Brian Doyle on Yes, No, and Maybe

Been hunkered of late, working on the new novel. Did take a few minutes this morning to check my favorite blogs, and found this link to an essay by Brian Doyle, editor of Portland Magazine, at the University of Portland, Oregon. Doyle's topic is rejection -- how much he's doled out over the years, and has received on his own. But he also touches on acceptance, which he discusses here:

Some of the best yesses I have issued over the years: Yes to a thirty-year-old Mormon man who wrote an absolutely haunting essay about laughter (which was also funny). Yes to a sixty-year-old man who drives a bus and wrote a piece about a six-year-old girl who was so broken and so hilarious and so brave that when I finished reading the essay I put my face in my hands and wept and wept. Yes to a fifty-year-old doctor who had sent me arch essay after arch essay but finally sent me a perfect essay about the best teacher she ever had, to which I said yes so fast I nearly broke a finger. Yes to half of an essay by Andre Dubus, an essay we were cheerfully arguing about when he died of a heart attack, and I asked his oldest son if I could print the good half and not the mediocre half, and he said yes, which made me smile, for I could almost hear Andre cursing at me happily from the afterworld, in that dark amused growly drawly rumble he had when alive.

Check it out when you have a few; it's a fun/funny read.