique views of family, nature and spirit among other things.
Having LOVED Mink River, I eagerly picked up The Plover and was equally knocked over. And to cap it all, Martin Marten was astounding.
Brian's lyrical narratives driven by themes of love, community, spirit and nature are breath taking. Characters have depth and quirkiness, plots immerse us into unusual story worlds and the poetic nature of his storytelling unrivaled.
With this series of essays, we hear the story of a son that required heart surgery at birth, his remarkable daughter, wife and Irish family. We hear of his father, an erudite journalist relying on an ancient typewriter, his brothers and passion for nature. Raised Catholic, he explores Eastern and Native spirituality, studies the animal world, ocean, and so much more. Each essay is a window into his soul, beliefs and creativity.
Brian was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2016 and passed the following year at age 60, a huge loss to his family and world of publishing. By FAR one of the most creative, loving and unique writers in the industry..I grow sad as I write this knowing we won't see more of his stories. RIP Brian.
Having LOVED Mink River, I eagerly picked up The Plover and was equally knocked over. And to cap it all, Martin Marten was astounding.
Brian's lyrical narratives driven by themes of love, community, spirit and nature are breath taking. Characters have depth and quirkiness, plots immerse us into unusual story worlds and the poetic nature of his storytelling unrivaled.
With this series of essays, we hear the story of a son that required heart surgery at birth, his remarkable daughter, wife and Irish family. We hear of his father, an erudite journalist relying on an ancient typewriter, his brothers and passion for nature. Raised Catholic, he explores Eastern and Native spirituality, studies the animal world, ocean, and so much more. Each essay is a window into his soul, beliefs and creativity.
Brian was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2016 and passed the following year at age 60, a huge loss to his family and world of publishing. By FAR one of the most creative, loving and unique writers in the industry..I grow sad as I write this knowing we won't see more of his stories. RIP Brian.
February 16, 2020
Just hours before the conclusion of 2019, I have read the best book of the year, hands down. Doyle is a gift beyond words. This is required reading for any human.
May 24, 2021
I'm not sure how I've made it through teaching for eighteen years without encountering an essay by Brian Doyle. I'm just glad I was made aware of him by my good friend Denise.
I started reading this book in January and took my time with it. I would read an essay or two a day (most are only a page or two) and savored the time it took me to read it.
Doyle writes about the smallest of moments and captures the emotional enormity with the perfect language.
I can't do the book justice at all. You just have to read one or two essays to know you are dealing with a writer of immense talent. I now have to get to his back catalog.
This NYT's review does a great job saying what I can not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/bo...
I started reading this book in January and took my time with it. I would read an essay or two a day (most are only a page or two) and savored the time it took me to read it.
Doyle writes about the smallest of moments and captures the emotional enormity with the perfect language.
I can't do the book justice at all. You just have to read one or two essays to know you are dealing with a writer of immense talent. I now have to get to his back catalog.
This NYT's review does a great job saying what I can not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/bo...
October 19, 2019
A beautiful, deeply true book. I have read Doyle's essays here and there over the years, mostly in the pages of Orion, but to sit and swim in his prose, short essay after short essay, was a wonderful thing, especially since he seems to have been a man fully in love with life.
June 29, 2020
This is a collection of vignettes, essays and poems which range from funny to heart breaking, mundane to reflective, political to philosophical, but above all, they are heartfelt and honest. His philosophical musings are of the common man, not the esoteric type. Some topics seem close to the author; marriage, parenthood, kids, childhood. Some themes as well; joy, pleasure, stillness, pain and loss. He also has an affinity for nature and animals, especially birds.
These were my favourite stories:
The Meteorites was a lovely, nostalgic tale of summer camp, of which an example of brotherly love left a deep impression on the author (David asking the author to help clean up Daniel).
Counselor, Danny needs you, spoken by a small boy on a high hill, and the four words fell from his mouth and were scattered by the four winds, years ago: but they have been a storm in me.
Because it’s hard was about a monk explaining his reason for becoming a monk.
But I knew inside that I had to try to do what was hard for me to do, to be of best use.
God again was about a long suffering post office staff whose patience, humility and servitude lead the author to see God in him.
So it is that I have seen God at the United States Post Office, and spoken to him, and been edified and elevated by his grace, which slakes all those who thirst; which is each of us, which is all of us.
To the beach was another poignant tale of brotherly love, how his older brother looked after the two younger boys after their mini-adventure to the beach.
a slight thing by the measurement of the world, yet to me not slight at all but huge and crucial and holy.
And a few more interesting quotes.
I was learning that a lot of times what people meant was not at all what they said. Maybe meant no, and The Lord will provide meant that the Lord had not yet provided, and Take your time meant hurry up.
The saddest word I’ve heard wrapped around divorce like a tattered blanket is tired, as in “We were both just tired,” because being tired seems so utterly normal to me…. that the thought of tired being both your daily bread and also grounds for divorce gives me the willies.
People who fear freedom fear libraries.
Sadly, Brian Doyle passed away in 2017 from a brain tumour.
These were my favourite stories:
The Meteorites was a lovely, nostalgic tale of summer camp, of which an example of brotherly love left a deep impression on the author (David asking the author to help clean up Daniel).
Counselor, Danny needs you, spoken by a small boy on a high hill, and the four words fell from his mouth and were scattered by the four winds, years ago: but they have been a storm in me.
Because it’s hard was about a monk explaining his reason for becoming a monk.
But I knew inside that I had to try to do what was hard for me to do, to be of best use.
God again was about a long suffering post office staff whose patience, humility and servitude lead the author to see God in him.
So it is that I have seen God at the United States Post Office, and spoken to him, and been edified and elevated by his grace, which slakes all those who thirst; which is each of us, which is all of us.
To the beach was another poignant tale of brotherly love, how his older brother looked after the two younger boys after their mini-adventure to the beach.
a slight thing by the measurement of the world, yet to me not slight at all but huge and crucial and holy.
And a few more interesting quotes.
I was learning that a lot of times what people meant was not at all what they said. Maybe meant no, and The Lord will provide meant that the Lord had not yet provided, and Take your time meant hurry up.
The saddest word I’ve heard wrapped around divorce like a tattered blanket is tired, as in “We were both just tired,” because being tired seems so utterly normal to me…. that the thought of tired being both your daily bread and also grounds for divorce gives me the willies.
People who fear freedom fear libraries.
Sadly, Brian Doyle passed away in 2017 from a brain tumour.
April 10, 2020
I happened to discover this beautiful book in one of my favorite bookstores—Jabberwocky in Newburyport. (No surprise that the booksellers there selected such a good book.) After I read the first piece which begins with an invitation to consider the hummingbird and, in particular, its heart, I called my mother and read it to her. Then, I went upstairs where my husband was working on some writing (a little reluctantly but recognizing its importance) and read it to him. Then, the next day, told my friends Eileen and Trish at Jabberwocky that they must read it. Then, photographed it and texted it to a group of five old friends who I regularly meet on a monthly call and suggested they read it. And so on. It’s that beautiful. I read the book slowly and savored it for Doyle’s big-hearted compassion and tenderness. It may change the way you see—everything. Listen to what he says he hopes he might say to his children and grandchildren when he is dying in an essay called “A Prayer for You and Yours”:
“...it was for you that I was here, and for you I prayed every day of your life, and for you I will pray in whatever form I am next to take. Lift the rock and I am there; cleave the wood and I am there; call for me and I will listen, for I hope to be a prayer for you and yours long after I am dust and ash.”
The prayer to become a prayer for one’s family. Isn’t that extraordinary?
“...it was for you that I was here, and for you I prayed every day of your life, and for you I will pray in whatever form I am next to take. Lift the rock and I am there; cleave the wood and I am there; call for me and I will listen, for I hope to be a prayer for you and yours long after I am dust and ash.”
The prayer to become a prayer for one’s family. Isn’t that extraordinary?
July 21, 2020
Dear Coherent Mercy,
Thank you for creating Brian Doyle, the miracle-worker. These essays are little mercies. And I thank you for each one.
Amen and amen.
Thank you for creating Brian Doyle, the miracle-worker. These essays are little mercies. And I thank you for each one.
Amen and amen.
September 27, 2021
4.5 stars
This is a good collection to read when you're feeling a little cynical and you need a balm for your battered spirit.
Re-read (via audio book) for Shorty September Readathon.
Fulfills the Hometown Shorts prompt: A book set in or by someone from the place you live.
This is a good collection to read when you're feeling a little cynical and you need a balm for your battered spirit.
Re-read (via audio book) for Shorty September Readathon.
Fulfills the Hometown Shorts prompt: A book set in or by someone from the place you live.
July 7, 2021
I’m so glad the world contains such people as Brian Doyle, in so much as it contains him still. His sinew and bone and earnest, wonderful grin, his eyes that loved to search for kestrels and owls and hawks and even dolls’ missing limbs, his arms that lobbed basketballs and raised children in utterly awed delight, are gone from us in the form that we would recognize them.
And yet, what I have come to know of him—a sense of clear-eyed wonder with a world altogether awful in both senses of the word, sentences that trail on in rivulets both dazzling and affecting, small snatches of attention undivided paid to the smallest of creatures and glimmers and glances and sounds—all these remain even as the atoms that made up Brian Doyle have tumbled apart into decidedly other things.
And so I sit at my desk, myself struck with wonder, filled o’er to slopping with an appreciation for a soul whom I’ve never met in the more traditional sense but with whom I have had the privilege to walk a-ways in a sense that really matters. And so I write this eulogy for a man I’ve never known on a humble piece of steno paper on a grey afternoon when I ought to be working, because wonder and gratitude and a totally humbling sense of awe compel me to, because isn’t all life and religion and love and care, at least in part, about paying attention and offering our most sincere thanks for what we find when we do?
And yet, what I have come to know of him—a sense of clear-eyed wonder with a world altogether awful in both senses of the word, sentences that trail on in rivulets both dazzling and affecting, small snatches of attention undivided paid to the smallest of creatures and glimmers and glances and sounds—all these remain even as the atoms that made up Brian Doyle have tumbled apart into decidedly other things.
And so I sit at my desk, myself struck with wonder, filled o’er to slopping with an appreciation for a soul whom I’ve never met in the more traditional sense but with whom I have had the privilege to walk a-ways in a sense that really matters. And so I write this eulogy for a man I’ve never known on a humble piece of steno paper on a grey afternoon when I ought to be working, because wonder and gratitude and a totally humbling sense of awe compel me to, because isn’t all life and religion and love and care, at least in part, about paying attention and offering our most sincere thanks for what we find when we do?
February 17, 2020
I discovered the delightful world of Brian Doyle seven years ago, beginning with his novel Mink River, and immediately immersed myself in any and all of his novels and essays, Broadway Books in Portland, Oregon, being my favorite shop to stop in and browse - there's a bookshelf dedicated to his books only. I had the good fortune to happen upon an all-day workshop with Mr. Doyle as well as an evening session of talking and reading - both filled with people who genuinely loved the person as well as his works. A storyteller in every sense of the word, engaging, gracious, generous with his time, he spoke and wrote totally from the heart about his own life, and the lives of others and the wonder of the world around him, and I could go on & on. This book is filled with essays of the aforementioned subjects, and I have read some of them in books I already own and there are several stories I had not yet read. And sometimes I have a favorite and I didn't pay attention to the title or the page number or even whether it was at the beginning or middle or end and so the hunt begins. No matter, One Long River of Song is a book I will pick up again and again, opening it to any page at all to commence reading. As the book blurb says, "His essays manage to find, again and again, exquisite beauty in the quotidian... Through Doyle's eyes, nothing is dull."
December 2, 2019
This is a beautiful book by the late Brian Doyle. This collection of essays makes you look at the world in a different way. It helps you see the beauty and wonder all around you.
I was given a free copy of this book by NetGalley and have provided this review voluntarily.
I was given a free copy of this book by NetGalley and have provided this review voluntarily.
February 28, 2020
At the end of the Seamus Heaney poem "Postscript" are these lines: "You are neither here nor there, / A hurry through which known and strange things pass / As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways / And catch the heart off guard and blow it open."
Brian Doyle's art was to catch the heart off guard and blow it open, over and over and over again. Doyle writes like a waterfall, and to read his essays is like standing in front of one, stilled by the magnitude of the torrent before you. His preoccupation was to take hold of moments of wonder and give them the expansiveness they deserve, to show that they look tiny only because they pass us swiftly, and that, under examination, they aren't small at all: they are towering, gigantic, the center of everything. Maybe that's why the word "humility" appears so often in Doyle's writing: you can't feel wonder without it.
Doyle was not the least interested in avoiding words like humility and kindness and love, not at all afraid of eye-rolling and accusations of sentiment and sap; you will not get off the hook so easily. The moments preserved in Doyle's essays, like dragonflies in amber, give those words back their viscera, their solidity, and you will be made to look at them straight on. "We all churn inside," Doyle writes near the middle of Joyas Voladoras, the book's first essay. He will never allow you to forget it.
Brian Doyle's art was to catch the heart off guard and blow it open, over and over and over again. Doyle writes like a waterfall, and to read his essays is like standing in front of one, stilled by the magnitude of the torrent before you. His preoccupation was to take hold of moments of wonder and give them the expansiveness they deserve, to show that they look tiny only because they pass us swiftly, and that, under examination, they aren't small at all: they are towering, gigantic, the center of everything. Maybe that's why the word "humility" appears so often in Doyle's writing: you can't feel wonder without it.
Doyle was not the least interested in avoiding words like humility and kindness and love, not at all afraid of eye-rolling and accusations of sentiment and sap; you will not get off the hook so easily. The moments preserved in Doyle's essays, like dragonflies in amber, give those words back their viscera, their solidity, and you will be made to look at them straight on. "We all churn inside," Doyle writes near the middle of Joyas Voladoras, the book's first essay. He will never allow you to forget it.
June 11, 2021
I am so glad I discovered Brian Doyle's work, and it only makes his joyful love for all things living, and especially his family, more poignant to know he left them too early. And I love love LVOE his style -- long sentences, perfect phrases, and in these tiny almost flash-nonfictions. But they are always more than anecdote. I kept this near my bed and would plan to read 1 or 2 of them before bed every night. The only problem was that after reading one I'd want to read another and another and before you know it I was up late because his voice was one I didn't want to leave behind.
I am rather anti-religious, so it seemed to me the first half of the book, weighted more toward nature, children, and family, was more to my liking than some of the later sections, which tipped deeper into his Catholicism and got a bit too sweet without the sharpness that balanced out his best pieces in the beginning.
His story of watching a pick up basketball game with his brother, as his brother was in decline and dying, is one of the most moving things I've ever read. The way he captured the scintillating beauty of his ordinary people and his ordinary environment makes me wish someone I know could write down their love for me like that. He made me feel loved by proxy in his open-hearted embrace of the world.
I am rather anti-religious, so it seemed to me the first half of the book, weighted more toward nature, children, and family, was more to my liking than some of the later sections, which tipped deeper into his Catholicism and got a bit too sweet without the sharpness that balanced out his best pieces in the beginning.
His story of watching a pick up basketball game with his brother, as his brother was in decline and dying, is one of the most moving things I've ever read. The way he captured the scintillating beauty of his ordinary people and his ordinary environment makes me wish someone I know could write down their love for me like that. He made me feel loved by proxy in his open-hearted embrace of the world.
August 20, 2020
I corresponded with Brian Doyle in the years past, usually sending him a story occasionally in the hope that he would take it for the magazine he edited. I read his stories regularly when I could find them in magazines, especially in ORION. I was so sad when I learned he was ill and then when he died.
A good friend of mine recommended this collection to me. I ordered it, read it slowly, an essay or two at a time, savoring them, and I truly loved it. When I finally finished, I mailed the book immediately to another dear friend, Leeann Culbreath, who had recently become a priest.
Most of the essays are a form called faith writing -- Brian's faith is wide & encompassing. He has this crazy, tumbling, ecstatic style, with long & well-crafted sentences, incredible diction, and lots of apt images. I very much enjoyed this book.
I'm so grateful to Brian's wife & also to David James Duncan for putting this book together posthumously. It is the best of the best.
I want to be more like Brian Doyle, as a writer & as a person.
A good friend of mine recommended this collection to me. I ordered it, read it slowly, an essay or two at a time, savoring them, and I truly loved it. When I finally finished, I mailed the book immediately to another dear friend, Leeann Culbreath, who had recently become a priest.
Most of the essays are a form called faith writing -- Brian's faith is wide & encompassing. He has this crazy, tumbling, ecstatic style, with long & well-crafted sentences, incredible diction, and lots of apt images. I very much enjoyed this book.
I'm so grateful to Brian's wife & also to David James Duncan for putting this book together posthumously. It is the best of the best.
I want to be more like Brian Doyle, as a writer & as a person.
Read
March 23, 2024This is the Most Important Book to me right now. I cried so hard finishing it, begging for him not to die (the whole point of the book is it’s a collection of posthumously collected essays). I still think about it almost every day.
Forgive me for all these quotes. Forgive me for any typos in my transcription. But I never. Ever. Want to forget what I read here. Thank you Cate Tedford for the miraculous gift that was this book. Thank you Brian Doyle for being unrelentingly profound in your writings.
My favorites (I wanted to underline the whole thing): Eating Dirt. First Kiss. Heartchitecture. The Creature Beyond the Mountains. Irreconncilable Dissonance. Cool Things. The Tender Next Minute. Last Prayer.
“We all churn inside.”
“We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart.”
“You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possible can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.”
“This tribe of mole is thought to be largely solitary, I read, and I want to laugh and weep, as we are all largely solitary, and spend whole lifetimes digging tunnels toward each other, do we not? And sometimes we connect, thrilled and confused, sure and unsure at once, for a time, before the family cavern empties, or one among us does not come home at all, and faintly far away we hear the sound of the shovel.”
“Let us consider silence as destination, ambition, maturity of mind, focusing device, filter, prism, compass point, necessary refuge, spiritual refreshment, touchstone, lodestar, home, natural and normal state in which let’s face it we began our existence in the warm seas of our mothers, all those months when we did not speak, and swam in the salt, and dreamed oceangoing dreams, and heard the throb and hum of mother, and the murmur and mutter of father, and the distant thrum of a million musics waiting patiently for you to be born.”
“You must trust that you being the best possible you matters somehow.”
“This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that this is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love. That could be. I wouldn’t know; I’m a muddle and a conundrum shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.”
“But I have written novels, and there are times, many times, when I think that I have done so in large part because of him and his old typewriter and the sound of his cheerful efficient staccato typing in the basement. Because he is still our hero and we love him and we want to be like him more than ever. Because maybe my novels are somehow the novels he started to write and could not finish. Perhaps somehow I have finished them for him and he startles awake and grins ruefully at his old typewriter and pads upstairs to wake the kids and I am typing these last words with my forefingers and with tears sliding slowly into my beard.”
“It is a good thing pants were invented, because without pants we could not have favorite pants, and we should, I think, occasionally pause in the river of time, and set our feet against the prevailing current, and say clearly and firmly that pants are an excellent invention, because consider the alternative, and also it should be said that slipping into your favorite pants is a subtle pleasure in the evening as you arrive home from the commercial struggle and unbuckle your corporate uniform, or on the weekend, when your pressing task for the morning is delivering a sermon on virtue to the dog.”
“There are a lot of ways to be an artist and one way is to be brilliant at saying things that don’t mean what you said.”
“I am riveted by how language is a process and not a preserve… Perhaps every one of us speaks a slightly different language even as we seem to be using the same words to one another… Perhaps languages invent themselves and then have to hunt for speakers. Perhaps all languages began from the music of insects and animals and wind through vegetative creatures. Perhaps languages began with the sound of creeks and rivers and crash of surf and whisper of tides, so that even now, eons later, when we open our mouths to speak, out comes not so much meaning and sense and reason and clarity but something of the wild world beyond understanding. Perhaps much of the reason we so often do not say what we mean to say is because we cannot; there is wild in us yet, and in every word and sentence and speech the seethe of the sea whence we came unto which we will return, which cannot be trammeled or corralled or parsed, no matter how hard we try to mean just what we say.”
“Consider that astounding journey your blood embarks upon as it enters the pumping station of your heart. In a healthy heart, a heart that works as it has been designed to work over many millions now years by its creative and curious and tireless and nameless holy wild silent engineer, blood that has been plucked and shucked of its oxygen by the body straggles back into the right atrium, the capacious gleaming lobby of the heart.”
“This circular door opes into another big room, the right ventricle, but at the very instant this ventricle is filled to capacity with tired blood the entire ventricle contracts!, slamming in on itself, and our tired heroes are sent flying through the pulmonary valve and thence into the pulmonary artery, which immediately branches, carrying the blood to the right and left lungs, and there, in the joyous airy countries of the blood vessels of the lungs, your blood is given fresh clean joyous oxygen!, gobs and slathers of it! O sweet and delicious air!…
…the four magic pulmonary rivers carrying your necessary elixir back to the looming holy castle of the heart, which they will enter this time through the left ventricle, whose job is to disperse and assign the blood to the rest of the body, to send it on its quest and voyage and journey to the vast and mysterious wilderness that is You, and to tell that tale, of the journeys of your blood cells through the universe of You, would take a billion books, each alike, each utterly different.”
“The ways that hearts falter and fail are endless. They clog and stutter. They sigh and stop.”
“We are soaked in the song of the heart every hour of every year every life long.”
“I would very much like to stop people in the street about this matter, and blast-text OMG!!!, and set up a continual river-bottom video feed in all grade schools so kids everywhere in my state will quietly mutter, Holy shit, Dad, and establish the website MassiveSturgeonVisitation.com, …”
HAHA I fucking loved this one -Lucy
“And the bigness of sturgeon here is mysteriously stitched, for me, into the character ad zest and possibility of Cascadia; there are huge things here, trees and fish and mountains and rivers and personalities and energies and ideas, and somehow the pairing of power and peace in the piscatorial is a hint of the possible in people.”
“We yearn for something with enormous gentle animals, something more than mammalian fellowship. We want some new friendship, some sort of intimate feeling for which we don’t have good words yet. Part of it is goofy wonder… Most of what we do know is that we don’t know hardly anything, which cheers me up wonderfully.”
“I go back and watch Herman for a while and consider that maybe his job is to be an agent of wonder. Maybe everyone who gapes at Herman gets a surgeon seed planted in their dreams. Maybe Herman is the one among his clan chosen to awaken the walk-uprights. Maybe he watches the people who watch him and every time a child leaps back amazed Herman silently scores another one for the good guys. Maybe he is here to grant us humility, because humility and wonder of sturgeonly shape and proportion naturally swim to wisdom.
“I have come to think that the birds are shards of faith themselves in mysterious ways. You could spend a whole life contemplating birds and never come to the end of the amazing things they do.”
“How could it be that two people who really liked each other, and who took a brave crazy leap on not just living together, which lots of mammals do, but swearing fealty and respect in front of a huge crowd, and fling taxes as a joint entity, and spawning a child, and cosigning mortgages and car loans, how could they end up signing settlement papers on the dining-room table and then wandering out into the muddy garden to cry? How could that be?”
“Good thing for ritual. How else could we say anything without saying anything? Could it be that most of w hat we say aims at something other than what we say?”
“Everyone thinks that the awful comes by itself, but it doesn’t. It comes hand in hand with the normal… The awful is inside the normal. Like normal is pregnant with awful. We know this, but we don’t talk about it.”
“He says uniforms are public pronouncements, like parades, and we should be careful about what we say in public.”
“He says most wars, maybe all wars, are about money in the end, and that when we hear the beating of war drums, we should suspect that it is really a call for market expansion.”
“Every once in a while someone you hardly know says something so piercingly honest that you want not just kneel down right there I the grocery store near the pears…”
“The other day when I asked our dog where you were, he immediately turned to the west. I found this fascinating and was going not call but this note will have to suffice. I have to go and pick up a child now. I love you, man. Send me a postcard?”
“We hardly ever talk about all the other kinds of love, which include affection and respect and reverence, and also bothering, which is rough and complicated.”
“Eventually the differences between and among you erode and dissolve and the love is left in craggy outcrops where you can sit together with your legs sprawled out.”
“We talked about how often you can see better with your soul than you ca with your eyes in some strange deep way that I cannot explain though I’ve been trying to articulate the inarticulable for a long time. We talked about how one of us promised to stay addled and thrilled by hawks as long as he lived, so that both of us would still be delighted by hawks somehow. So it is that ow, when I see a sharp-shied hawk slicing sideways through oak branches at supersonic speed in pursuit of a flitter of waxwings, my brother Kevin sees it too, though the prevailing theory is that he is dead.
Often I find myself mumbling, “O gawd did you see that?” And he mutters, “What could possibly be cooler than that?” and somehow we are still sprawled and lucky and it is almost summer and we are talking about love.”
“Surely we are made of more things than we know.”
“I don’t know how to say any words that would catch the way I love him.”
“The truest words I ever heard about divine love were uttered once by a friend as a grace before a meal. He bowed his head, in the guttering candlelight, steam rising from the food before him, the fingers of the cedar outside brushing the window, and said, ‘We are part of a Mystery we do not understand, and we are grateful.’”
“Perhaps most reports are hallucinations; perhaps all of them. But perhaps hallucinations are illuminations, and there are countless more things possible than we could ever dream. One thing I know at this age: if you think you know the boundaries and limits and extents of reality, you are a fool. Thus we pray.”
“When I am in my last hour, when I am very near death, when I am so soon to change form and travel I unaccountable ways and places, I hope I will be of sound enough mind to murmur this, to our three children, and perhaps, if the Mercy has been especially ridiculously generous, our grandchildren: it was for you that I was here, and for you I prayed every day of your life, and for you I will pray in whatever form I am next to take. Lift the rock ad I am there; cleave the wood and I am there; call for me and I will listen, for I hope to be a prayer for you and yours long after I am dust and ash.”
“It’s the moment in the lurk of the hedge that I want to sing Here for a moment.”
“But no man was ever more grateful for Your profligate generosity, and here at the very end, here in my last lines, I close my eyes and weep with joy that I was alive, and blessed beyond measure, and might well be headed back home to the incomprehensible Love from which I came, mewling, many years ago.”
Forgive me for all these quotes. Forgive me for any typos in my transcription. But I never. Ever. Want to forget what I read here. Thank you Cate Tedford for the miraculous gift that was this book. Thank you Brian Doyle for being unrelentingly profound in your writings.
My favorites (I wanted to underline the whole thing): Eating Dirt. First Kiss. Heartchitecture. The Creature Beyond the Mountains. Irreconncilable Dissonance. Cool Things. The Tender Next Minute. Last Prayer.
“We all churn inside.”
“We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart.”
“You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possible can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.”
“This tribe of mole is thought to be largely solitary, I read, and I want to laugh and weep, as we are all largely solitary, and spend whole lifetimes digging tunnels toward each other, do we not? And sometimes we connect, thrilled and confused, sure and unsure at once, for a time, before the family cavern empties, or one among us does not come home at all, and faintly far away we hear the sound of the shovel.”
“Let us consider silence as destination, ambition, maturity of mind, focusing device, filter, prism, compass point, necessary refuge, spiritual refreshment, touchstone, lodestar, home, natural and normal state in which let’s face it we began our existence in the warm seas of our mothers, all those months when we did not speak, and swam in the salt, and dreamed oceangoing dreams, and heard the throb and hum of mother, and the murmur and mutter of father, and the distant thrum of a million musics waiting patiently for you to be born.”
“You must trust that you being the best possible you matters somehow.”
“This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that this is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love. That could be. I wouldn’t know; I’m a muddle and a conundrum shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.”
“But I have written novels, and there are times, many times, when I think that I have done so in large part because of him and his old typewriter and the sound of his cheerful efficient staccato typing in the basement. Because he is still our hero and we love him and we want to be like him more than ever. Because maybe my novels are somehow the novels he started to write and could not finish. Perhaps somehow I have finished them for him and he startles awake and grins ruefully at his old typewriter and pads upstairs to wake the kids and I am typing these last words with my forefingers and with tears sliding slowly into my beard.”
“It is a good thing pants were invented, because without pants we could not have favorite pants, and we should, I think, occasionally pause in the river of time, and set our feet against the prevailing current, and say clearly and firmly that pants are an excellent invention, because consider the alternative, and also it should be said that slipping into your favorite pants is a subtle pleasure in the evening as you arrive home from the commercial struggle and unbuckle your corporate uniform, or on the weekend, when your pressing task for the morning is delivering a sermon on virtue to the dog.”
“There are a lot of ways to be an artist and one way is to be brilliant at saying things that don’t mean what you said.”
“I am riveted by how language is a process and not a preserve… Perhaps every one of us speaks a slightly different language even as we seem to be using the same words to one another… Perhaps languages invent themselves and then have to hunt for speakers. Perhaps all languages began from the music of insects and animals and wind through vegetative creatures. Perhaps languages began with the sound of creeks and rivers and crash of surf and whisper of tides, so that even now, eons later, when we open our mouths to speak, out comes not so much meaning and sense and reason and clarity but something of the wild world beyond understanding. Perhaps much of the reason we so often do not say what we mean to say is because we cannot; there is wild in us yet, and in every word and sentence and speech the seethe of the sea whence we came unto which we will return, which cannot be trammeled or corralled or parsed, no matter how hard we try to mean just what we say.”
“Consider that astounding journey your blood embarks upon as it enters the pumping station of your heart. In a healthy heart, a heart that works as it has been designed to work over many millions now years by its creative and curious and tireless and nameless holy wild silent engineer, blood that has been plucked and shucked of its oxygen by the body straggles back into the right atrium, the capacious gleaming lobby of the heart.”
“This circular door opes into another big room, the right ventricle, but at the very instant this ventricle is filled to capacity with tired blood the entire ventricle contracts!, slamming in on itself, and our tired heroes are sent flying through the pulmonary valve and thence into the pulmonary artery, which immediately branches, carrying the blood to the right and left lungs, and there, in the joyous airy countries of the blood vessels of the lungs, your blood is given fresh clean joyous oxygen!, gobs and slathers of it! O sweet and delicious air!…
…the four magic pulmonary rivers carrying your necessary elixir back to the looming holy castle of the heart, which they will enter this time through the left ventricle, whose job is to disperse and assign the blood to the rest of the body, to send it on its quest and voyage and journey to the vast and mysterious wilderness that is You, and to tell that tale, of the journeys of your blood cells through the universe of You, would take a billion books, each alike, each utterly different.”
“The ways that hearts falter and fail are endless. They clog and stutter. They sigh and stop.”
“We are soaked in the song of the heart every hour of every year every life long.”
“I would very much like to stop people in the street about this matter, and blast-text OMG!!!, and set up a continual river-bottom video feed in all grade schools so kids everywhere in my state will quietly mutter, Holy shit, Dad, and establish the website MassiveSturgeonVisitation.com, …”
HAHA I fucking loved this one -Lucy
“And the bigness of sturgeon here is mysteriously stitched, for me, into the character ad zest and possibility of Cascadia; there are huge things here, trees and fish and mountains and rivers and personalities and energies and ideas, and somehow the pairing of power and peace in the piscatorial is a hint of the possible in people.”
“We yearn for something with enormous gentle animals, something more than mammalian fellowship. We want some new friendship, some sort of intimate feeling for which we don’t have good words yet. Part of it is goofy wonder… Most of what we do know is that we don’t know hardly anything, which cheers me up wonderfully.”
“I go back and watch Herman for a while and consider that maybe his job is to be an agent of wonder. Maybe everyone who gapes at Herman gets a surgeon seed planted in their dreams. Maybe Herman is the one among his clan chosen to awaken the walk-uprights. Maybe he watches the people who watch him and every time a child leaps back amazed Herman silently scores another one for the good guys. Maybe he is here to grant us humility, because humility and wonder of sturgeonly shape and proportion naturally swim to wisdom.
“I have come to think that the birds are shards of faith themselves in mysterious ways. You could spend a whole life contemplating birds and never come to the end of the amazing things they do.”
“How could it be that two people who really liked each other, and who took a brave crazy leap on not just living together, which lots of mammals do, but swearing fealty and respect in front of a huge crowd, and fling taxes as a joint entity, and spawning a child, and cosigning mortgages and car loans, how could they end up signing settlement papers on the dining-room table and then wandering out into the muddy garden to cry? How could that be?”
“Good thing for ritual. How else could we say anything without saying anything? Could it be that most of w hat we say aims at something other than what we say?”
“Everyone thinks that the awful comes by itself, but it doesn’t. It comes hand in hand with the normal… The awful is inside the normal. Like normal is pregnant with awful. We know this, but we don’t talk about it.”
“He says uniforms are public pronouncements, like parades, and we should be careful about what we say in public.”
“He says most wars, maybe all wars, are about money in the end, and that when we hear the beating of war drums, we should suspect that it is really a call for market expansion.”
“Every once in a while someone you hardly know says something so piercingly honest that you want not just kneel down right there I the grocery store near the pears…”
“The other day when I asked our dog where you were, he immediately turned to the west. I found this fascinating and was going not call but this note will have to suffice. I have to go and pick up a child now. I love you, man. Send me a postcard?”
“We hardly ever talk about all the other kinds of love, which include affection and respect and reverence, and also bothering, which is rough and complicated.”
“Eventually the differences between and among you erode and dissolve and the love is left in craggy outcrops where you can sit together with your legs sprawled out.”
“We talked about how often you can see better with your soul than you ca with your eyes in some strange deep way that I cannot explain though I’ve been trying to articulate the inarticulable for a long time. We talked about how one of us promised to stay addled and thrilled by hawks as long as he lived, so that both of us would still be delighted by hawks somehow. So it is that ow, when I see a sharp-shied hawk slicing sideways through oak branches at supersonic speed in pursuit of a flitter of waxwings, my brother Kevin sees it too, though the prevailing theory is that he is dead.
Often I find myself mumbling, “O gawd did you see that?” And he mutters, “What could possibly be cooler than that?” and somehow we are still sprawled and lucky and it is almost summer and we are talking about love.”
“Surely we are made of more things than we know.”
“I don’t know how to say any words that would catch the way I love him.”
“The truest words I ever heard about divine love were uttered once by a friend as a grace before a meal. He bowed his head, in the guttering candlelight, steam rising from the food before him, the fingers of the cedar outside brushing the window, and said, ‘We are part of a Mystery we do not understand, and we are grateful.’”
“Perhaps most reports are hallucinations; perhaps all of them. But perhaps hallucinations are illuminations, and there are countless more things possible than we could ever dream. One thing I know at this age: if you think you know the boundaries and limits and extents of reality, you are a fool. Thus we pray.”
“When I am in my last hour, when I am very near death, when I am so soon to change form and travel I unaccountable ways and places, I hope I will be of sound enough mind to murmur this, to our three children, and perhaps, if the Mercy has been especially ridiculously generous, our grandchildren: it was for you that I was here, and for you I prayed every day of your life, and for you I will pray in whatever form I am next to take. Lift the rock ad I am there; cleave the wood and I am there; call for me and I will listen, for I hope to be a prayer for you and yours long after I am dust and ash.”
“It’s the moment in the lurk of the hedge that I want to sing Here for a moment.”
“But no man was ever more grateful for Your profligate generosity, and here at the very end, here in my last lines, I close my eyes and weep with joy that I was alive, and blessed beyond measure, and might well be headed back home to the incomprehensible Love from which I came, mewling, many years ago.”
September 6, 2019
This is a beautiful book. One that I will read over and over.
Brian relishes in the wonder and beauty of everyday things. He find simple things, examines them fully and relates them to us as beautiful moments.
I read Brian's devotions in Guideposts through the years and always enjoyed them. I am happy to have his thoughts now where I can go back and reread and ponder.
I received a complimentary copy from the NetGalley but the opinions and review are entirely my own.
Brian relishes in the wonder and beauty of everyday things. He find simple things, examines them fully and relates them to us as beautiful moments.
I read Brian's devotions in Guideposts through the years and always enjoyed them. I am happy to have his thoughts now where I can go back and reread and ponder.
I received a complimentary copy from the NetGalley but the opinions and review are entirely my own.
July 18, 2021
An interesting mix of pieces from throughout Doyle's career -- from op-ed pieces to creative nonfiction essays about parenting -- which are always engaging, even if you don't agree with Doyle's views. His writings about God, nature and how divine presence appears throughout creation are particularly effective.
April 18, 2021
Absolutely beautiful. Gorgeous. Profound. Pages are jewels to slowly savor and treasure.
I’m left with a deep sadness that Brian Doyle no longer walks among us. This collection of disparate essays stirs the heart with both laughter and tears while also stimulating your soul. It’s a soothing salve.
I’m left with a deep sadness that Brian Doyle no longer walks among us. This collection of disparate essays stirs the heart with both laughter and tears while also stimulating your soul. It’s a soothing salve.
January 9, 2022
Perfection. No review could ever do this prayer of a book justice.
“Look, I know very well that brooding misshapen evil is everywhere, in the brightest houses and the most cheerful denials, in what we do and what we have failed to do, and I know all too well that the story of the world is entropy, things fly apart, we sicken, we fail, we grow weary, we divorce, we are hammered and hounded by loss and accidents and tragedies. But I also know, with all my hoary muddled heart, that we are carved of immense confusing holiness; that the whole point for us is grace under duress; and that you either take a flying leap at nonsensical illogical unreasonable ideas like marriage and marathons and democracy and divinity, or you huddle behind the wall.”
“Look, I know very well that brooding misshapen evil is everywhere, in the brightest houses and the most cheerful denials, in what we do and what we have failed to do, and I know all too well that the story of the world is entropy, things fly apart, we sicken, we fail, we grow weary, we divorce, we are hammered and hounded by loss and accidents and tragedies. But I also know, with all my hoary muddled heart, that we are carved of immense confusing holiness; that the whole point for us is grace under duress; and that you either take a flying leap at nonsensical illogical unreasonable ideas like marriage and marathons and democracy and divinity, or you huddle behind the wall.”
January 27, 2023
This is an outstanding collection of brief essays. Doyle succinctly captures moments in his life that, to some, may not seem worthy of describing. He takes these moments and describes them in a literary yet highly relatable manner. Be prepared for your emotions to go every which way; you just might find yourself laughing and crying within the same two-page essay.
June 4, 2022
Holy cow. One of my favorite books ever. So beautiful. I don’t know what else to say I just loved it so much.
October 14, 2022
A really amazing collection of thoughts on the world and the soul that are ours and that we share.
"We are part of a Mystery we do not understand, and we are grateful."
"We are part of a Mystery we do not understand, and we are grateful."
July 1, 2020
“Something is opening in me, some new eye. I talk less and listen more. Stories wash over me all day like tides. I walk through the bright wet streets and every moment a story comes to me, people hold them out like sweet children, and I hold them squirming and holy in my arms and they enter my heart for a while, and season and salt sweeten that old halting engine and teach me humility and mercy, the only lessons that matter, the lessons of the language I most wish to learn; a tongue best spoken without a word, without a sound, hands clasped, heart naked as a baby.”
“But you cannot control everything...All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference...You must trust that you being the best possible you matters somehow...That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will prevent a thread or two of the social fabric from unraveling.”
“Not to mention they (raptors) look cool, they are seriously large, they have muscles on their muscles, they are stone-cold efficient hunters with built-in-butchery tools, and all of them have this stern I could kick your ass but I'm busy look, which took me years to discover was not a general simmer of surliness but a result of the supraorbital ridge protecting their eyes.”
Brian Doyle is a Canadian writer of novels, essays and short stories. He died in 2017 of brain cancer, at the age of 60. This is an excellent collection of his essays, released in 2019. He has a knack for finding the joys in life – a stroll in the woods, birding his favorite patch, a deep discussion with a good friend, watching the wonder of his children at play. He also had a strong spiritual side as well and a couple of these pieces explore the solace he finds there. If you are looking for something uplifting during these dark times, give this terrific book a try. 4.5 stars
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