by Brian Doyle
His books will always be in libraries here, and his masterpiece Garden of the Brave in War will always be in print in America, I suspect; but the salt and song of the man himself, the ocean of his smile, the seethe of his stories, the whip of his wit, the lilt of his laugh, the sheer Portlandishness of the man, the depth of his love for his city and his state — that is dissolving, even as the limping vessel that held his spirit also dissolves into the soil of his beloved Iran, where his ashes are buried. There’s a memorial to him in Portland, in the Peace Plaza on his beloved Park Blocks, but the better memorial, especially now as America and Iran brandish sticks at each other, is to read Garden of the Brave in War, and to laugh whenever you find a reason to today; consider it a gesture of respect and affection for Terry, a great and wondrous Oregonian.
The Secretary to the Famous Author Answers the Morning Mail
Sir: We are in receipt of your invitation to Himself to deliver a talk, but I report sadly that I have been instructed to decline politely, with the usual folderol. I believe he means the usual excuse that he prefers to retain what brief time he has left on this mortal coil for his own work, what little there has been of it in recent years, but he might have meant that he is exhausted creatively, inasmuch as there are no more plots to crib from obscure authors, or that he prefers to spend his time dallying with Miss deWitt instead of sitting his butt in the chair and working at the craft he has so often abused in dismaying and disturbing fashion. I am, sir, and etc.
Sir: We are in receipt of your invitation for a cruise on the South Seas during which His duties would be essentially to offer light banter and the occasional authoritative issuance of insufferable and uninformed opinion about the State of Literature Today. I can assure you of his facility to accomplish the latter but I would be reluctant to assure you similarly of the former. I am, sir, and etc.
Madame: We are in receipt of your invitation for Himself to deliver an unctuous address to the Friends of Cats at their annual Clawathon event. I am instructed to decline for whatever reasons I can invent without ado, so I will note that cats are the spawn of Satan and the best argument for unregulated handguns. I anticipate your objection, madame, but I must insist from experience that heavier-bore weapons are not suitable for suburban use. I am, madame, and etc.
Madame: We are in receipt of your invitation for Himself to participate in a panel of learned authors commenting on something having to do with paleontology or pornography, your handwriting not being of the highest order, but I am instructed to decline your most thoughtful offer, unless it is the latter, in which case tell us more. I am, madame, and etc.
Sir: We are in receipt of your awesome invitation for the surfing event, and, like, decline. Thank you for the sand from the beaches of Mars. I can say without fear of contradiction that we have never received such a gift before.
Madame: I assure you that Himself is actually a fervent supporter of the cribbage community in its endless battle against the evil empire of the chess players; no man on earth thinks more highly of your brave and stalwart struggle. But he is by chance absolutely committed to something or other to be determined on the date you mentioned, and could not possibly untangle himself from the wilderness of Miss deWitt.
Sir: We are in receipt of your hilarious invitation for Himself to travel, at his expense, across the nation, to seek lodging, at his expense, and sufficiently fortify himself, at his expense, so as to be able to offer a brief public talk, prepared at his expense, for the benefit of your shadowy organization, which, as far as I can tell from the chaos of material you enclosed, would be selling incredibly expensive tickets for the event, the proceeds of which would be beneficial apparently only to you, no evidence of other employees, trustees, or interested parties being discoverable in any of the material you enclosed, not to mention the fact that your organization is not listed anywhere as legal, legitimate, or in fact extant except in the remarkable corridors of your febrile imagination. I am instructed to say yes and make arrangements for Miss deWitt to accompany Him on the journey. I am, sir, and etc.
Madame: We are in receipt of your courteous invitation for Himself to be a visiting scholar for a year at your estimable institution. I can assure you, madame, that the very concept of Himself making anything but a roaring hash of teaching the young, trying to at least achieve a modicum of civility in committee meetings without foaming at the mouth and trying to grope his neighbors, pretending to responsible management of budget and stipend, remembering to wear pants in public, attempting to rise before noon without infusions of coffee laced with whiskey, refraining from urinating from the campus towers, refraining from using squirrels in trebuchets, muting his usual lewd and lascivious language, or, in fact, answering his own mail, is beyond the reach of imagination as constituted in our species to date. One can only hope for evolution’s pace to improve as the years trundle on, their tails dragging slightly in the new-fallen snow.
The Christmas Letter
Greetings and salutations! A quick look at the year past in our family: the Woman of the House started a ska band, had a fistfight with a shopping cart, lost her right eye but then found it again under the couch cushions, and was the object of a terrific crush from one of the two boys who came to the door one day on behalf of the Church of the Risen Lord of the Swamps of the Sewanee. One boy started into a reasoned discussion of spirituality and community as the twin foundational pillars of the Church of the Risen Lord of the Swamps of the Sewanee and the other one just gaped and blubbered until he, this second boy, finally blurted out that she, the Woman of the House, was the very personification of his lifelong dreams of feminine allure, and if she could see her way clear to opening her heart to more than one husband, he, the second boy, could and would adjust his career plan with the Church of the Risen etcetera to include purchasing a ranch in Utah where perhaps societal norms were more open to committed love in other forms than the usual straitjacket of monogamous marriage. The Woman of the House declined but was deeply flattered and made a small contribution to the Church of the Risen etcetera, fine people, as she said later, tall, with excellent teeth. Dental hygiene is very important, as she says often, poring over a map of Utah.
Son One did have that unfortunate adventure with a weasel and a pumpkin but we report happily that son and weasel have both recovered, although the pumpkin was lost — a sentence that may never have been written before. Son One also enrolled at laundromat school this fall and has been studying diligently, words that never previously applied to him, but when a young person finds that one powerful driving interest in life, after an adolescence devoted to sneering, underwear catalogues, and expensive software, all you can do is be happy for him, and save your quarters in a pickle jar, isn’t that so?
Son Two started out the year on a bodybuilding kick but working only on his left arm for some reason and after he toppled over at the turkey rodeo in McMinnville and had to be hauled home on a boat trailer, he made some life adjustments, and we won’t have to build that extra room on the west side of the house, after all! It’s such a delight to see your kids come to grips with challenges in life, and bull their way through, whimpering gently and asking for money as if you are made of money, the very idea, do they not have the slightest iota of sense about money? They do not.
Our Lovely Daughter concluded her relationship with Biff, who mournfully then shaved off his mohawk, and we report that we are happy not to have to write or type or say the word Biff anymore, it just isn’t a name that a sane mother would inflict on a child, all those consonants at the end comprising, essentially, a lip raspberry, fffffffff, and the name as a whole seeming like something you would name a bison, or a pit bull, or the hero of a penny dreadful novel from the early 1920s. But we are getting distracted here with Biff, and will move along in this letter, but not before once again seizing the chance to excoriate the parents who stared at their new miraculous child, and, probably while drinking heavily, named it Biff. The whole thing makes you revisit the notion that perhaps we
should be required to obtain a license to parent, or at least there should be some basic rules for naming a child, like no more than four syllables, and no capital letters in the middle of the name suddenly for no reason, and no naming a child for rainbows or seasons of the year or planets. Also you are not allowed to make up silly words, or name your child something without any vowels, or anything that ends with the letter i, or anything with a space in the middle of it. Nor can you name two or more children with the same name, which is just bad form, and you may not name children for appliances or insects. You may name children for obscure angels and testy minor characters in whatever holy book you keep by the fire, but you must use a capital letter to begin. The rest of the year was lovely and we wish you and yours the best.
Acknowledgments
Many of these essays appeared first in The Oregonian newspaper, published in the moist and lovely City of Roses, Stumptown, Puddletown, Bridgetown, old gentle riveting Portland, and I am especially indebted to that excellent newspaper’s book editor Jeff Baker for the grace and guts to print such nutty inky adventures. Note Jeff’s entertainingly Doylesque introductory essay on page xv. My particular thanks also to Anne Fadiman, Robert Wilson, Sudip Bose, Jean Stipicevic, and Sandra Costich of The American Scholar, Ben Schwarz of The Atlantic, David Lynn and John Pickard of The Kenyon Review, Chip Blake and Hannah Fries of Orion, Nancy Boutin of The Los Angeles Review, Tim Kroenert of Eureka Street (in Melbourne, Australia), John McMurtrie of The San Francisco Chronicle, Kim Dana Kupperman of Welcome Table Press (which published “A Note on Playfulnessness” as a lovely little chapbook), Kerry Temple of Notre Dame Magazine, and Cathy O’Connell-Cahill of U.S. Catholic, which ‘posted’ (I love that word) “Mister Burns” on its website, as a celebration of that legendary editor of their magazine, which he was, God rest his grinning soul. Editors go to heaven fourth, after mothers, teachers, and nurses.
Brian Doyle
Books by Brian Doyle
FICTION
The Adventures of John Carson
Bin Laden’s Bald Spot & Other Stories
Cat’s Foot
Chicago
Martin Marten
Mink River
The Plover
NONFICTION
The Grail
The Wet Engine
POETRY AND PRAYER
The Book of Uncommon Prayer
Epiphanies & Elegies
How the Light Gets In
The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be
A Shimmer of Something
Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices
BOOKS OF ESSAYS
Children & Other Wild Animals
Credo
Eight Whopping Lies
Grace Notes
Hoops
Leaping
The Mighty Currawongs
Reading in Bed
Saints Passionate & Peculiar
A Sense of Wonder
So Very Much the Best of Us
Spirited Men
Thirsty for the Joy
The Thorny Grace of It
Two Voices (with Jim Doyle)
Brian Doyle, Self-Portrait
BRIAN DOYLE died in May of 2017. He was for many years the editor of Portland magazine, the awardwinning publication of the University of Portland, and was a prolific author of books of stories, essays, and novels, including Grace Notes and So Very Much the Best of Us, both published by ACTA Publications. Brian lived and thrived in Oregon with his beloved children and wife, Mary Miller Doyle, who contributed the interior drawings for this book.
Brian Doyle writes with Melville’s humor, Whitman’s ecstasy, and Faulkner’s run-on sentences….
Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See
Cover photo by Jessy Paston
