Brian Doyle’s ferocious attention
Doyle’s exuberant writing praised particular things in rich detail. It cut to the pulsing heart of life.
When the writer Brian Doyle was diagnosed with an advanced brain tumor in November, a flood of support poured in from readers. When he was asked what well-wishers could do, he said, “Hear all laughter. Be tender to each other. Be more tender than you were yesterday, that’s what I would like. You want to help me? Be tender and laugh.”
Those words—spirited, playful, somehow both wordy and direct—were a characteristic invitation from Doyle, who died at age 60 on May 27 at his home near Portland, Oregon, with his wife Mary and three children at his side.
In Doyle’s hand, every experience became literature. A boat ride wasn’t a boat ride but “this voyage, this particular jaunt, this epic adventure, this bedraggled expedition, this foolish flight, this sea-shamble, this muddled maundering, this aimless amble on the glee of the sea . . . ” Doyle indulged a rabid showboating streak, beginning essays with impish openings like “Speaking of badgers . . .” or “And while we are talking about fourth grade . . .” He laughed in the face of Strunk & White’s dictum to “omit needless words,” instead unspooling flamboyant strings of modifiers like the “sinuous quicksilver geometry of basketball” or the “bright redolent funk of gymnasiums.”
