| Title | : | Grace Notes: True stories about sins, sons, shrines, marriage... |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0879464348 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780879464349 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 152 |
| Publication | : | First published September 1, 2011 |
Grace Notes: True stories about sins, sons, shrines, marriage... Reviews
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Brian Doyle confronts the devastation and the mystery and the abundance that is life in his writing unlike anyone else I’ve read. His writing is precise and accessible and honest and so profound. Doyle’s words have held me and set me free. I return to his writing over and over—each time offering something new—gifts of comfort, joy, peace, a new pair of glasses… I am forever by touched Doyle’s brilliance and wit. Thank god!!!!
“I rise earlier and earlier in these years. I don't know why. Age, sadness, a willingness to epiphany. 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 to me 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 and 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, with your hands clasped in prayer and your heart as naked as a baby.”
“As usual I set out to tell stories and sing prayers and tell jokes and draw tears and foment cheerful chaos and try to connect at some deep inexplicable level that I don't understand and can't explain that has everything to do with laughing and weeping which are of course extraordinary forms of prayer, and as usual I was granted more epiphany and delight than I could have ever delivered, which happens to me all the time, which is one of the reasons I feel like the richest man on earth…”
“The words we have are so thin. Life, soul, the miraculous energy that drives bone and meat toward love and light, the electric prayer of her, the hymn of him: gone.
But not gone. Is there a wilder, crazier, truer belief than that? And if life is a miraculous opening, why cannot death be a miraculous opening also?”
“You think we have words for this sort of thing but we do not. All we can do is witness and report and hope that somehow stories turn into prayers. All we can do is drape words on experience, and hope the
words give some hint of the shape of the moment, and pray that our attentiveness matters in a way we will never know. I believe, with all my heart, that it does. What do you believe?”
“You who know full well, in the bone of your soul, that power that doesn't work for the powerless is only flash and glitter, vanity and chaff, a hall of mirrors for staring endlessly and uselessly at yourself; which is a — good definition of hell.” -
Nobody writes like Doyle. Nobody. I used to wonder if there were still writers who would flip me on my head the way Duncan, Dillard, and Vonnegut did when I first encountered them. I wondered if you had to be 17-21 to feel that rush. I don't wonder about that anymore.
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So here’s where I try to “review” this collection of Brian Doyle essays. These essays are sharp, roomy, poignant, commonplace, apt, wild, grandfatherly, cool, funny, woolly, eye-opening, eye-closing, hysterical, familiar, tickling. Please indulge my attempt at a Brian Doyle–esque exercise.
I was genuinely moved by this collection. I had little tiny post-its to mark the essays and lines that I particularly liked…and then I realized that just about every other essay was marked. Hardly a useful exercise. I should just put a regular size Post-it on the front that says “really good stuff.” Anyways. Brian Doyle has a way of writing ideas that seemed so familiar and so fresh at the same time. I could hardly choose a favorite line, but here’s a really good passage:
"I believe with all my hoary heart that stories save lives, and the telling and hearing of them is a holy thing, powerful far beyond our ken, sacramental, crucial, nutritious; without the sea of stories in which we swim we would wither and die; we are here for each other, to touch and be touched, to lose our tempers and beg forgiveness, to listen and to tell, to hail and farewell, to laugh and to snarl, to use words as knives and caresses, to puncture lies and to heal what is broken." (p. 145)
Don’t you feel that? I read that and thought, I feel that way and I have my whole life, but I’ve never been able to put it into words quite like that. Brian Doyle’s language isn’t hard to read or understand, but it’s beautiful and hard to ignore. To put it in his own terminology, Brian Doyle’s writing understands “the power of powerlessness.” And that’s why his insights were so… I don’t know? I don’t want to say life-changing, but refreshing and thought-provoking might describe what I’m feeling.
And it just doesn’t hurt that he quotes my favorite, Mary Oliver. He loves her just as much as I do. And I have a feeling that this volume will sit next to hers on the bookshelf, and when I pull hers down to read a poem or two at night, his will come down after.
I recommend this book to everyone. -
I'm surprised to say that this was the worst book I've ever (tried to) read. I've read some pretty bad books in my day, but they almost always have one or two redeeming qualities, and I'm not one to give up on a book without finishing. This is the first exception.
I simply could not bring myself to keep reading this. I found Doyle's writing style to be unnecessarily complicated, and I had to stop and study almost every sentence one by one. After investing all of that work, I was disheartened to realize that he was essentially saying the same thing over and over in ridiculously verbose language. I pushed myself through the first few pieces, but I just couldn't keep going. Perhaps I missed some worthwhile gems later in the book, but if so, I question the editing.
I was honestly surprised to learn that Doyle is a regular columnist. His writing reminded me of the sermons of a small-town clergyman, repeating his message over and over in different language, so that even if you doze off for ten minutes, you don't really miss anything. Unfortunately, if you actually stop and pay attention to the entirety, the insight of the message falls far short of the effort invested in repeating it. -
A book of short essays by Catholic writer Brian Doyle. These were my favorites, in descending order:
1) "A Note On Pornography"
2) "A Child Is Not a Furniture"
3) "The Next Eleven Minutes"
4) "Rec League"
5) "On Miraculousness" -
Brian Doyle's writing never ceases to move me profoundly. He speaks honestly, in a deeply sacramental and incarnational way. Reading his writing consistently has honestly changed the way I look at the world. His writing is also deeply spiritually integrated within the Pacific Northwest, encouraging us to pay close attention to the presence of the sacred in all the components of our life.
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I loved the fiction books written by this author and was delighted to learn of all of the non-fiction ones he had also written. This is the first one I’ve read and used as part of my morning time of devotional readings. Brian Doyle is all the things I most delight in when it comes to authors. He is relevant, funny, observant, honest, lyrical, and powerfully subtle when it comes to making the real point he has in mind. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading other collections of his essays.
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This is a beautiful book of essays. I love how he makes the chaotic and mundane things in life seem joyful. I appreciate his focus on the importance and beauty and confusion of raising kids and being married. I cried and laughed in almost every essay.
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Brian Doyle is one of my new favorite authors. His books make me laugh and cry and deeply move me.
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37 short stories or essays. Each points out that every day we meet the wonderful, the amazing, the inexplicable, the miraculous. But most of us, especially me, don't notice or care about these ridiculous gifts.
" 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 fail to do, and I know all to 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." YES. THERE IS ALWAYS REASON FOR HOPE. -
How can I do an unbiased review when Brian Doyle is one of my literary heroes and when he’s currently fighting a malignant brain tumor? I can’t. I love this book, which is full of little stories, philosophy, prose poetry, and faith. I love the cover, I love the stories, I love the gratitude that he includes in his acknowledgements. Do I occasionally wish he would write shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs so a reader could catch a breath? Yes. Do I wonder how come he can publish these utterly noncommercial musings while nobody wants to publish mine? Yes. But that does not take away from the fact that Doyle is an incredible artist, whether he’s writing essays, poetry or novels, and I love this book. Give it a read. Take your time. Savor each piece. Take a little of Doyle’s grace into your heart.
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Summer bingo-With an Ugly Cover-The toad on the cover might be considered ugly, but I think Brian Doyle's essays are lovely and look forward to poring over this collection.
I found that I couldn't rush reading this collection of essays, I needed to sit still for a while after reading each one. I couldn't choose a favorite, they were all wonderful. -
I loved this collection of short essays and its breadth of subject matter. Doyle is the master of the adjective-riddled run-on sentence, and he can get away with so much by virtue of the sheer genius of his writing.
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Doyle writes like no other. His run-on sentences and jagged style takes some getting used to. I love it. These essays cover marriage and basketball, prayer and bullets. Jump right in.
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This collection of poem-essays is purely beautiful. It got into my heart.
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Sublimely down to earth. When he says the Virgin Mary spoke to him once, I believe it.
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My favorite genre is short stories. What I love about short stories is that I can read a complete stories in short bursts of time, e.i., bus, train, waiting at the doctor's, etc. One of my favorite authors is Brian Doyle. He writes short, short stories. They are like blog posts. Some short stories (not Brian Doyle's) are really novellas. Grace Notes and A Sense of Wonder, are two books Brian Doyle demonstrates exactly what I am describing .
A Sense of Wonder edited by Doyle has thirty-six writers. If you don't care for one story, skip it and go to another. This is a book of other people's writing.
Grace Notes is all Doyle's writing. I think I read them all. My favorite story was "On Miraculousness." Yes I know it's misspelled and/or it may not even be a word, however it works. This is typical of Doyle.
My favorite story in A sense of Wonder is David James Duncan's "An Elevator in Utah." Duncan's descriptions of feelings are on-target. I identified and loved his reactions to the little girls.
In conclusion, forget the recommended "beach reads." They're too big. Summer for me is too busy to settle into a big book. Big books are for winter blizzards. Summer reads are for short stories. So look up Brian Doyle, and enjoy. You can thank me via goodread's comments. -
I wanted to love Doyle's collection (he came to JBU in 2012 for Giving Voice and is now deceased), but at times his attempt at a self-consciously clever, Joycean style irked me to no end. I don't agree with his "all religions are basically the same" approach to faith, either. On the other hand, some of the essays made me emotional, especially the ones about children and failing at parenting. Sigh.
Here are the titles I liked, starting with my favorite:
"Rec League"
"[Silence]"
"A Child is not a furniture"
"A Sin"
"All Legs & Curiosity"
"The You of You" (stupid title, heart-rending theme)
"The Order in which people are admitted to Heaven" (funny)
"Journal: Ash Street"
"The Knock"
"Six Women"
"Litany of the Blessed Mother"
Please do not be offended, Catholic reader of this review, but Doyle's vision of hearing Mother Mary's voice saying "Let it go" prompted a vision of Frozen Elsa singing for this Protestant. While describing the essay to my husband, he remarked, "Let it Be?" and then sang the Beatles song. We are hopeless, I know. -
Brian Doyle was the editor of the University of Portland alumni magazine when I was editor at Dartmouth. I had no idea that this talented magazine editor was one of the finest spiritual writers alive. He died in 2017, before I read this beautiful book of short essays.
Brian wrote as a deeply faithful Roman Catholic. But this book should be read even more by the rest of us, who could use a few sermons in their lives. His essays read like sermons, in a good way. They're all beautiful, all moving, often funny, and each of his stories contains a palatable moral.
One of the last essays, "Your Final Exam," begins with one question about a particle emission. The question: "What is the distance that the particle travels through the barrier?" Brian gives a host of answers, but this one is my favorite: "The distance between the words I and I do on your wedding day." That's the epitome of Brian Doyle's writing.
Oh, how I wish that I had known Brian as more than a warm, friendly, talented editor. How I wish, for entirely selfish reasons, that he was alive today. -
“I am a storycatcher, charged with finding stories that matter, stories about who we are at our best, who we might be still, because without stories we are only mammals with weapons. I am here to point at shards of holiness. That’s all. That’s enough.”
I’ll say it again and again - I adore Brian Doyle. His flash nonfiction pieces make me slow down and see my everyday moments as holy and unique gifts. I love his novels, too. The world lost an amazing storycatcher too soon, but thank the Lord that Doyle used his gifts: carving stories into arrows... “and [firing] them into the hearts of as many people as [he could] reach on this bruised and blessed planet.” These arrows of furious hope have reached me. -
Doyle does it again. The man never ceases to amaze me with his words, which always probe at deep truths stitched on every human heart. Favorite essays from their collection include: A Sin, Advice To My Son, The Senator, A Child is not a Furniture, A Note on Pornography, Irreconcilable Dissonance, The Terrible Brilliance, and a Note on Power.
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Reading this made me sad all over again that I live in a world missing Brian Doyle. I cried (multiple times) and I laughed and felt grateful to be part of this mess of humanity. His writing is always magic.
Also, to whoever I lent my copy of A Book of Uncommon Prayer - if you're reading this, can I get it back :) ? -
Beautiful in a way that I can't describe. I don't know the words. I sense that what Brian Doyle is writing is deeply meaningful and important, but in my first read-through I've barely scratched the surface.
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Grace Notes is a wonderfully written collection of essays / short stories on various semi random ponderings on faith. My take away reminder was his summation that his life has been about learning that he was sent here not to be loved, but to love.
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Only Brian Doyle can render these pedestrian moments with musicality and honesty in his trademark hard-to-catch-a-breath-long sentence structures which complicate and connect his apparent subjects. Collectively, these essays sing of the human spirit. I love this humble book.
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I already knew that I loved Brain Doyle before picking up this collection of essays. Some made me laugh and some made me cry, but most of the essays moved me in some way. My favorite is " Cool Things" I will be keeping this book for when I need too feel the emotion of it.
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I would rate this about a 2.5. I love the words of wisdom he has, but his writing style isn't very engaging. These are the ideas we need to promulgate in our society. I recommend this for 14 and up.
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I miss you sir. I struggle with some of your thoughts related to Catholicism and conservativism. But as you stated in your last essay- you are a storyteller. I believe a world class one--who has written some of the most beautiful words I have ever read. I would read your grocery list.
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I love Brian Doyle's writing, his subject matter and style. This one fell a little short for me, maybe because I so much loved his One Long River of Song, and was expecting more brilliance. Still am glad I bought and read this.
