by Brian Doyle
Further, I am fascinated by the fact that Gaelic is a language in love with nouns, as can be seen with a phrase that often occurs to me when I think about my daughter’s and my sons’ futures, tá eagla orm, which in English would be I fear but in Gaelic is fear is upon me, which it is, like a demon between my shoulders. To exorcise it I sometimes whistle; in English I whistle, just so, but in Gaelic ligim fead, I let a whistle, or táim ag feadaíl, I am at whistling.
I am at whistling a great deal these days, it turns out, trying to get the fear off me. For I am terrified of the fates that may befall my children—fates over which I have no power at all, not the slightest, other than keeping my little children close to me in the presence of cars and dogs and such. So there are times now, I can honestly say—for I am sometimes an honest man, and admiring always of honesty—that I am exhausted by, and frightened for, my raft of children, and in the wee hours of the night when up with one or another of the little people, I sometimes, to be honest, find myself wondering what it might have been like not to have so many.
It would have been lonely. I know this. I know it in my heart, my bones, in the chalky exhausted shiver of my soul. For there were many nights before my children came to me on magic wooden boats from seas unknown that I wished desperately for them, that I cried because they had not yet come; and now that they are here I know I pay for them every minute with fear for their safety and horror at the prospect of losing them to disease and accidents and the harsh fingers of the Lord, who taketh whomever He wishes, at which time He alone appoints, and leaves huddled and broken the father and the mother, who begged for the joy of these round faces groping for milk in the dark. So as I trudge upstairs to hold Lily in my lap, and rub my old chapped hands across the thin sharp blades of her shoulders, and shuffle with sons on shoulders in the blue hours of the night, waiting patiently for them to belch like river barges, or hear Joe happily blowing bubbles of spit in his crib simply because he can do it and is pretty proud of himself about the whole thing, or hear Liam suddenly say ho! for no reason other than Liamly joy at the sound of his own voice like a bell in his head, I say yes to them, yes yes yes, and to exhaustion I say yes, and to the puzzling wonder of my wife’s love I say O yes, and to horror and fear and jangled joys I say yes, to rich cheerful chaos that leads me sooner to the grave and happier along that muddy grave road I say yes, to my absolute surprise and with unbidden tears I say yes yes O yes.
Is this a mystery and a joy beyond my wisdom?
Sea—it is.
Brian Doyle Interviews
Brian Doyle
What writers have affected and afflicted you most?
With awfulness or awe?
Either.
Jesus, make up your mind.
Both.
In English? And awful? Well, there’s Jerzy Kosínski, and then there’s everyone else. Blind Date is a book so bad I couldn’t even bring myself to prop up a gimpy table with it. Wouldn’t insult the table.
Anyone else?
Jerzy fills my mind to brimming at the moment. My God, the culmination of the book is a murder with an umbrella. Where was the man’s editor? Talk about professional negligence. Who was responsible for marketing that book? Where are they hiding? How can they face their children? Or librarians? Or the children of librarians?
You’re fixating.
I know, I know, but life’s so short, and I blame Kosínski.
For the shortness of life?
Hadn’t thought of that, but yes, now that I think about it, why not?
Let’s change the subject. How about superb writers?
Writers or books?
Either.
Not again. Piss or get off the pot.
Okay, both, writers first.
Well, Blake, Conrad, Orwell, Twain, Stevenson, I could go on.
Go on.
I can’t go on.
You must go on.
I’ll go on.
Go on.
Elwyn Brooks White, Li Po, Joyce Cary, Barry Lopez, Bernard DeVoto, John Updike when he’s being a literary critic, in which guise he might be the best America ever made, all due respect to Edmund Wilson, who couldn’t hold Updike’s jock when it comes to literary essays, and you know, while I am on the subject, I have to say that Updike’s Poorhouse Fair was a perfect little book, and all his famous novels after that weren’t as good.
Heresy.
Yeah, I know. But c’mon. The Rabbit books are Great Novels? No way. Rabbit Run is a very good novel and then old Rabbit gets his pecker pulled through three more. Not worth it.
You were talking superb writers.
Frank O’Connor, Patrick Kavanaugh, Wallace Stegner, Raymond Chandler, Halldór Laxness, Tolstoy, Beckett, Czesław Miłosz, Georges Simenon, Homer. Did you know there is a strain of scholarly thought that says Homer was a brilliant young woman?
No. But you were going on interminably about great writers…
Horace, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Amado, J. F. Powers, Seneca, Cervantes of course, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Edward Hoagland, Tom Stoppard, Andre Dubus, John McPhee, and, my God, I nearly forgot Jorge Luis Borges, one of the greatest writers in history. Not to mention Plutarch, who might be the greatest writer in history.
No women?
Sweet Lord yes, dozens. Alice Munro, Mary Lavin, Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bishop, Pattiann Rogers, Muriel Spark, Margaret Atwood, who wrote one of the best essays I ever read in my life…
Which was?
“True North.” Oh, God, it’s terrific.
Others?
Jan Morris, Jane Austen, Marguerite Yourcenar, George Sand, Isak Dinesen, Eudora Welty, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Nadine Gordimer, Annie Dillard, now we are getting into books, because Annie Dillard is a tremendous essayist but better known and justifiably so I guess as a maker of books. And there are many men like that too, Ken Kesey and Walker Percy spring to mind, who wrote well short, as essayists, but their hats rest on their books. People are always ragging on Kesey for writing crap at the end, and it is crap, but my God, the man wrote two classics, and Percy, who wrote some meandering crap too, wrote The Moviegoer, a classic, and a couple of perfect lesser books, like Love in the Ruins and The Thanatos Syndrome. And who am I to criticize?
Good question. Who are you to criticize?
I’m a small man who writes small essays about small matters.
So who made you god of literary criticism?
Well, first of all, you’re the one who drove all the way out here to interview me, the good sweet Lord alone knows why, and second of all, you could say that criticism isn’t fair unless you’re John Updike or someone, that only another fine writer can accurately judge if a book is good or bad.
Would you say that?
Nah. It’s bullshit.
What would you say?
That readers are very good judges of books read, for the most part. You recall what Samuel Johnson says in his Life of Gray.
Ah, no, not right off the top of my head.
“I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claim to poetical honours.”
That’s well said.
Johnson was an eloquent bastard, by all accounts, when he wasn’t swilling tea and lurching around London in one of his fits. Or guzzling port at such an alarming rate that Portugal was thinking of taking over the world for a while.
But what did he mean?
That every reader is a judge, and then the years of readers add up after a while, and the Hilaire Bellocs of the world fade and the Stevensons rise, and there, after a while, and with some discounting for fashion, you have a canon of writers who did things of grace and substance.
Are you one of those writers?
Nah. But writers are the worst judges of their work, in some ways.
High hopes?
Wicked high. There’s a peculiar hop
e, or expectation, in writers that they will be able occasionally to make a piece of writing that is shapely, clear, direct, vigorous, witty, substantive, piercing, penetrating, astonishing, pointed, no fat, no posturing, no indulgence, something that matters greatly to the reader, something that pushes the world forward slightly, rather than just being the usual jesting in place and dancing aimlessly for the sake of entertainment in the shapeless void.
Does this happen much?
Nah. Even the best writers slump, stumble, stutter. Consistency itself isn’t hard—hell, look at Jerzy Kosínski, he was consistent, all right. But consistent quality? Not even Twain or Stevenson could pull that off. Not even Shakespeare or Homer. Maybe that’s why we’re so dazzled by the writer who makes one perfect book and then never another word, like Harper Lee. She sure was consistent—every novel she ever made was a masterpiece, and that one novel will be in print forever. Lately I have been thinking this about Frank McCourt. Angela’s Ashes is near perfect, and ’Tis isn’t, and whatever else he writes won’t be Angela’s Ashes. Although, Jesus, what if Stevenson had stopped after Treasure Island, and never wrote his essays, or Kidnapped? God, what a loss. Great book. Which brings to mind poor Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston, half-finished, the poor bastard died in the middle of it.
Speaking of books…
Oh, yes, great books. Well, the King James Bible, of course. You know the poor man who translated the Bible from its original Greek and Hebrew was executed for his pains? God forbid the Bible should get into the hands of the dirty-necked man in the street. William Tyndale. Guy was a saint.
That’s it?
Nah. Moby-Dick. Ulysses. Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth. Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian. But, see, even Joyce, a hell of a great writer, wrote some crap. Did you ever read Chamber Music? The ravings of a sophomore. Or Exiles? Tinny stuff, third-rate summer stock. And Finnegans Wake? Listen, I read Finnegans Wake at the rate of one page a day for more than a year and when I got to the end I was impressed with the effort, which was herculean and admirable, but the book itself, as narrative of substance and verve? Awful. Which reminds me of Marcel Proust, the sickly bastard, and Remembrance of Things Past, another book I waited all my life to read. Read it. Awful. And speaking of awful, that damned James Fenimore Cooper was awful. Although, come to think of it, Twain wrote a terrific essay about how awful Cooper was, so Cooper was good for something.
You sure have a lot of spleen and bile for an essayist.
Well, I hope to work up to the spleen and bile of a novelist. Really, though, I just get annoyed at bullshit books.
Proust is bullshit?
Yeah. Face the facts. Ever read Remembrance of Things Past?
Yes, I did, and I found it a monumental accomplishment…
Interesting?
Pardon?
Was it interesting?
Well, it taught me a great deal about French society, and…
…it grabbed you in the gut and made your heart race and changed your life and woke you up in the night and made you cry?
It’s one of the great literary accomplishments of Western civil…
It’s neurasthenic bullshit, and Zane Grey was a better writer.
Well. Any other writers you think, uh, overrated?
I’m stuck on Proust at the moment. To think of all the hours wasted on his interminable salon comedy, my God. To all those readers who think Proust is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I say go read a real writer. Read the first 100 pages of War and Peace. That’s how far you can take salon comedy and make it work. Not seven volumes of twitches and repressed longing, for Christ’s sake. Get back under the covers, you wheezing pervert.
The dusk draws nigh and we had better conclude this interview. One last question: How would you rate Brian Doyle as a writer?
By trade, essayist. Commits occasional poem. As essayist, usually mumbling about love, books, hawks, or children, sometimes all four at once. Has made, I’d say, a handful of really fine essays; maybe ten, if we stretch a little. Addicted to fragmented and cascading sentences, lists, semicolons, and bang endings. Windy bastard. Best when forced into a small space. As his editor, I keep a sharp eye out for his tendency toward sentimentality, schmaltz, the scraping of badly tuned violins. His collection of essays with his dad reveals the father to be a clear, concise writer with a son happy to be a Strunk and White Elements of Style nightmare. Subsequent work by the son reveals a writer of occasional power and zest not at all afraid of pursuing his own peculiar obsessions and asking you to pay ten bucks for the privilege of chasing after them with him…Maybe there is a single great work in him, but I don’t think so.* I think he is going to keep trying to make small perfect pieces of prose that get smaller and smaller until he finally stops writing altogether and ends his days pondering a single word, or a single letter of the alphabet, poor bastard. I’ll visit him in the nuthouse.
* This chat between Brian and Brian was conducted in the online journal Smokebox and took place in 2002, when BD had published almost nothing but essays. How fascinating to find him here doubting himself even as he was mastering, among other forms: the novel; very short memoir; even shorter experimental nonfictions; his unique geometric prose form, the proem; and form-defying incantations and meditations about birds, kids, wild creatures of all colors, kinds, and sizes, his own and the larger human family, courage under extreme duress, being “rammed by joy,” the glory of the Now, sneak attacks of wonder, and stories he would somehow siphon out of introverted or humble or reticent people whose stories would otherwise have remained untold.
Pants: A Note*
Speaking of pants, we all have favorite pants, and have had favorite pants, and in most cases, I would guess, we have worn those favorite pants down to the nubs, to the point where people who love us first made jokes and then exasperated remarks and finally shrieked when we wore those pants, and someone should call a halt in the daily ramble to celebrate the overall concept of favorite pants, and I am just that man, for I have worn several pants down to the nubs, to the point where they were first repaired here and there when fenestration occurred, and then deftly patched by the tailor, and then despaired of by the tailor, at which point they lost their legs and became shorts, but even shorts wear out eventually, and are torn asunder to finish as the household rags with which we buff our ancient automobiles, and rub mink oil into new shoes, and soak with vinegar when the windows need to be cleaned, which they do, and I had better be about the task with the last tatters of those excellent gray house-pants I loved so for the last ten years, though I was quite alone in that affection, and suffered tart and abusive remarks about them from my children, who were mortified by them, partly because I bought them for less than two dollars, and because they were shapeless, and because they had so many patches, and because I wore them with pleasure, though no other dad would be caught dead wearing pants like that, and instead of a button fastening them at the waist they had a safety pin, and because on the left side there was no pocket but only the shadow of a pocket, the pocket having declared independence from the empire of the pants at some date far in the past, an occasion I did not mourn or even really notice, until I heard the shrill plaints of my children, mortified that their dad would publicly appear in pants that were missing a pocket, and were held up by a safety pin, and were the color of nothing natural on this planet, and had been stitched and patched to the point where there were more patches than original pants.
Before those pants there were the white painters’ pants I wore until they vanished one day and everyone in the house looked guilty and I never did find out what happened; and before that the white cotton coveralls I wore until the day I washed them in Boston and they actually no kidding dissolved in the washing machine, leaving a sort of bedraggled sad grainy dust I had to shovel out with a trowel; and before that I admit to a pair of bellbottom jeans, which all of us of a certain age wore at one time, though we do not admit to this willingly, and deny it when we are called on it, and lie
as instantly and adamantly as we lie when asked if we ever wore desert boots, or jackets with fringes, or necklaces made with puka shells, all of which we did wear, long ago when we were young and pants had just been invented.
It is a good thing pants were invented, because without pants we could not have favorite pants, and we should, I think, occasionally pause in the river of time, and set our feet against the prevailing current, and say clearly and firmly that pants are an excellent invention, because consider the alternative, and also it should be said that slipping into your favorite pants is a subtle pleasure in the evening as you arrive home from the commercial struggle and unbuckle your corporate uniform, or on the weekend, when your pressing task for the morning is delivering a sermon on virtue to the dog.
* The editor feels duty-bound to warn those leery of kayaking through whitewater prose without a paddle that the first paragraph of “Pants” consists, by Brian’s own proud count, of a single 379-word sentence.
20 Things the Dog Ate
1. Ancient Squashed Dried Round of Flat Shard of Beaver
Sweet mother of the mewling baby Jesus! You wouldn’t think a creature that likes to watch Peter O’Toole movies would be such an omnivorous gobbling machine, but he has eaten everything from wasps to the back half of a raccoon. And let us not ignore the beaver. Speculation is that beaver was washed up onto road when overflowing lake blew its dam, was squashed by a truck, got flattened ten thousand times more, then summer dried it out hard and flat as a manhole cover, and the dog somehow pried it up, leaving only beaver oil on the road, and ate it. Sure, he barfed later. Wouldn’t you?
2. Young Sparrow
I kid you not. Sparrow falls from nest in the pine by the fence, flutters down ungainly to unmerciful earth, dog leaps off porch like large hairy mutant arrow, gawps bird in half an instant. Man on porch roars drop it! Dog emits bird with a choking coughing sound as if disgusted by a misplaced apostrophe. Bird staggers for a moment and then flutters awkwardly up to fence post. I wouldn’t have believed this if I had not seen it with my own holy eyeballs. Wonder how fledgling bird explained that adventure to mom.
