Writer. Age 60. Dead of a
brain tumor discovered six months earlier.
Stark details, and too
familiar. They don’t say anything about who Brian was. How he wrote in a way
that made grown men drool and old women swoon clutching their rosaries. How he
touched the lives of thousands of people who knew him or read his words. He was
reverent and irreverent, often in the same sentence. Insightful. Optimistic.
Funny. Stuffed full of heart and faith. An artist with words that stunned with
their lyrical beauty.
My introduction to him began
when I stumbled over his essay “Playfulness” near mine in the River Teeth Journal. I really liked it
but, at that point, I didn’t spark to his name. I liked it so much that I began
paging through my other journals and Best
American anthologies to see if he had written anything else. He was in most
of them, too. I had dog-earned those pages, but not remembered his name.
I thought this was funny, so
I wrote about it and sent Brian a copy to make sure it was okay to publish. I
figured he was a big fish in the essay world and didn’t want to piss him off.
He wrote back, no caps: “o gawd that made me laugh.” With his blessing, the
piece was published by Burlesque Press.
(“Dear Famous Writer” https://burlesquepressllc.com/2014/01/14/dear-famous-writer-by-mark-liebenow/
)
At the University of
Portland, where he worked as editor-in-chief of the Portland Magazine, he also did things like sponsor the “Brian Doyle
Scholarship in Gentle and Sidelong Humor.” As a nod back for all the times that
he made me chuckle, I made donations to his cancer fund from the Brian Doyle
Cricket Club, then the Hedge Trimmer Hobbits of the Whodunnit, the Ambidextrous
Thinkers of America, the Hairy Kloggers of Laughter and Light, and finally the
Troglodytes of Whimsy and Mercy.
Our last correspondence was
over a book on the spirituality of nature that I was working on with a Montana
photographer. I sent the text to Brian, he suggested a place to submit it, and
offered to write a promo when the time came.
Brian knew the darkness of
humanity, but he also celebrated its great, creative, and wondrous joy. He held
fiercely to his faith in things unseen, believing that, even in the midst of
the cruelest tragedies, the holy was still present, and that it was its mystery
that holds us up until we are able to walk on our own again.
Now and then we discover
someone who writes what takes our breath away, what props us up on bad days
when despair threatens to drag us down, and makes us believe in goodness again.
Then they’re gone. They’re always gone too soon.
“Writing is a time machine,”
Brian said. I suppose that is why I continue to write about grief and dead
people, having lost friends, parents, and a wife. Writing keeps them alive.
Brian said, “writing gives death the finger.” So it does, and so do I.
Thank you for sharing! I love your sense of humor and enjoy your blog!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Danell.
DeleteWherever he is now, Mark, I hope your friend Brian is reading and enjoying this beautiful tribute you've written about him ~ and just so you know, your own writing does for all of us what his has done for you. Blessings to you, and thank you ♥
ReplyDeleteKind words, Marty. Thank you.
Deletea great player of words and emotions...returned to great unknown he loved...thank u
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, Sue. I like to think that Brian is having the time of his life, and wishing he could write about it.
Delete