Brian Doyle - Leaping: Revelations & Epiphanies

3441 N. Ashland Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60657

(800) 621-1008

www.loyolapress.com

2013, 2003 Brian Doyle

All rights reserved.

The Bible excerpts in Why Write?, Grace Notes, and Leap are taken from the King James Bible (Cambridge University Press).

The Bible excerpts in Room Eight, Washed Clean, Christs Elbows, and Altar Boy are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, and 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA.

The excerpt from the book of Wisdom in Leap is taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms, copyright 1991, 1986, 1970 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

An excerpt in Grace Notes is taken from Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jays Dance: A Birth Year (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 7072. Copyright 1995 by Louise Erdrich.

The letter In A Thin Ragged Man is reprinted by permission of Jim Wood.

An excerpt in Reading the Birds is taken from Walt Whitmans The Dalliance of the Eagles, Leaves of Grass (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1900).

Cover art credit: Andrew Johnson/Getty Images

Back cover author photo credit: Jerry Hart

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8294-3905-2

Based on the print edition: 978-0-8294-3904-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013940992

13 14 15 16 17 EPUB 5 4 3 2 1

Ah, ten years after Leaping was first inflicted on an unsuspecting world, how very tempting to use this space to make a series of small jokes about being grayer and saltier and much more interested in afternoon napsbut no.

Because here I can say that no essayist has ever gotten such piercing and lovely and passionate responses from readers as I have. No essayist was ever so moved by how his muddled arrows landed in hearts far away. No essayist ever was reminded so often that the point of writing is connection, stimulation, the creation of a quiet country where writer and reader can stand together for a moment in amazement and awe. The essay is a grapple, a cheerfully desperate attempt to drape words on thoughts and emotions mostly too vast for words, and you never write quite as good a piece as you wanted to write, and there will always be readers who fuss and complain and object and nitpick, especially among the Catholic lunatic fringe in which I happily count myself. But since Leaping was first published, I have been blessed with hundreds of letters, paper and electronic both, and the vast majority were reports of arrows landing in hearts that needed exactly that arrow at that moment.

We take this for granted, that we can connect, that we can speak to each other through headlong sentences on pages and pads, and that those sentences, hammered laboriously by a humming man early in the morning in Oregon, travel around the world, and shiver some hearts, and cause people to laugh and weep, and make them feel, for a moment, like they have a brother who knows how they feel. We take this for granted. Its miraculous, really. Its holy. And I have very little to do with it. I just try as hard as I can to say something real, to tell a story that matters somehow, and then its off and away on its own. An essay is very much like a child whom you raise slowly, doing the best you can to shape him straight and true and generous and openhearted, and then away he goes, to bring his own wild light to the world, and all you can do is sit at your desk and weep with pleasure at the messages you get from those whose hearts he hit.

Theres a great deal else we could say here about the essay, which I think is the coolest of all forms, because its closest to our speaking voices, and its unadorned and unfiltered, and it has none of the prim mannerisms that often afflict other forms, and its the crucial backbone of memoir and nature writing and spiritual writing, but lets stay with this one point: Isnt it sweet and wild and amazing that sometimes an essay just completely sizzles your heart and becomes something youll never forget the rest of your life? Isnt that great? Isnt that, no kidding, holy?

Brian Doyle