| Title | : | One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder for the Spiritual and Nonspiritual Alike |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0316492892 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780316492898 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 250 |
| Publication | : | First published December 3, 2019 |
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, One Long River of Song, Doyle and Duncan invite readers to experience it in the most ordinary of moments, and allow themselves joy in the smallest of things.
One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder for the Spiritual and Nonspiritual Alike Reviews
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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. -
First 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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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.
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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.
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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.
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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... -
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.
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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. -
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? -
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. -
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. -
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."
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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’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? -
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 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. -
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. -
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. -
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.
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Holy cow. One of my favorite books ever. So beautiful. I don’t know what else to say I just loved it so much.
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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." -
“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 -
I was aware of this book being in process long before it finally appeared, as friends were involved in its collecting, publishing, etc. I have been fortunate to be asked to read from it in public on two occasions, with a third pending. All this is a way of saying I feel closer to it than I do most books, as if engaging with work from a close friend even though I never met Brian Doyle in any context other than his writing.
It is a beautiful book. Doyle's essays are heartwarming, funny, gorgeous, and gut wrenching. That it is finding a growing audience well beyond any his nonfiction previously reached (as described by David James Duncan in his heartfelt introduction) is exactly what the folks putting it together had aimed for. I can't say enough good things about this collection and I hope many more people take a look at it. If you need more love in your life with everything that is happening in the world, this is for you. -
There’s a lot to say about an absolutely breathtaking writer like Brian Doyle, so I will try to keep it concise: these are the essays you carry with you for the rest of your life, that make you rethink how you see something as simple as a bird or how you hear a sound (or silence).
Remarkably funny at times, he has an amazing way of evoking spirituality and thoughtfulness in a way that isn’t pushy, but just brings you to the point of asking important questions about your own faith. Some of my favorite moments are when he writes about his life as a father, as a son, and as a brother to show that you don’t need melodrama or tragedy to evoke emotions, but rather you need to direct attention the little details that fill life with it’s unexpected richness.
Favorite essays: “His Last Game”, “Irreconcilable Dissonance”, “Joyas Voladoras”, “Meteorites”, and “Two on Two” -
One of the best essay collections I’ve ever read. Doyle is life-affirming and hopeful. He writes about family, faith, death, tragedy, nature, and childhood. His thoughtful optimism inspires me to try to be the same.
