Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Brian Doyle

  • 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.

    READ MORE
  • 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.

    READ MORE
  • 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.

    READ MORE
  • 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 ...

    READ MORE
  • 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.

    READ MORE
  • 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.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Strange encounters on the Spanish Camino

    • Tony Doherty
    • 14 October 2009
    5 Comments

    We entered the house expecting the warm hospitality usually offered to weary pilgrims. But a small ancient man barred our way and attacked us with a venom normally reserved for carriers of some ancient plague, snarling like an enraged guard dog.

    READ MORE
  • 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.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A bookish look at cars and sport

    • Brian Doyle
    • 05 August 2009
    2 Comments

    What if all the cars and sports teams we name for fleet and powerful animals and cosmic energies and cool-sounding things that don't exist or mean anything are, effective immediately, renamed for literary characters and authors.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Irreconcilable dissonance and other reasons for divorce

    • Brian Doyle
    • 15 July 2009
    8 Comments

    Marriages are houses and unless you keep cleaning, repainting and using duct tape with deft punctilio, everything sags and mould wins. The first divorce I saw up close, like the first car crash you see up close, is imprinted on the inside of my eyelids.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Make sport, not war

    • Brian Doyle
    • 03 June 2009
    1 Comment

    Jimmy was a high school basketball superstar, who went to war after graduating and had both his hands blown off by a mine. Imagine a world where instead of violence, international disputes were decided via epic sports tournaments.

    READ MORE