Summary of novella 'The Professor':
'The Professor' unfolds its human drama against the backdrop of cosmic modern science that augurs universal extinction. Ordinary people here engage in an extraordinary fight for spiritual light when all the stars are fading into night.
Critical response to 'The Professor':
"[T]his is essentially a novel of ideas, and Christensen effectively and at times movingly shows that science and human values can coexist to the advantage of both."
— Ilene Cooper, 'Booklist Online'
Links for ordering 'The Professor'
The critics respond to'The Portals of Sheol' and Other Poems:
Sheol is the realm of the dead, and Christensen visits portals to the underworld that are both camouflaged and thrown wide open. Working in tandem with illustrator Jodi Dahlin, poet, academic, book critic, and novelist Christensen (Winning,2007) begins with a serene scene of a man comfortably seated in “lawn-chair leisure,” fishing in a reservoir. This introduces memories informed by piquant wit and thoughtful tenderness of the speaker’s grandfather, who loved to fish, and of his mother baking bread in yeast cans, her sons “hungry for hot handfuls” to devour while watching television cartoons punctuated by commercials for “loaves of air.” A drawing of a funeral in the rain leads to a beautifully balanced poem about a niece’s death, the first in a series of graceful elegies, some laced with medical metaphors. Christensen strides into the sphere of quantum physics and the atomic bomb, his coiled-tight outrage over nuclear recklessness turning his use of rhyme into molten satire. Religious reflections mix with critiques of our preference for the virtual over the actual, the frivolous and conniving over the profound. Christensen matches erudition with moral conscientiousness and warmth in his embrace of life and contemplation of death.
— Donna Seaman, Senior Editor, Booklist
The theme of the elegiac sonnets, satirical epigrams, and formal lyrics ofThe Portals of Sheolcan be best summarized by the Psalmist: “As for man, his days are like grass.” With wit and wisdom, Bryce Christensen punctures human pretensions and vanity, whether of arrogant scientists or hedonistic consumers, reminding us in poems like “Ultimate Grammar” that “our is, our are, our am—all melt away / To was and were, the markers of a grave,” and that such darkness can yet be vanquished by “the Easter dawn.”
--Paul Lake, poetry editor for First Things
Samuel Johnson once stated that “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” This well-known remark could serve as a touchstone forThe Portals of Sheol.If death is the one great certainty in life, then how should we live? In poem after poem deaths are examined -- those of relatives (the finality of earthly separation) and those of famous scientists (like Clausius) whose celebrated theories are going to be superseded one day just as surely as was the picture of the Ptolemaic cosmos. Such theories are weighed against their discoverers’ flaws as human beings -- Einstein’s abandonment of an illegitimate daughter or the lack of moral imaginationin the physicists who built the atomic bomb. Also pondered is the unavoidable agony of death of one A-bomb scientist in a hospital, a place where every man slips beyond all that science can do for him and dies alone. The superficialities of modern life are critiqued as well -- the soulless competition of the business world and the illusion of dream vacations on cruise ships. Of special note is “Bayside Immortals,” a poem about life in San Francisco where no new burials have been allowed within the city limits for over a century and in which natural law is ignored in a Peter Pan atmosphere of unreality. Against all of this are poems on traditional family life such a grandfather who fishes the old-fashioned way without the need of modern fish-locating machines. The book closes with the answer to the question of whether death makes life meaningless. This answer is found in sonnets on the Christian understanding of time where the LogosCreator’s I Am triumphs over death at dawn on Easter Day when the stone at the Tomb is rolled away and “tombstones hold their breath.” Bryce Christensen’s excellent poems -- all written in traditional forms, especially the sonnet -- are about what T.S. Eliot once called “the permanent things,” and on such things the best of these poems focus the mind wonderfully
--David Middleton, Alcee Fortier Professor at Nicholls State University, Emeritus
Christensen writes with striking precision about the pervasive power of family history and relationships, often contrasting these with metaphors of science's sad mutability and its irrelevance to the deepest human concerns.
-Dennis R. Perry, author of Hitchcock and Poe: The Legacy of Delight and Terror (Scarecrow)
A gifted literary craftsman who is impelled by a deeply humane sensitivity and sympathy.
--George A. Panichas, editor,Modern Age: A Quarterly Review
Bryce Christensen weaves the threads of life into a compelling, cohesive whole--- a tellurian tapestry born of experience. His loom is precise, his technique faithful, and his trajectory true.
--Coke Newell, lyricist forBox of Rocks(Gallinipper Records)
Winning (Whiskey Creek Press, 2007):
In the small town of Dilthon, Wyoming, high-school football is religion and the local football coach, Brad Porter, is god. But Coach Porter is a cruel deity, so fiercely determined to win that he drives his vulnerable place kicker, Alasdair Pittman, to suicide. Yet when his recklessness costs his own son his life, Coach Porter turns to his war-scarred uncle for guidance--and redirects his energies to a sport devoid of glamour: cross-country running. However, Coach Porter never expected the new sport to attract Alasdair Pittman's brother, Anson, an athlete needing help with far more than his stride. Who will win in this unexpected new contest? And what will winning mean?
What critics are saying about the novel Winning:
Powerfully written with in-depth characterization, Winning is itself a winner. Christensen’s philosophical style will appeal to all readers, along with prose delivered with a luring cadence that at times comes very close to poetic. A poignant, thought-provoking story providing a galvanizing look at family dynamics, inner struggles, and the impetus behind certain driven behaviors, this book will hold the reader’s attention until the end.
--Christy Tillery French,Midwest Book Review
. . .Part war story, part family saga, part coming-of-age drama . . . Christensen's meditation on love and loss, hope and despair, and winning and losing is both sensitive and insightful. The 'softening' of the hero may remind sports-fiction fans of Mark Harris' classicBang the Drum Slowly.
--Mary Frances Wilkens, American Library Association Booklist
I read the whole book in one day (how could one quit?).The word 'riveting' comes to mind. The style of writing is captivating and the depth of the lessons learned from the story is amazing. A beautiful creation!
--Janice Kapp Perry, lyricist/composer of "No Ordinary Man," "The Test," "One Perfect Day," and many other works
This moody book will appeal to fans of Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks. . . . [I]t tells a powerful story that will haunt you.
--Amanda Kilgore, Huntress' Book Reviews
Link to purchase Winning:
