A Writer With an Eye for Real Life   

Brian Dickinson can't move, but he can reach into himself and into his readers.

Brian Dickinson teaches us about life, and about writing. He was always a good writer. Pain and trouble can make us better if we don't go bitter. Life deepens us, if we let it.

Our old friend Brian just keeps growing, finally unable to move any part of his body except for his eyes, working the right one hard to beam commands to his keyboard, and, really, writing better all the time. What power he has now to reach way into himself, and then into us. What a gift.

For five years he has been in the trenches with Lou Gehrig's disease: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). For a while he could write by voice, but he lost it. Then he had one finger to hit the keys, but it went limp. Today he sits still at his home near Providence, writing with his right eye (see "Writing for His Life," page 24).

We used to look forward to seeing Brian and Barbara at gatherings of editorial writers and editors, usually NCEW and ASNE. For a long time he was chief editorial writer and columnist of the Providence Journal-Bulletin, where he put out an elegant editorial page, sophisticated in an older tradition: readable, informed.

He had an inner eye for good writing and bad writing, and he brought it to bear with a gentle grumpiness when the editorial writers sat in critique groups all day commenting on the editorial pages they had exchanged.

He and Barbara seemed to have the whole world by the tail. They were smart, droll, arch, full of beans. They made time for the joys of life: traveling, good music, Barbara's gourmet cooking, skiing, entertaining, surfing, the fellowship of good friends.

When I went to see them last June, believe it or not the same spirit and style prevailed. Barbara, always a great beauty, always with a contrarian mind churning, could have been spotted in a crowd anywhere. Brian couldn't turn his head away from his computer when we sat down a few feet from him. He very slowly pecked out a greeting. Pecked out? Well, whatever a signal from an eye does.

Several of us talked. He piped in, and we'd read his words and respond. A couple of times he went into ALL-CAPS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!! He does that, Barbara said, when he gets mad at something or just wants to yell.

He's still writing his column in the Journal-
Bulletin. And he's working on two books, one a memoir, he said.

"Things coming apart. Family is terribly stressed. Everybody angry much of the time... Futility. Is that what some of us are feeling? That he's going to die before long anyway?" Words written for his journal in May 1994. Other words tell of his family's extraordinary devotion in seeing him through.

No sappiness. Life is real, life is earnest... That's the message at the Dickinsons', a sunny place where Brian looks out through big windows to the garden and the pool.

So it takes 10 to 12 hours, or even more, to write a column now. "I can still do my thing, which is writing; this has kept me more or less sane. I am an observer, and I can observe as well now as ever."

Those are words for us to keep. Read about Brian. Rejoice.