About this item

"An affectionate homage...a loving reconstruction of an era of storytelling now lost." -- The New York Times"[A] triumph...If a writer is going to put on Stevenson's voice, he'd better, as the poets say, 'bring it.' Reader, Doyle has brought it...Adventures is a tonic for our bitter times." -- Washington PostThe young Robert Louis Stevenson, living in a boarding house in San Francisco in the 19th century while waiting for his beloved's divorce from her feckless husband, dreamed of writing a soaring novel about his landlady's adventurous and globe-trotting husband -- but he never got around to it. And very soon thereafter he was married, headed home to Scotland, and on his way to becoming the most famous novelist in the world, after writing such classics as Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped.But now Brian Doyle brings Stevenson's untold tale to life, braiding the adventures of seaman John Carson with those of a young Stevenson, wandering the streets of San Francisco, gathering material for his fiction, and yearning for his beloved across the bay. An adventure tale, an elegy to one of the greatest writers of our language, a time-traveling plunge into The City by the Bay during its own energetic youth, The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World is entertaining, poignant, and sensual.



About the Author

Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle (born in New York in 1956) is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author of many books, among them the novels Mink River (set in Oregon) , The Plover (in the South Seas) , Martin Marten (on Oregon's Wy'east mountain, foolishly often called Mount Hood) , and Chicago (take a guess) . Among his other books are the story collection Bin Laden's Bald Spot, the nonfiction books The Grail and The Wet Engine, and many books of essays and poems. Brian James Patrick Doyle of New Yawk is cheerfully NOT the great Canadian novelist Brian Doyle, nor the astrophysicist Brian Doyle, nor the former Yankee baseball player Brian Doyle, nor even the terrific actor Brian Doyle-Murray. He is, let's say, the ambling shambling Oregon writer Brian Doyle, and happy to be so.



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