ONE LONG RIVER OF SONG

A posthumous collection of stunning mystical prose from the award-winning author and editor.

Doyle (1956-2017) was well known as the longtime editor of Portland Magazine, but he also published multiple novels (Chicago, 2016, etc.) and numerous volumes of short stories, “proems” (hybrids of prose and poems), and essays. Though his nonfiction appeared in many renowned publications, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Harper’s, he had a cultlike following for his lesser-known writing on spirituality. After Doyle was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor in late 2016, David James Duncan, a friend, novelist, and essayist, proposed this collection to benefit Doyle’s family. While the book may prove to be of financial value to his survivors, the richest beneficiaries will undoubtedly be those who read it. Doyle’s spirituality defies categorization. He was raised Catholic and does occasionally draw from that tradition, but his catechism isn’t comprised of doctrine or theology. Rather, much like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Doyle employs the ordinary to catch the reflection of a world that is “still stuffed with astonishments beyond our wildest imagining, which is humbling, and lovely, and maybe the only way we are going to survive ourselves and let everything else alive survive us too.” The author looks for God not in a book or a building but in a group of kindergarteners, at the post office, in a doll with one arm. Doyle’s mysticism is similar to spiritual writers like Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen, but his prose is informal, instantly relatable, and quite often delightfully unorthodox—e.g., “I am standing in the hospital watching babies emerge from my wife like a circus act.” Though each topic spans at most a few pages, Doyle’s prose is so expansive and dripping with visceral detail that even the briefest vignettes are often a wondrous adventure.

This brilliant compendium of spiritual musings will resonate with people of any faith—or of none.