Bryan, Mike

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Bryan, Mike

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Attended Criswell College and Columbia University.

ADDRESSES: Agent—The Spieler Agency, 154 W. 57th St., Rm. 135, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Journalist and author. Worked at Golf magazine.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Mary Key) Journey from Ignorant Ridge: Stories and Pictures of Texas Schools in the 1800s, Texas Congress of Parents and Teachers (Austin, TX), 1976.

(With Keith Hernandez) If at First: A Season with the Mets, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1986.

Dogleg Madness (nonfiction), Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1988.

Baseball Lives: Men and Women of the Game Talk about Their Jobs, Their Lives, and the National Pastime, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Karen Mullarkey and others) Baseball in America: From Sandlots to Stadiums, a Portrait of Our National Passion by Fifty of Today's Leading Photographers, Collins (San Francisco, CA), 1991.

Chapter and Verse: A Skeptic Revisits Christianity, Random House (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Keith Hernandez) Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

Uneasy Rider: The Interstate Way of Knowledge, Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Cal Ripken, Jr.) The Only Way I Know, Viking (New York, NY), 1997.

The Afterword (novel), Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Golf aficionado and journalist Mike Bryan has distinguished himself with his interview-based books on topics ranging from sports to theology. Critics have commented on his accessible, conversational style. Referring to Bryan's treatment of evangelical Christianity in Chapter and Verse: A Skeptic Revisits Christianity, reviewer Michael Eric Dyson state in the New York Times Book Review that, "to his credit, Mr. Bryan does not simply report,… he skillfully weaves anecdote, narrative, class notes, and denominational history to create a balanced story." In Baseball Lives: Men and Women of the Game Talk about Their Jobs, Their Lives, and the National Pastime, Bryan gives equal play to vendors, coaches, players, and bus drivers. Only in the juxtaposition of situations and characters does the author's opinion come forth.

Early in his career, Bryan worked at Golf magazine, where he combined his passion for writing and his passion for the game of golf. Bryan eventually "threw away his clubs and quit his job at Golf magazine, hoping to make a clean break with the damnable sport. It didn't work," commented Booklist reviewer Bill Ott. Bryan's book Dogleg Madness is the result of these vicissitudes. Library Journal contributor Eugene J. Millich noted that Bryan "seeks to explain philosophically why so many people have an all-consuming passion to do a better job in hitting that tiny, little white ball." The book traces the professional golf tournament circuit from the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills in New York to the Ozone Country Club's Invitational in Texas. Publishers Weekly reviewer Genevieve Stuttaford called Dogleg Madness an "amiable ramble through the world of the golf tournament."

Baseball Lives contains fifty-four interviews, of which only three are with Major League players. The rest are with lesser-known but equally insightful characters such as the "batting practice pitcher, equipment manager, director of special events, and building and grounds superintendent," according to Stuttaford in Publishers Weekly. Stuttaford also remarked that the book is "well worth reading." In another book about baseball, Bryant collaborated with baseball legend Cal Ripken, Jr., on Ripken's autobiography, "The Only Way I Know."

Chapter and Verse marks a departure from Bryan's previous subject matter. A self-proclaimed agnostic, Bryan sets out on an intellectual mission to gain an understanding of the evangelical Christianity movement. According to Dyson, writing in the New York Times Book Review, Bryan "stocks his narrative with nifty capsules of biblical criticism, moral debates, and philosophical arguments." Library Journal reviewer Anna M. Donnelly described Chapter and Verse as "a fair-minded exploration of American evangelical Christianity" that is "refreshingly objective and free from shallow denigration." Booklist critic Ilene Cooper praised Bryan's attempt to dispel stereotypes, concluding that his account "certainly forces us to look beyond the popular image" of fundamentalist Christians who are often portrayed as "boobs at best, charlatans at worst."

The Afterword, Bryan's first novel, also deals with theological issues. The book is written as the afterword to a wildly popular, minutely analyzed, and entirely fictional novel, titled The Deity Next Door. In the fictional novel, a computer programmer discovers that he is a new incarnation of God, has divine powers, and can perform miracles, from levitating objects to healing the sick (one of the beneficiaries being his son, who is cured of cancer). The narrator of The Deity Next Door is also named Mike Bryan. In The Afterword, the real-life Bryan ponders questions of religion, faith, truth, and fiction.

The Afterword "is less a sendup of the publishing world than a high-toned meditation on Christian theology, spirituality, and the writing life," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Some reviewers criticized the convoluted metafictional construction of the book, while others accepted the fiction-within-a-fiction element as part of the novel's strength. "Bryan writes briskly and simply enough—though the breezy style is sometimes at odds with his purposes" commented the CompleteReview.com critic, while Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman called The Afterword "a piquantly good read."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 1988, review of Dogleg Madness, p. 1302; April 15, 1989, Wes Lukowsky, review of Baseball Lives: Men and Women of the Game Talk about Their Jobs, Their Lives, and the National Pastime, p. 1423; May 15, 1991, Ilene Cooper, review of Chapter and Verse: A Skeptic Revisits Christianity, p. 1756; March 15, 2003, Donna Seaman, review of The Afterword, p. 1273.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2003, review of The Afterword, p. 5.

Library Journal, April 15, 1988, Eugene J. Millich, review of Dogleg Madness, p. 91; April 1, 1989, Tom Reigstad, review of Baseball Lives, p. 94; June 1, 1991, Anna M. Donnelly, review of Chapter and Verse, p. 144.

New York Times Book Review, August 18, 1991, Michael Eric Dyson, "A Stranger within Their Gates," review of Chapter and Verse, p. 19.

Publishers Weekly, February 26, 1988, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Dogleg Madness, p. 189; February 10, 1989, Stuttaford, review of Baseball Lives, p. 62; March 3, 2003, review of The Afterword, p. 55.