Reading In Bed
If you love to read, or write, or both, you’ll appreciate Brain Doyle—passionate observer of and commentator on all things written. In this ultimate collection of his thoughts on writers and writing and readers and reading, he covered everything from what the books people keep stashed in the cars or sitting on their bookshelves tell you about them, to the pleasures of reading box scores or what’s hung on refrigerator doors, to the scent that books and newspapers give off as they age, to literary genres of books about nature or travel or Portland or almost any subject you can name, to (in his humble opinion) the great and not-so-great-but-still-essential writers, to why the essay is the coolest wildest literary form of all. But don’t believe us, listen to him: “Think how many times in your own work you were typing along happily, cursing and humming, and suddenly you wrote something you didn’t know you felt so powerfully, and maybe you cried right there by the old typewriter, and marveled, not always happily, at what dark thread your typing had pulled from the mysterious fabric of your heart. Maybe that happens the most with essays. This could be.”
Brian Doyle
Brian Doyle is a hirsute shambling shuffling mumbling grumbling muttering muddled maundering meandering male being who edits Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon – the best university magazine in America, according to Newsweek, and "the best spiritual magazine in the country," according to author Annie Dillard, clearly a woman of surpassing taste and discernment. Doyle is the author of many books, among them: five collections of essays, two nonfiction books (The Grail, about a year in an Oregon vineyard, and The Wet Engine, about the "muddles& musics of the heart"), and two collections of "proems," most recently Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices. His novel Mink River will be published in October of 2010 by Oregon State University Press. Doyle’s books have four times been finalists for the Oregon Book Award, and his essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion, The American Scholar, and in newspapers and magazines around the world. His essays have also been reprinted in the annual Best American Essays, Best American Science& Nature Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. Among various honors for his work is a Catholic Book Award, two Pushcart Prizes, and, mysteriously, a 2008 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His greatest accomplishments are that a riveting woman said yup when he mumbled a marriage proposal, that the Coherent Mercy then sent them three lanky snotty sneery testy sweet brilliant nutty muttering children in skin boats from the sea of the stars, and that he made the all-star team in a Boston men’s basketball league that was a really tough league, guys drove the lane in that league they lost fingers, man, one time a guy drove to the basket and got hit so hard his right arm fell off but he was lefty and hit both free throws, so there you go.
