Brian Doyle (4) (1956–2017)
Teoksen Mink River tekijä
Katso täsmennyssivulta muut tekijät, joiden nimi on Brian Doyle.
About the Author
Brian James Patrick Doyle was born in New York on November 6, 1956. He received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Notre Dame 1978. He worked for several magazines including U.S. Catholic, Boston College Magazine, and Portland Magazine, which he was editor of from 1991 until his näytä lisää death. His books included Mink River, Martin Marten, Bin Laden's Bald Spot, Children and Other Wild Animals, Prayer for Cashiers and Checkout-Counter Folks, and The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World: A Novel of Robert Louis Stevenson. He died Saturday from complications related to a brain tumor on May 27, 2017 at the age of 60. (Bowker Author Biography) näytä vähemmän
Sarjat
Tekijän teokset
A Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary (2014) 71 kappaletta
The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling Through an Oregon Vinyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole… (2006) 49 kappaletta
Children and Other Wild Animals: Notes on badgers, otters, sons, hawks, daughters, dogs, bears, air, bobcats, fishers,… (2014) 25 kappaletta
A Sense of Wonder: The World's Best Writers on the Sacred, the Profane, and the Ordinary (2016) — Toimittaja — 24 kappaletta
Associated Works
Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present (2007) — Avustaja — 179 kappaletta
True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine (2014) — Avustaja — 51 kappaletta
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Virallinen nimi
- Doyle, Brian James Patrick
- Syntymäaika
- 1956
- Kuolinaika
- 2017-05-27
- Sukupuoli
- male
- Kansalaisuus
- USA
- Syntymäpaikka
- New York, New York, USA
- Asuinpaikat
- Portland, Oregon, USA
- Koulutus
- Notre Dame University (1978)
- Ammatit
- editor
- Organisaatiot
- University of Portland
- Lyhyt elämäkerta
- BiographyBrian Doyle (born in New York in 1956) is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. he is the author of thirteen books, among them the novels Mink River and Cat's Foot, the story collection Bin Laden's Bald Spot, the nonfiction books The Grail and The Wet Engine, and many books of essays and poems. He is cheerfully NOT the great Canadian novelist Brian Doyle, nor the astrophysicist Brian Doyle, nor the former Yankee baseball player Brian Doyle, nor even the terrific actor Brian Doyle-Murray. He is, let's say, the Oregon writer Brian Doyle.
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
Wow, I read Mink River by this author, and while it is not a conventional story there did exist a story. I really struggled to get more than 100 pages into this book. Endless mindless ramblings from the narrator than don't go anywhere. Obviously this book was not for me.
Doyle is an Oregon author, and the book is set here, on Mt. Hood, or as Doyle refers to the mountain, Wy'East. The book centers on two beings, a teenage boy, named Dave, and a young Marten named, (wait for it) Martin. A bit theme of the book is the similarity between humans and other animals, and the idea that animals could also have complex emotional lives.
If you are like me, and have wondered, from time to time, what it would be like to be an animal, or maybe a tree, this is a book for you. It's probably not a book for everyone, my daughter was dismayed to see that it doesn't have quotation marks, and is pretty gently plotted. A neighbor was unhappy at the violence in the book (nature, after all, being red in tooth and claw.). Another deficit in the book (IMO) is that everyone in the book is very good-hearted. People make mistakes, but there is not much in the way of mean-ness or selfishness here. Which is charming, but maybe not realistic?
However, the book has much to recommend it; lovely nature writing; wonderful quirky character, and a sweet philosophical narrative voice. Here is a piece of that voice, discussing a Marten who was tangential to this story:
"He will, for example, be hit by lightning and assumed to be dead but then rise up spitting and utterly alive as if by magic. He will briefly find himself atop a running horse, which is a remarkable story all by itself. He will be a rare and perhaps unique case of a Marten who learns to kill and eat porcupines after watching a fisher accomplish that potentially punturous and eminently painful task. He will father more kits than we could easily count if they were somehow piled wriggling in front of us in a seething mewling pile. He will die finally in an act of stunning courage in defense of his enduring love, a story which by itself you could write three books about, and by heavens what a terrific movie it would make. And he is only one of a million, no a billion stories you could tell about the living beings on just this side of the mountain. The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in a single square foot of dirt and air and water, than we could tell each other in a hundred years..... The fact is that the more stories we share about living beings, the more attentive we are to living beings, and perhaps the less willing we are to slaughter them and allow them to be slaughtered. That could be."… (lisätietoja)
If you are like me, and have wondered, from time to time, what it would be like to be an animal, or maybe a tree, this is a book for you. It's probably not a book for everyone, my daughter was dismayed to see that it doesn't have quotation marks, and is pretty gently plotted. A neighbor was unhappy at the violence in the book (nature, after all, being red in tooth and claw.). Another deficit in the book (IMO) is that everyone in the book is very good-hearted. People make mistakes, but there is not much in the way of mean-ness or selfishness here. Which is charming, but maybe not realistic?
However, the book has much to recommend it; lovely nature writing; wonderful quirky character, and a sweet philosophical narrative voice. Here is a piece of that voice, discussing a Marten who was tangential to this story:
"He will, for example, be hit by lightning and assumed to be dead but then rise up spitting and utterly alive as if by magic. He will briefly find himself atop a running horse, which is a remarkable story all by itself. He will be a rare and perhaps unique case of a Marten who learns to kill and eat porcupines after watching a fisher accomplish that potentially punturous and eminently painful task. He will father more kits than we could easily count if they were somehow piled wriggling in front of us in a seething mewling pile. He will die finally in an act of stunning courage in defense of his enduring love, a story which by itself you could write three books about, and by heavens what a terrific movie it would make. And he is only one of a million, no a billion stories you could tell about the living beings on just this side of the mountain. The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in a single square foot of dirt and air and water, than we could tell each other in a hundred years..... The fact is that the more stories we share about living beings, the more attentive we are to living beings, and perhaps the less willing we are to slaughter them and allow them to be slaughtered. That could be."… (lisätietoja)
Listat
Palkinnot
Children and Other Wild Animals: Notes on badgers, otters, sons, hawks, daughters, dogs, bears, air, bobcats, fishers, mascots, Charles Darwin, newts, ... tigers and various other zoological matters (Finalist – Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction – 2016)
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The prose had some magnificent moments. Most of the characters were at least interesting. I enjoyed the bits of Native American and Irish oral histories. The maical realism was lovely. The town certainly came to life... But... BUT.
There just feels like a huge BUT hanging in air there. I was not invested in enough of the characters. Some, yes. Worried Man and Cedar - absolutely - but none of the traumas or joys experienced by the characters in this affected me in the least (with the exception of a depression of one character which was beautifully described).
And I think that the overwhelming Catholicism of it just put me off by a LOT. I am not a religious person and I would go so far as to say that I can border on antireligious especially with regard to organized religion in general and Christianity in particular. Regardless, I can read books that have a religious/morality based undercurrent and not dislike them. This felt super preachy to me, though (especially with the Inch that goes out to sea).
I don't know. I'd like to give it 3.5 stars if I could. But I can't. And because I save my 4 and 5 Stars for things that really knock my socks off, I have to stick with 3 on this one.
That said, I did send 3 quotes to myself from the book - so it had plenty to offer... Like this:… (lisätietoja)