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When Brian Doyle died of brain cancer at the age of sixty, he left behind dozens of books -- fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of essays -- and a cult-like following who regarded his writing on spirituality as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Though Doyle occasionally wrote about Catholic spirituality, his writing is more broadly about the religion of everyday things. He writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the holiness of small things, and about love in all its forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, friendly love, love of nature, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon. At a time when our world feels darker than ever, Doyle's essays are a balm for the tired soul. He finds beauty in the quotidian: the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, the whiskers a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every day -- but through his eyes, nothing is ordinary. David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the collection: "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to the glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size or renown, and brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." In a time when wonder seems to be in short supply, Your One Wild and Precious Life, Doyle and Duncan invite readers to experience it in the most ordinary of moments, and allow themselves joy in the smallest of things.
When Brian Doyle died of brain cancer at the age of sixty, he left behind dozens of books -- fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of essays -- and a cult-like following who regarded his writing on spirituality as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Though Doyle occasionally wrote about Catholic spirituality, his writing is more broadly about the religion of everyday things. He writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the holiness of small things, and about love in all its forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, friendly love, love of nature, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon. At a time when our world feels darker than ever, Doyle's essays are a balm for the tired soul. He finds beauty in the quotidian: the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, the whiskers a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every day -- but through his eyes, nothing is ordinary. David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the collection: "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to the glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size or renown, and brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." In a time when wonder seems to be in short supply, Your One Wild and Precious Life, Doyle and Duncan invite readers to experience it in the most ordinary of moments, and allow themselves joy in the smallest of things.
Brian Doyle (1956-2017) was born in New York and attended the University of Notre Dame. He worked at U.S. Catholic Magazine, Boston College Magazine and, up until his death, was the editor of Portland Magazine. He wrote a number of novels and works of nonfiction, and his essays appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Orion, American Scholar, America Magazine, and many more. He won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the 2017 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, the Oregon Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, among others, and had multiple essays included in Best American Essays.
"One Long River of Song celebrates life in all its iterations.
Remarkable for their kindness and intelligence, their humanity and
humor, these essays are a thoughtful antidote for the cheap
cynicism present in so much of the media we consume."--Ann Cannon,
Salt Lake Tribune
"A final collection of Doyle's lyrical, sometimes mystical pieces
about life and its gifts. Doyle often used his Catholicism to
explore the human and natural worlds, but this is perhaps the most
generous, universal 'religious writing' you'll ever
read."--Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post
"A generous, posthumous collection [with] the rhythm of poems and
the lyricism of songs...infused with qualities of spirit, goodness,
and grace. Doyle was a wonderful stylist...he is generous, almost
profligate in filling his work with [love]...readers will be
equally grateful for this lovely book and its beautiful
contents."--Michael Cart, Booklist (starred review)
"A posthumous collection of stunning mystical prose...Doyle's prose
is so expansive and dripping with visceral detail that even the
briefest vignettes are often a wondrous adventure. This brilliant
compendium of spiritual musings will resonate with people of any
faith--or of none."--Kirkus (starred review)
"A wonder-filled book... Doyle's essays often wriggle with wild
miracles... Doyle's greatest gift may be the quiet wisdom that
grows out of his senses of humor and humility and gratitude...
Reading this collection of essays will awaken readers to the
everyday wonders of saying yes."--Tom Montgomery Fate, The
Christian Century
"An excellent, thought-provoking collection of essays that is
likely to make you run out and pick up anything else he's
written."--Ray Walsh, Lansing State Journal
"Astonishing... gorgeous... Doyle was a writer 'made of love and
song and amusement.' Every living thing intrigued him and was
worthy of his powerful capacity for study and his equally powerful
capacity for celebration."--Margaret Renkl, New York Times
"Both ecstatic and sober...This posthumous collection dances on the
edge of mortality, tossing out exaltations and questions, and
offering a fresh, playful, slant on spiritual writing...a
celebration of life, love, and waking each day."--Jane Ciabattari,
BBC
"Brian Doyle took on the everyday and he suffused it, every last
drop of it, with a redefining soulfulness... This posthumous
collection will leave you marveling and wiping away the occasional
tear. Certainly you will spill ink on its pages---starring and
underlining, sprinkling exclamations up and down the margins...
Over and over, Doyle's musings are canticles of joy, punctuated
with occasional double-shots of heartbreak and humility. It's the
textured layering, the leap from shadow to light, that keeps the
reader alert, and ever absorbing. Always, emphatically, there comes
wisdom; it's a signature move, one you can count on. Have your pens
aimed and ready. It's a gospel of the ordinary, the shoved-aside,
the otherwise overlooked. And at the heart of it, that ineffable
and necessary unction, a holiness you can all but hold in your
palms."--Barbara Mahany, Chicago Tribune
"Brian's glowing essays create a vision of what a good person might
be, what a good life surely is, a larger story of the
transformative power of joyful gratitude."--Kathleen Dean Moore,
Orion Magazine
"Dazzling... Doyle's writing bursts with vivid descriptions...a
renewed opportunity for more readers to discover the insight and
humanity of his work...Doyle's brand of theology will appeal to
fans of the work of writers like Anne Lamott...readers fortunate
enough to discover the many pleasures of Brian Doyle's work here
will be grateful, too, for that encounter."--Harvey Freedenberg,
Shelf Awareness
"Doyle's curiosity is insatiable and his self-described
Celtic-mystic disposition spots the transcendent regularly. As much
haunted by the language of James Joyce as the lessons of Jesus,
Doyle sees and celebrates what happens every day in each essay of
this eclectic collection. This 'best-of' should enlarge his circle
of admirers."--Publishers Weekly
"The essays in One Long River of Song are truly staggering--as
close as stones in our palms, and as vast as the sky. Brian Doyle's
voice is full of tender pivots, keen wit, and startling joy,
summoning all of us to pay more passionate attention to the
world."--Leslie Jamison, author of the New York Times bestsellers
TheEmpathy Exams and The Recovering
"The first pleasure of reading Doyle lies in being swept away by
the deft melding of his two most distinctive qualities, his
sentences and his sensibility. How he loved sentences. And how he
loved the world. Form and content never fit more hand in glove...I
don't know a writer who more reliably or with such seeming ease
plucks genuine epiphanies fresh from the ether. The ubiquity of
these is testament to Doyle's craft or, perhaps, the quality of his
attention...One Long River of Song demonstrates what Doyle's
writing has always demonstrated, that when you find the courage to
pay attention and be open to love, you can trust that 'doing your
chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far
beyond your ken.'"--Scott F. Parker, The Oregonian
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