Bin Laden's Bald Spot & Other Stories

Bin Laden's Bald Spot & Other Stories PDF Author: Brian Doyle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781597099158
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
Welcome to the peculiar and headlong world of Brian DoyleÆs fiction, where the odd is happening all the time, reported upon by characters of every sort and stripe. Swirling voices and skeins of story, laughter and rage, ferocious attention to detail and sweeping nuttiness, tears and chortling--these stories will remind readers of the late giant David Foster Wallace, in their straightforward accounts of anything-but-straightforward events; of modern short story pioneer Raymond Carver, a bit, in their blunt, unadorned dialogue; and of Julia Whitty, a bit, in their willingness to believe what is happening, even if it absolutely shouldnÆt be. Funny, piercing, unique, memorable, this is a collection of stories readers will find nearly impossible to forget: ... The barber who shaves the heads of the thugs in Bin LadenÆs cave tells cheerful stories of life with the preening video-obsessed leader, who has a bald spot shaped just like Iceland. ... A husband gathers all of his wifeÆs previous boyfriends for a long day on a winery-touring bus. ... A teenage boy drives off into the sunset with his troubled sisterÆs small daughters...and the loser husband locked in the trunk of the car. ... The late Joseph Kennedy pours out his heart to a golf-course bartender moments before the stroke that silenced him forever. ... A man digging in his garden finds a brand-new baby boy, still alive, and has a chat with the teenage neighbor girl whose son it is. ... A man born on a Greyhound bus eventually buys the entire Greyhound Bus Company and revolutionizes Western civilization. ... A mountainous bishop dies and the counting of the various keys to his house turns... tense. ... A man discovers his wife having an affair, takes up running to grapple with his emotions, and discovers everyone else on the road is a cuckold too. And many others.

Bin Laden's Bald Spot

Bin Laden's Bald Spot PDF Author: Brian Doyle
Publisher: Red Hen Press
ISBN: 1597091790
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Book Description
A collection of humorous short stories from the award-winning author of The Plover and Mink River. Welcome to the peculiar, headlong world of Brian Doyle’s fiction, where the odd is happening all the time, reported upon by characters of every sort and stripe. Swirling voices and skeins of story, laughter and rage, ferocious attention to detail and sweeping nuttiness, tears and chortling—these stories will remind readers of the late giant David Foster Wallace, in their straightforward accounts of anything-but-straightforward events; of modern short story pioneer Raymond Carver, a bit, in their blunt, unadorned dialogue; and of Julia Whitty, a bit, in their willingness to believe what is happening, even if it absolutely shouldn’t be. Funny, piercing, unique, memorable, this is a collection of stories readers will find nearly impossible to forget. “To read Brian Doyle is to apprehend, all at once, the force that drives Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman, and James Joyce, and Emily Dickinson, and Francis of Assisi, and Jonah under his gourd. Brian Doyle is an extraordinary writer whose tales will endure. The sublime ‘Waking the Bishop’ is going to inhabit American anthologies forever and ever.” —Cynthia Ozick, New York Times–bestselling author of Heir to the Glimmering World “What I like about Brian Doyle’s writing is that it’s real—it’s got mud and blood and tears but it’s also got earthly angels who teach him to grasp on to each small epiphany as it opens before him.” —Martin Flanagan, author of The Call and The Art of Pollination

Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace

Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace PDF Author: Brian Doyle
Publisher: Franciscan Media
ISBN: 1632531666
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
“Brian Doyle is an extraordinary writer whose tales will endure.” —Cynthia Ozick, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Quarrel and Quandary This is a guided tour through the mind of one of the most acclaimed voices in contemporary Catholic writing. Brian Doyle effortlessly connects the everyday with the inexpressible and consistently marries searingly honest prose with interruptions of humor and humanity. These essays bear Doyle’s trademark depth and deliver with eloquence his piercing observations on mohawks and miracles, vigils and velociraptors, syntax and scapulars, jail and jihad, and mercy beyond sense. A 2018 Catholic Press Association Book Award winner. The audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.

Reading In Bed

Reading In Bed PDF Author: Brian Doyle
Publisher: ACTA Publications
ISBN: 0879466545
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
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.”

Tin House

Tin House PDF Author: Win McCormack
Publisher: Tin House Books
ISBN: 0982650787
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
In our increasingly mediated society, where joy is self-conscious and tweeted about as it is happening, is it possible for the genuinely ecstatic experience? From religious to chemically induced, from biochemical analysis to attempts to capture the ineffable, our issue on the ecstatic will feature poetry, fiction, and essays addressing the ecstatic and its counterparts ? the comedown and ecstasy thwarted, whether by internal or external means. "Tin House" is a beautifully designed periodical that features the best writers of our time alongside a new generation of talent poised to become the most important voices of the future. Content includes short stories, profiles, author interviews, poetry, essays, and unique departments such as Lost and Found, in which writers review overlooked or underrated books, and Blithe Spirits and Readable Feast, which present tales and recipes for drinks and food in a literary way.

One Long River of Song

One Long River of Song PDF Author: Brian Doyle
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316492876
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
From a "born storyteller" (Seattle Times), this playful and moving bestselling book of essays invites us into the miraculous and transcendent moments of everyday life. When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the twenty-first century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon. At a moment when the world can sometimes feel darker than ever, Doyle's writing, which constantly evokes the humor and even bliss that life affords, is a balm. His essays manage to find, again and again, exquisite beauty in the quotidian, whether it's the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, or a husband's whiskers that a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every morning. Through Doyle's eyes, nothing is dull. David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the collection: "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to quiet glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size, renown, or commercial value, and he brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." A life's work, One Long River of Song invites readers to experience joy and wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle's rapturous and exuberant gaze, extraordinary.

The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World

The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World PDF Author: Brian Doyle
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
ISBN: 1250100526
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
-The young Robert Louis Stevenson, living in a boarding house in San Francisco while waiting for his beloved's divorce from her feckless husband, dreamed of writing a soaring novel about his landlady's adventurous and globe-trotting husband--but he never got around to it. And very soon thereafter he was married ... and on his way to becoming the most famous novelist in the world ... Now Brian Doyle brings Stevenson's untold tale to life, braiding the adventures of seaman John Carson with those of a young Stevenson, wandering the streets of San Francisco, gathering material for his fiction, and yearning for his beloved across the bay---

How The Light Gets In

How The Light Gets In PDF Author: Brian Doyle
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608336107
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in. -- Leonard Cohen, Anthem. In this rich treasury of prose poems on matters theological, spiritual, mystical, and everyday, popular Catholic author Brian Doyle offers readers a lyrical but commonsense take on the ways grace, prayer, sin, love, boredom, joy, suffering and redemption play out in our daily lives. Doyle's hundred-plus 'proems' are lyrical creations resembling poetry, but devoid of any meter or typical poetic structure--and yet they are not strictly prose either. Some are droll and acid takes on modern life; others spirit-lifting paeans to the joy of creation; still others humorous and light appreciations of the grace-filled moments that can fill the day of any person paying close enough attention. (Publisher).

Chicago

Chicago PDF Author: Brian Doyle
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250061997
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
On the last day of summer, some years ago, a young college graduate moves to Chicago and rents a small apartment on the north side of the city, by the vast and muscular lake. This is the story of the five seasons he lives there, during which he meets gangsters, gamblers, policemen, a brave and garrulous bus driver, a cricket player, a librettist, his first girlfriend, a shy apartment manager, and many other riveting souls, not to mention a wise and personable dog of indeterminate breed. A love letter to Chicago, the Great American City, and a wry account of a young man's coming-of-age during the one summer in White Sox history when they had the best outfield in baseball, Brian Doyle's Chicago is a novel that will plunge you into a city you will never forget, and may well wish to visit for the rest of your days.

The Best Spiritual Writing 2013

The Best Spiritual Writing 2013 PDF Author: Philip Zaleski
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 0143121537
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
A new volume of the critically acclaimed spiritual writing series, with an introduction by bestselling author Stephen Prothero Boasting an impressive selection of personal essays, articles, and poems by today's leading luminaries, The Best Spiritual Writing 2013 captures our nation's spiritual pulse and offers readers an opportunity to explore the most nourishing writings on spirituality published in the past year. As in previous editions, Philip Zaleski draws from a wide range of journals and magazines to build an anthology of stimulating works by some of the nation's most esteemed writers such as Adam Gopnik, Edward Hirsch, and Melissa Range. The result is a book, ideal for gift giving, that will appeal to religious thinkers, atheists, and people of all faiths and beliefs.