How to be normal

Critic and lecturer Christman (Midwest Futures) examines in these searching essays his various identities--as white, heterosexual, and a "left-of-center Christian," to name a few--through the lens of their being unexceptional. Despite what the title suggests, this isn't a how-to, but rather an exploration of averageness in which Christman considers such subjects as racism, masculinity, artistry and religion. In "How to Be White," he surveys the "vast, flimsy" nature of "whiteness" and lambasts "shit-eating allyism," in which "a person of privilege suspends, at least rhetorically--most of the time it is only rhetorical--their... claim to basic self-respect or human rights." He critiques the prevalent usage of vague terms to assign value to art in "How to Be Cultured (II): Middlebrow," observing how in America, "None of us can enjoy our pleasures till we think someone wants us not to have them." Christman is at his sharpest when analyzing religion, as seen in "How to Be Religious (II): Fundamentalism," in which he reflects, "What growing up fundamentalist helped me learn early on, is how terribly wrong you can be while thinking very hard." While there are moments in which Christman doesn't sufficiently articulate his line of thinking, his style is, for the most part, cogent and on-point. It's a probing and provocative collection. (Feb.)

Erudite riffs on race, religion, masculinity, and other contentious subjects. The title of Christman's second book is facetious. "Normal," he knows, is both unrealistic and pretty much nonexistent at the individual level, a point that's clearer now that Covid-19 has wildly disrupted "our little attempts that we make at building a home in this world." However, the title of this collection of informed, inviting essays hints at a common theme: A more stable society requires challenging the pieties and presumptions we bring to touchy subjects. It's no easy task, and Christman acknowledges his own struggles. In "How To Be a Man," he skewers acculturated masculinity's "abstract rage to protect" as sexist and borderline racist, but he concedes how his own actions have implicated him. In the strongest, most nuanced piece, "How To Be White," the author voices skepticism about anti-racist jargon (which often leads to what he calls "shit-eating allyism") and exposes the false premises of Whiteness while recognizing how toxic the "labyrinth" of racism is. Christman delivers his scholarship with a certain humility, but he gives no ground when it comes to injustice, and he's often witty. Recalling evangelical hand-wringing about alleged Satanic backward messages on rock albums, he quips, "If you wish to be offended, from any number of perspectives…by Zeppelin, that's easy enough to manage with the record playing forward." Navigating difficult social challenges, he argues, requires eschewing absolutism and cultivating a certain ambivalence. Religion is more meaningful, he writes, when you stop thinking about God as a "personal mood improver"; marriage matters not because of high-flown vows but "because you have met a person interesting enough that, death being inevitable, you'd prefer to experience it with them." A crisp set of essays that bring big social and cultural debates to a human level. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.