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Author: Brian Doyle

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best Of 2010: The thirty good priests

    • Brian Doyle
    • 04 January 2011
    2 Comments

    For every greedy evil rapacious liar priest .. there are thirty great and subtle men .. Who wake alone quite early and don their vocations .. Willingly like a thorny endlessly tumultuous prayer

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Two nuns and my second confession

    • Brian Doyle
    • 30 November 2010
    2 Comments

    Consider the nun we had for first grade ... Sister Dorita, who had a stevedore's forearms. On the second day of school she hauled a bubbling boy named David into the air by his necktie.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Football hero's homeless grace

    • Brian Doyle
    • 10 November 2010
    6 Comments

    Former local sports hero The Hawk took up residence on the town football field. A reporter came looking for a tale of woe but didn't find it. People leave him sandwiches, the kids who play lacrosse set up a screen so his tent won't get peppered by stray shots, and cops drift by to make sure no one's giving him grief.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Defying the ebook revolution

    • Brian Doyle
    • 28 July 2010
    5 Comments

    Went to return a book the other day and it refused to go in the BOOKS ONLY slot. I tried again, thinking perhaps I had suddenly aged beyond belief and could not muster the muscle to cram it through the wall, but no, it was the book itself, adamant, recalcitrant, bristling and ruffling indignantly, that would not allow itself to be returned.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The thirty good priests

    • Brian Doyle
    • 13 July 2010
    4 Comments

    For every greedy evil rapacious liar priest .. there are thirty great and subtle men .. Who wake alone quite early and don their vocations .. Willingly like a thorny endlessly tumultuous prayer

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The joys and risks of reading in bed

    • Brian Doyle
    • 07 April 2010
    5 Comments

    As a society we fail our children if we do not carefully remove our street clothes, don cotton pyjamas, and crawl into the boat of the bed with a sigh of delight, each and every night, there to voyage, UnKindled, BlackBerryless, PalmPilotless, into the glory of story.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A bishop's first education

    • Brian Doyle
    • 30 March 2010
    13 Comments

    Augustine. Wondrous lesson, that man, but he has been imprisoned by theology. Grant me chastity but not yet, everyone knows that hilarious remark.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The allure of J. D. Salinger and Shane Warne

    • Brian Doyle
    • 03 February 2010
    6 Comments

    Just as Brits were more absorbed by Byron's life than his work, and Australians were absorbed by Shane Warne's antics more than his artistry, J. D. Salinger grew more famous for retreating from public life, than for his masterpieces.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The big gift of small problems

    • Brian Doyle
    • 19 January 2010
    3 Comments

    The blizzards of bills, the surly son, the dismissive daughter, the shabby house, the battered car, the shivering pains, the dark thread of fear that I might not have been a good dad, the feeling sometimes that maybe there was a better husband for my wife ...

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A child's 'Christ bus' in America

    • Brian Doyle
    • 18 December 2009

    Once I opened a present on which a young niece had written MARY CHRIST BUS, with every iota of her tongue-clenched diligence. If I was a wise man, I would have saved that paper, so that I could even now open it and see the world as it is, ancient, glorious and written endlessly by the young.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Harry Potter and other killer serials

    • Brian Doyle
    • 21 October 2009
    6 Comments

    From Pullman's His Dark Materials and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to Lewis' Narnia novels or the tale of Mr H. Potter, the series is often where young readers enter the seething and delightful universe of books, in a way that sets them up for life as readers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    How not to make a toast

    • Brian Doyle
    • 23 September 2009

    My mother-in-law stood up on the night before her daughter married me, held her glass aloft, and sighed, 'Let's just hope this one comes off'. Some of the best toasts I ever heard were from children: 'Here's to all mum's husbands past and present!' said one girl, aged 11.

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