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How to Be Normal
Building on themes explored in his first book—specifically the notion of normality, or banality, or just plain "averageness" as it relates to Midwesternness and other modes of identity—Phil Christman here writes from the intersection of his own various identities: Democratic Socialist, antiracist, prison abolitionist, former fundamentalist, striving feminist. Essays include "How To Be a Man," "How To Be White," "How to Be Religious," "How To Be Married," "How To Be Midwestern," and more, including brilliant analyses of middlebrow culture, bad movies, Marc Fisher, and Christian fundamentalism. With exquisite attention to syntax and prose, Christman unites these essays by his radical openness to inquiry. In the hands of this probing, witty writer, even the most seemingly "normal" subjects blossom into explorations laced with curiosity and delight.
A book that speaks to lovers of cultural criticism and gorgeous prose that engages with big ideas and small.
A book that speaks to lovers of cultural criticism and gorgeous prose that engages with big ideas and small.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published February 1, 2022
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1094 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
December 12, 2022
loved it. the essay on mark fisher was thoughtful and nuanced. the film criticism essays were sharp and fun. the essays on faith were wonderful. the essay on marriage was beautiful. if you’re into personal essays about culture, faith, and love, you should try this book.
March 2, 2023
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Phil Christman is perhaps my favorite essayist, and this collection is just superb. I don’t know how many times I’ve read his essay on masculinity (included here as “How to Be a Man”), but it’s been one of the three or four essays that has truly fed and watered the roots of my own self-understanding.
I’m pleased to say that there are even better essays within, particularly his essay on faith and religious fundamentalism. Our backgrounds in religious fundamentalism are different and similar enough for it to feel like I’m reading about an alternate universe version of my childhood: “One was enjoined to trust in the mercy, for one’s own part, absolutely, and to expect the wrath of the judgment on any other person, equally absolutely. It may be due to my lack of Keatsian negative capability, my yokelish desire to make sense of things, that I can’t imagine how this schema works for anyone.” And yet, growing alongside the fear and contradiction and outright lies of a fundamentalist world, there can still be found faith, hope, and love. (Christman calls himself, “perhaps inevitably after all that confusion . . . religious these days but not spiritual.”)
Often when I read his essays I feel like I’m lost in a dark forest with a half-working flashlight; my own ignorance and smallness show up big time. But he has a way of writing that saves face, as if to say, “we all feel that way in differences of degrees, not kinds.” And then my world expands, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. His essays on bad movies and “middlebrow” culture are perfect examples of this.
Other times, or rather, often simultaneously, his essays are poignant and surprisingly touching, such as his essay on marriage. And it helps that he is just really funny, too. “Being normal” has never felt so strange and terrifying and maybe even a little beautiful.
Phil Christman is perhaps my favorite essayist, and this collection is just superb. I don’t know how many times I’ve read his essay on masculinity (included here as “How to Be a Man”), but it’s been one of the three or four essays that has truly fed and watered the roots of my own self-understanding.
I’m pleased to say that there are even better essays within, particularly his essay on faith and religious fundamentalism. Our backgrounds in religious fundamentalism are different and similar enough for it to feel like I’m reading about an alternate universe version of my childhood: “One was enjoined to trust in the mercy, for one’s own part, absolutely, and to expect the wrath of the judgment on any other person, equally absolutely. It may be due to my lack of Keatsian negative capability, my yokelish desire to make sense of things, that I can’t imagine how this schema works for anyone.” And yet, growing alongside the fear and contradiction and outright lies of a fundamentalist world, there can still be found faith, hope, and love. (Christman calls himself, “perhaps inevitably after all that confusion . . . religious these days but not spiritual.”)
Often when I read his essays I feel like I’m lost in a dark forest with a half-working flashlight; my own ignorance and smallness show up big time. But he has a way of writing that saves face, as if to say, “we all feel that way in differences of degrees, not kinds.” And then my world expands, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. His essays on bad movies and “middlebrow” culture are perfect examples of this.
Other times, or rather, often simultaneously, his essays are poignant and surprisingly touching, such as his essay on marriage. And it helps that he is just really funny, too. “Being normal” has never felt so strange and terrifying and maybe even a little beautiful.
February 21, 2022
4.25/5. A scintillating collection of provocative (as in thought-provoking) essays. Every page teems with insight imbued with Christman’s personal experiences. Though it meanders at times, I found many passages uncommonly moving. Here’s one:
“I try not to thrust limiting assumptions on other people; I try to let people surprise me. I mostly fail at these things, and sometimes they feel irrelevant in a historical moment when so much of the evil around us is unsubtle and simple. But by that same token, if there is any hope for those who live in such a moment, it is precisely where, to my mind, literature and beauty have always resided: in the part that is an obvious, in the part you can’t see though it is right in front of you, in the calm mystery of what is.”
That’s half of the last paragraph of the book. A lovely passage in its own right, it also functions as a kind of hermeneutic key for everything that precedes it, summarizing as it does Christman’s basic framework for life and for writing. He’s a self-described left-of-center Christian (something I didn’t know when I started reading), but he frequently transgresses propositional association with those categories. His fear of the obvious and the cultural autopilot many of us live by is his greatest strength, an impulse that carries him through discussions of religious conservatism, antiracism, masculinity, and the politics de jeur with nuance, humor, and depth (don’t worry, it’s not all hot-button). That is not to say he is countercultural in the broad sense (an utterly meaningless designation). He’s just himself—a brilliant and understated writer deserving of our attention.
“I try not to thrust limiting assumptions on other people; I try to let people surprise me. I mostly fail at these things, and sometimes they feel irrelevant in a historical moment when so much of the evil around us is unsubtle and simple. But by that same token, if there is any hope for those who live in such a moment, it is precisely where, to my mind, literature and beauty have always resided: in the part that is an obvious, in the part you can’t see though it is right in front of you, in the calm mystery of what is.”
That’s half of the last paragraph of the book. A lovely passage in its own right, it also functions as a kind of hermeneutic key for everything that precedes it, summarizing as it does Christman’s basic framework for life and for writing. He’s a self-described left-of-center Christian (something I didn’t know when I started reading), but he frequently transgresses propositional association with those categories. His fear of the obvious and the cultural autopilot many of us live by is his greatest strength, an impulse that carries him through discussions of religious conservatism, antiracism, masculinity, and the politics de jeur with nuance, humor, and depth (don’t worry, it’s not all hot-button). That is not to say he is countercultural in the broad sense (an utterly meaningless designation). He’s just himself—a brilliant and understated writer deserving of our attention.
April 22, 2022
Christman is one of my favorite writers and he does not disappoint with this collection. He says upfront this isn’t actually a self help book. I understand the need for the disclaimer, but for me there was something very helpful in processing these topics along with him. Here’s just a sampling of some of my favorite Christman lines.
On fundamentalism - “What growing up fundamentalist helped me learn early on, is how terribly wrong you can be while thinking very hard.”
On being religious - “You arrived at your deep belief in human rights, in class struggle, in science - the lawn-sign sense of the term - more or less the same way I arrived at my left-of-center Christianity: sloppily.”
“Maybe you’re staking your life on something different. That’s okay. If I’m right, you are loved for far more than your ability to be right about stuff. If I’m wrong, maybe you’ll be right. But we’re both, so far as we know, down here in the dark, making little leaps of faith in every direction.”
On marriage - “We’ve had to kiss each other with closed hearts before, and we’ll do it again. Very young people think of this as a kind of treason to the self, but actually it’s the opposite. It’s refusing to let todays mood be the final vote on what you are to each other. It’s losing the vision but caring enough about it to give it time to come back.”
On fundamentalism - “What growing up fundamentalist helped me learn early on, is how terribly wrong you can be while thinking very hard.”
On being religious - “You arrived at your deep belief in human rights, in class struggle, in science - the lawn-sign sense of the term - more or less the same way I arrived at my left-of-center Christianity: sloppily.”
“Maybe you’re staking your life on something different. That’s okay. If I’m right, you are loved for far more than your ability to be right about stuff. If I’m wrong, maybe you’ll be right. But we’re both, so far as we know, down here in the dark, making little leaps of faith in every direction.”
On marriage - “We’ve had to kiss each other with closed hearts before, and we’ll do it again. Very young people think of this as a kind of treason to the self, but actually it’s the opposite. It’s refusing to let todays mood be the final vote on what you are to each other. It’s losing the vision but caring enough about it to give it time to come back.”
September 23, 2024
A truly delightful essay collection that perfectly balances humor, rigorous introspection, lightheartedness, sincerity, pop-cultural fluency, and deep intellectual commitments. I especially liked the “How to Be Cultured” essays, which discuss high/low/middlebrow culture, poptimism, and what it means to be an intellectual in contemporary America. The “How to Be a Man” and “How to Be White” essays are also refreshingly rigorous and more thought-provoking than 99% of the writing out there on masculinity and whiteness.
Christman is also just an incredible writer—I found myself highlighting huge swaths of this book because there was so much good, interesting, elegantly expressed ideas! He includes some reading recommendations at the end related to activism and writing as well.
Christman is also just an incredible writer—I found myself highlighting huge swaths of this book because there was so much good, interesting, elegantly expressed ideas! He includes some reading recommendations at the end related to activism and writing as well.
August 17, 2025
Lovingly written, vulnerable essays on a range of subjects that concern me: Christianity, social justice, love, art, Mark Fisher. More discursive and probing than philosophically rigorous, but that works well here.
November 10, 2024
I loved this. Gonna be on the lookout for more of his work! Included the best essay I’ve maybe ever read on masculinity.
August 9, 2022
This book disappointingly did not tell me how to be normal. It did, however, provide a collection of thoughtful and insightful (if slightly meandering at times) essays and reflections on disparate topics. I found many (uncomfortable) resonances in the essays on faith and growing up fundamentalist. The essay on marriage is perhaps my favourite in the collection (in which he tells single people that ‘settling’ is a ‘an incredibly contemptuous thing to do to another human being’). Christman is self-aware but not cloyingly self-deprecating. He explains without insulting, is curious and funny without belittling, and disarms without bombast. He is one of my favourite writers of late; and I imagine we could be friends.
November 29, 2021
This feels like a journal of a person processing the fevers of a slightly aimless society. Incredibly beautiful writing that doesn’t lead to any hardline answers or conjectures and a reckoning of what is and isn’t personal and how the line is murky, at best. Some sections of essays might go a little too far down the rabbit hole or sometimes circle an idea too much, but overall, I really enjoyed it.
Thanks Belt and Phil for sending me an eARC of this book that releases Feb 1, 2022.
Thanks Belt and Phil for sending me an eARC of this book that releases Feb 1, 2022.
March 30, 2023
I try to give five stars to folks who write vulnerably and honestly about their personal life. And Christman does this throughout. Energetic yet measured, his essays also have a way of entering some ordinary spaces (e.g., being married, being midwestern) but entering at an angle that makes you take a second and third look at those same things.
April 17, 2022
Reads sort of like Marilynne Robinson essays, except by a near-millenial. I couldn't put it down, quite frankly.
July 3, 2023
All these essays rock.
April 16, 2022
Something I've been thinking a lot about is the importance of well-established first principles and trust when having difficult conversations. The past decade or so of political discourse has made a lot of discussions about the topics Christman writes about in this collection (whiteness, maleness, culture, religion) fraught and, there's no sense in pretending otherwise, risky. The level of care needed to stray away from unacceptable boundaries is high enough among friends, but is justifiably stultifying among strangers. My knowledge that my partner is a committed feminist makes discussions about the specifics and practicalities of "cancel culture" possible in a way that it isn't with strangers.
That's what made this collection refreshing. Christman's commitments to feminism, anti-racism, activism and social justice, religious tolerance, etc. are never in doubt, and it makes his gentle but firm challenges of unearned orthodoxies in all of those topics all the more rewarding. Maybe that sounds toothless. Maybe it's the qualification necessary for a 40-year old white straight mid-western Christian to offer cultural criticism in 2022 that isn't embarrassingly out of touch.
The overriding theme of these pieces is a rebuttal of "normal" ideas about normal or hegemonic concepts. That masculinity allows men confidence and security in their bodies as opposed to the opposite; that most or all white people feel solidarity in an effable "whiteness"; that fundamentalist religious thought is the product of mindlessness. But the result is a group of essays with the "courage" to approach banality thoughtfully and originally. The prose is beautiful and there are constant memorable sentences. For example, the most concise description of poptimism I've ever read: "Why have we settled for this strange cultural compromise—lowbrow genres, done with middlebrow earnestness, in revolt against a thoroughly defunded highbrow regime?"
The tone of a 2022-released book of essays about being a straight white middle-aged religious man would seem to be basically a coin flip: either defensive, aggrieved, and angry, or simpering and deferential. How to Be Normal is neither. It's a thoughtful and reflective collection that offers a cohesive and always empathetic perspective on banality.
That's what made this collection refreshing. Christman's commitments to feminism, anti-racism, activism and social justice, religious tolerance, etc. are never in doubt, and it makes his gentle but firm challenges of unearned orthodoxies in all of those topics all the more rewarding. Maybe that sounds toothless. Maybe it's the qualification necessary for a 40-year old white straight mid-western Christian to offer cultural criticism in 2022 that isn't embarrassingly out of touch.
The overriding theme of these pieces is a rebuttal of "normal" ideas about normal or hegemonic concepts. That masculinity allows men confidence and security in their bodies as opposed to the opposite; that most or all white people feel solidarity in an effable "whiteness"; that fundamentalist religious thought is the product of mindlessness. But the result is a group of essays with the "courage" to approach banality thoughtfully and originally. The prose is beautiful and there are constant memorable sentences. For example, the most concise description of poptimism I've ever read: "Why have we settled for this strange cultural compromise—lowbrow genres, done with middlebrow earnestness, in revolt against a thoroughly defunded highbrow regime?"
The tone of a 2022-released book of essays about being a straight white middle-aged religious man would seem to be basically a coin flip: either defensive, aggrieved, and angry, or simpering and deferential. How to Be Normal is neither. It's a thoughtful and reflective collection that offers a cohesive and always empathetic perspective on banality.
July 15, 2023
Christman is an incredible writer. I think that this book particularly resonantes with me because of growing up in evangelical fundamentalist contexts and growing out of that in ways that increasingly depend on mystery and uncertainty. Christman is possibly one of the most insightful cultural critics alive in the United States, all the while possessing a refreshing humility and vulnerability. This was a phenomenal collection of essays.
August 19, 2023
I started How to Be Normal on vacation and soon found myself reading lines from it aloud to my family - sometimes for the interesting insights, sometimes to explain why I was laughing to myself. These essays cover a lot of ground, from masculinity to his fondness for bad movies to being a Christian at odds with his family's fundamentalism, and they do so with keen intelligence and vulnerability.
July 4, 2023
"Most of all, I see the more than there is in her that is in her. As she sees the more than there is in me that is in me. We will help each other remember it, till the error that is time is corrected and all those flickers stay in place."
“I try not to thrust limiting assumptions on other people; I try to let people surprise me. I mostly fail at these things, and sometimes they feel irrelevant in a historical moment when so much of the evil around us is unsubtle and simple. But by that same token, if there is any hope for those who live in such a moment, it is precisely where, to my mind, literature and beauty have always resided: in the part that is an obvious, in the part you can’t see though it is right in front of you, in the calm mystery of what is.”
A wonderful little collection of essays on a variety of topics near to me. "how to be married", as someone who has been in a long-term relationship where I have all but felt married for much of it, hit me hard in the best possible way. "how to be white" was a lovely, much needed deconstruction of the failings of neoliberal antiracism from a radical perspective. "how to be religious: fundamentalism" is the best distillation of the fundamentalist christian worldview I've ever read, one that strikes at the core elements of that belief system and lays bare how those elements create the fertile ground that conspiratororial thinking has taken root in during the past years. Overall, I highly recommend this slim, punchy volume.
“I try not to thrust limiting assumptions on other people; I try to let people surprise me. I mostly fail at these things, and sometimes they feel irrelevant in a historical moment when so much of the evil around us is unsubtle and simple. But by that same token, if there is any hope for those who live in such a moment, it is precisely where, to my mind, literature and beauty have always resided: in the part that is an obvious, in the part you can’t see though it is right in front of you, in the calm mystery of what is.”
A wonderful little collection of essays on a variety of topics near to me. "how to be married", as someone who has been in a long-term relationship where I have all but felt married for much of it, hit me hard in the best possible way. "how to be white" was a lovely, much needed deconstruction of the failings of neoliberal antiracism from a radical perspective. "how to be religious: fundamentalism" is the best distillation of the fundamentalist christian worldview I've ever read, one that strikes at the core elements of that belief system and lays bare how those elements create the fertile ground that conspiratororial thinking has taken root in during the past years. Overall, I highly recommend this slim, punchy volume.
October 14, 2022
“If you need a YouTube video to help you be a man, then in some essential sense, simply BEING one is already off the table.” Phil Christman, professor and writer, cultural critic, offers this observation in his entry titled “How to Be a Man,” one of ten entries in this 2022 publication.
Compact in print and pages, Christman is also compact in content. Christman, who has had work appearing in the Christian Century and in Plough, among other publications, writes of his own experience and his observations and reflection on U.S. culture. “I take it that every person’s mind is a sort of junk shop full of beautiful and terrible ideas and images and possibilities and phantasms and all of their opposites, which we have absorbed from our world. …You have to make the best thing you can from your junk shop.”
Christman’s book was both thought-provoking and offputtingly intimidating for me. My criticism of the book is that Christman’s frequent references to writers, scholars, movies, and music, largely unknown to me, moved much of his landscape into esoteric territory. At least for this reader.
Compact in print and pages, Christman is also compact in content. Christman, who has had work appearing in the Christian Century and in Plough, among other publications, writes of his own experience and his observations and reflection on U.S. culture. “I take it that every person’s mind is a sort of junk shop full of beautiful and terrible ideas and images and possibilities and phantasms and all of their opposites, which we have absorbed from our world. …You have to make the best thing you can from your junk shop.”
Christman’s book was both thought-provoking and offputtingly intimidating for me. My criticism of the book is that Christman’s frequent references to writers, scholars, movies, and music, largely unknown to me, moved much of his landscape into esoteric territory. At least for this reader.
January 14, 2025
Coming out of the pandemic and settling into the pervasive brain-rot of social media it's clear to Christman that “we are ruled, locally and nationally and internationally, by greedy and silly people." In the face of that he grapples with his own identity as a cig-gendered, heterosexual, white man. In the chapter "How to Be a Man" he struggles with our culture's demands of masculinity where “your choices are between stick figures, between Death Wish or Animal House, the Batman of Christian Bale or the Batman of Adam West.” In both cases he feels like an imposter, covered in flop sweat. In "How to Be White" he decries the prevalence of "shit-eating allysim" and how whiteness toggles between "monstrosity and banality".
Despite the title it's not a how-to manual, more a state of the union infused with warmth, a self-deprecating precision, and a slight bit of Christian sentiment that never feels hectoring or proselytizing. That warmth is what is going to have me revisit some of the essays here. They feel worth the extra time and consideration.
Despite the title it's not a how-to manual, more a state of the union infused with warmth, a self-deprecating precision, and a slight bit of Christian sentiment that never feels hectoring or proselytizing. That warmth is what is going to have me revisit some of the essays here. They feel worth the extra time and consideration.
September 24, 2024
A mind-blowing, heartfelt collection of essays about the different manifestations of mundanity and the mystery they keep. I particularly enjoyed "How to Be a Man," "How to be White," and "How to Be Married," but every essay is truly gorgeous. What I love most is how forward Christman is with his opinions--the problem with so much cultural criticism these days is that writers ask questions without truly committing to any answers. Christman commits to his opinions and more. He respects his own experiences and his own perspective. The result is an inimitable book that will stay with me for a long time.
June 19, 2022
Some of the most unexpectedly moving and refreshing cultural criticism I've read in a long time! I can't remember how I found this book but I will absolutely be reading "Midwest Futures." Favorite essays were on Marriage and Fundamentalism, least favorite was on the Middlebrow. He at one point writes that reading Mark Fisher was like taking a walk with your smartest friend, and that's how I felt reading this book.
July 10, 2023
I suspect that, all things being equal, Christman and I would have disagreements about a few things, but on the whole we would get along in a majority of aspects. He hits high points for me on a variety of subjects, even when I feel his writing strays into the haze of philosophy (usually French) that has plagued my brain since grad school. As he states, this not a ‘how-to’ manual, yet there is plenty of advice to take away and share.
April 8, 2025
This is my kind of book, I love a hodge podge of thoughtful essays thrown together. That said, I only engaged deeply with about half of them which is fewer than I would like. I don't agree with his take on everything (true of everyone), but when he gets something right I found it to be well said. I also generally enjoyed his sense of humor and intellect. A self-aware, intelligent writer who doesn't take himself too seriously will reliably get 4-5 stars from me.
November 23, 2024
This was a challenging read for me because some of Christman's references just went way over my head. I had to re-read paragraphs multiple times to fully understand them, but I came to enjoy certain essays, especially the ones on culture, faith (from his perspective as an ex-Fundamentalist), marriage, and the Midwest.
February 12, 2025
I picked this up based on a positive review from a substacker I follow but I was pretty disappointed with it. I found it very uneven. The author made some points that I thought were clever, but many others that I thought were trite, obvious, or wrong. The essays were generally not well structured and I was often surprised by where we ended up.
January 7, 2025
Haven't (knowingly) read any of the man's writings before so this was a pleasant surprise. Going to keep an eye out now!
(shout-out to Celine Nguyen's blog for the recommendation!)
(also lol that his name is literally Christman)
(shout-out to Celine Nguyen's blog for the recommendation!)
(also lol that his name is literally Christman)
March 24, 2025
Love this guy's writing, I keep up with all his substack posts. Greatly enjoyed the essay on highbrow and lowbrow culture, skimmed and skipped various bits on Christianity and fundamentalism which is fine. Another one that I'd enjoy having a physical copy of.
Read
February 19, 2022Review forthcoming.
interested-in
February 28, 2022I think I knew him a long time ago...
July 6, 2022
Phil Christman has this knack for writing really smart, insightful essays in an almost conversational style. One of my favorite essayists right now.
August 23, 2022
One of my favorite writers right now. The essay on marriage was a particular highlight.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews