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Interior States: Essays
Winner of The Believer Book Award for Nonfiction
"Meghan O'Gieblyn's deep and searching essays are written with a precise sort of skepticism and a slight ache in the heart. A first-rate and riveting collection."
--Lorrie Moore
A fresh, acute, and even profound collection that centers around two core (and related) issues of American faith, in general and the specific forms Christianity takes in particular; and the challenges of living in the Midwest when culture is felt to be elsewhere.
What does it mean to be a believing Christian and a Midwesterner in an increasingly secular America where the cultural capital is retreating to both coasts? The critic and essayist Meghan O'Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka "Flyover Country." She writes of her "existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still," and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the fifteen superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection. The subjects of these essays range from the rebranding (as it were) of Hell in contemporary Christian culture ("Hell"), a theme park devoted to the concept of intelligent design ("Species of Origin"), the paradoxes of Christian Rock ("Sniffing Glue"), Henry Ford's reconstructed pioneer town of Greenfield Village and its mixed messages ("Midwest World"), and the strange convergences of Christian eschatology and the digital so-called Singularity ("Ghosts in the Cloud"). Meghan O'Gieblyn stands in relation to her native Midwest as Joan Didion stands in relation to California - which is to say a whole-hearted lover, albeit one riven with ambivalence at the same time.
"Meghan O'Gieblyn's deep and searching essays are written with a precise sort of skepticism and a slight ache in the heart. A first-rate and riveting collection."
--Lorrie Moore
A fresh, acute, and even profound collection that centers around two core (and related) issues of American faith, in general and the specific forms Christianity takes in particular; and the challenges of living in the Midwest when culture is felt to be elsewhere.
What does it mean to be a believing Christian and a Midwesterner in an increasingly secular America where the cultural capital is retreating to both coasts? The critic and essayist Meghan O'Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka "Flyover Country." She writes of her "existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still," and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the fifteen superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection. The subjects of these essays range from the rebranding (as it were) of Hell in contemporary Christian culture ("Hell"), a theme park devoted to the concept of intelligent design ("Species of Origin"), the paradoxes of Christian Rock ("Sniffing Glue"), Henry Ford's reconstructed pioneer town of Greenfield Village and its mixed messages ("Midwest World"), and the strange convergences of Christian eschatology and the digital so-called Singularity ("Ghosts in the Cloud"). Meghan O'Gieblyn stands in relation to her native Midwest as Joan Didion stands in relation to California - which is to say a whole-hearted lover, albeit one riven with ambivalence at the same time.
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 9, 2018
65 people are currently reading
2121 people want to read
About the author
Meghan O'Gieblyn
6 books223 followersI write essays, features, and criticism for Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, Bookforum, n+1, The Point, The Believer, The Guardian, The New York Times, Paris Review Daily, and other publications. I am the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes. One of my essays was included in The Best American Essays 2017; another was a finalist for a 2019 National Magazine Award. My first book, Interior States, won the 2018 Believer Book Award for nonfiction. I also write an advice column for Wired. My book God, Human, Animal, Machine will be published by Doubleday on August 24, 2021.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 123 reviews
April 6, 2019
This caught my eye in LaGuardia airport and I bought on impulse. A quick scan of the chapter titles quickly revealed this was about subjects of deep interest to me: Living and loving in the conservative Midwest, wrestling out of a fundamentalist religious upbringing and fresh views on how and why our states have turned (politically) red. Though at least 20 years my junior, this author hit on many of my cylinders and writes the way I would have (had I chosen that path in my youth, and had I been able). This is a remarkable set of essays, well researched and beautifully written. They were deeply satisfying to me as they covered topics of interest (I considered the small Wheaton college in IL, choosing another even more conservative) with accuracy and respect. There is no scathing retribution here – we all have to live with our families, even when they choose despicable leaders and justify their intellectually suspect ends with profoundly amoral means. (did you detect that shot of vitriol in your warm milk? That is typical of a certain brand of Midwesterner). I travel to the coasts often, mostly eastern, but I’ve lived chunks of my life in the same states as this author (Michigan, Illinois). She’s currently in Madison WI, one of the little blue enclaves we are known for in an otherwise sea of red. And she parts the waters nicely. O’Gieblyn writes personal stories, but is fair-minded and sees folly in both sides of arguments – she is not partisan, which works for me. I must laud her for writing about the authentic trauma of being taught at a very young age about the horrors of hell and damnation – the psychological scars can be lifelong and detrimental to a healthy moral and spiritual life.
O’Gieblyn understands the seduction of the fundamentalism worldview in modern times (pp. 76-77): “As someone who grew up immersed in creationism, I never thought about whether it was an attractive worldview- it was simply the Truth. Ironically, it was only after I stopped believing in God- for unrelated reasons – that I began to regard creationism as a deeply seductive belief system. After I left the faith, I read Richard Feynman and Stephen Jay Gould, and as I confronted the specter of a universe determined by phenomena as bizarre as virtual particles and Boltzmann brains, I felt the pang of nostalgia for the elegance of the Genesis narrative. The truth is that even when it’s dressed up in pseudoscientific jargon, creationism’s appeal lies in its delicious simplicity. It presents the kind of tidy framework physicists dream about: a unified theory of everything- and one that hasn’t been revised in six thousand years. By the time I got around to the books of Brian Greene, by contrast, people were already debating whether string theory had been debunked by the Large Hadron Collider.”
Unbeknownst to the author, her writing about Michigan foreshadows the pending 2016 presidential election (p. 115): “Nostalgia almost always stems from an anxiety about modernity: the fear that progress is happening too fast….Here it in Michigan, it’s hard not to sense that something fundamental shifted, or perhaps snapped, during the recession…during the years that followed, when the news touted the ‘recovery’ of the market while people throughout the state continued to lose their homes and their jobs. Any lingering belief that Detroit stood as a symbol of the nation …was shattered in 2013 when the city declared bankruptcy the same week the Dow Jones and the S&P closed at record highs.”
Perplexed about how literalists, even our presidents and VPs, use biblical scripture to justify geopolitical actions? Then this is the book for you, an article from 2015, an account largely missed by journalists who don’t understand these roots (pp. 134-135): “Years later, George W. Bush apparently believed that these empires referred to Iraq and Afghanistan. ‘Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East,’ he told French president Jacques Chirac in a 2003 phone call, appealing to their common Christian faith as a basis for an invasion. ‘ This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase His people’s enemies before a new age begins.’…American believers see themselves as guardians of earthly virtue, charged to ‘occupy’ the Earth until Christ’s return.”
I found this especially poignant, precisely true and unflinching: O’Gieblyn nakedly reveals her personal journey when her intellect shatters the worldview of her youth and she emerges defenseless and at risk for a period (p. 186): “At that time, I would have insisted that my rituals of self-abase- drinking, pills, the impulse to put my body in danger in ways I now know were deliberate- were merely efforts to escape; that I was contending, however clumsily, with the overwhelming despair at the absence of God. But at least one piece of that despair came from the knowledge that my body was no longer a sacred vessel; that it was not a temple for the Holy Spirit, formed in the image of God and intended to carry me into eternity; that my body was matter, and any harm I did to it was only aiding the unstoppable process of entropy for which it was destined. To confront this reality after believing otherwise is to experience perhaps the deepest sense of loss we are capable of as humans. It’s not just about coming to terms with the fact that you will die. It has something to do with suspecting there is no difference between your human flesh and the plastic seat of the train. It has to do with the inability to watch our reflection appear and vanish in a window without coming to believe you are identical with it.”
The last chapter (Exiled) is the only piece not previously published, and explains much to those unfamiliar with the fundamentalist worldview and its contamination in GOP politics, manifest in our current VP most recently, and the persistence of its power (p. 215): “Such assumptions rest on the modern, liberal notion that history is an endless arc of progress and that religion, like all medieval holdovers, will slowly vanish from the public sphere. But evangelicals themselves regard history as the Old Testament authors do, as a cycle of captivity, deliverance, and restoration, a process that is sometimes propelled by unlikely forces- pagan strongmen, despotic kings. This narrative lies deep in the DNA of American evangelicalism and is one of the reasons it has remained such a nimble and adaptive component of the Republican Party.”
O’Gieblyn understands the seduction of the fundamentalism worldview in modern times (pp. 76-77): “As someone who grew up immersed in creationism, I never thought about whether it was an attractive worldview- it was simply the Truth. Ironically, it was only after I stopped believing in God- for unrelated reasons – that I began to regard creationism as a deeply seductive belief system. After I left the faith, I read Richard Feynman and Stephen Jay Gould, and as I confronted the specter of a universe determined by phenomena as bizarre as virtual particles and Boltzmann brains, I felt the pang of nostalgia for the elegance of the Genesis narrative. The truth is that even when it’s dressed up in pseudoscientific jargon, creationism’s appeal lies in its delicious simplicity. It presents the kind of tidy framework physicists dream about: a unified theory of everything- and one that hasn’t been revised in six thousand years. By the time I got around to the books of Brian Greene, by contrast, people were already debating whether string theory had been debunked by the Large Hadron Collider.”
Unbeknownst to the author, her writing about Michigan foreshadows the pending 2016 presidential election (p. 115): “Nostalgia almost always stems from an anxiety about modernity: the fear that progress is happening too fast….Here it in Michigan, it’s hard not to sense that something fundamental shifted, or perhaps snapped, during the recession…during the years that followed, when the news touted the ‘recovery’ of the market while people throughout the state continued to lose their homes and their jobs. Any lingering belief that Detroit stood as a symbol of the nation …was shattered in 2013 when the city declared bankruptcy the same week the Dow Jones and the S&P closed at record highs.”
Perplexed about how literalists, even our presidents and VPs, use biblical scripture to justify geopolitical actions? Then this is the book for you, an article from 2015, an account largely missed by journalists who don’t understand these roots (pp. 134-135): “Years later, George W. Bush apparently believed that these empires referred to Iraq and Afghanistan. ‘Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East,’ he told French president Jacques Chirac in a 2003 phone call, appealing to their common Christian faith as a basis for an invasion. ‘ This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase His people’s enemies before a new age begins.’…American believers see themselves as guardians of earthly virtue, charged to ‘occupy’ the Earth until Christ’s return.”
I found this especially poignant, precisely true and unflinching: O’Gieblyn nakedly reveals her personal journey when her intellect shatters the worldview of her youth and she emerges defenseless and at risk for a period (p. 186): “At that time, I would have insisted that my rituals of self-abase- drinking, pills, the impulse to put my body in danger in ways I now know were deliberate- were merely efforts to escape; that I was contending, however clumsily, with the overwhelming despair at the absence of God. But at least one piece of that despair came from the knowledge that my body was no longer a sacred vessel; that it was not a temple for the Holy Spirit, formed in the image of God and intended to carry me into eternity; that my body was matter, and any harm I did to it was only aiding the unstoppable process of entropy for which it was destined. To confront this reality after believing otherwise is to experience perhaps the deepest sense of loss we are capable of as humans. It’s not just about coming to terms with the fact that you will die. It has something to do with suspecting there is no difference between your human flesh and the plastic seat of the train. It has to do with the inability to watch our reflection appear and vanish in a window without coming to believe you are identical with it.”
The last chapter (Exiled) is the only piece not previously published, and explains much to those unfamiliar with the fundamentalist worldview and its contamination in GOP politics, manifest in our current VP most recently, and the persistence of its power (p. 215): “Such assumptions rest on the modern, liberal notion that history is an endless arc of progress and that religion, like all medieval holdovers, will slowly vanish from the public sphere. But evangelicals themselves regard history as the Old Testament authors do, as a cycle of captivity, deliverance, and restoration, a process that is sometimes propelled by unlikely forces- pagan strongmen, despotic kings. This narrative lies deep in the DNA of American evangelicalism and is one of the reasons it has remained such a nimble and adaptive component of the Republican Party.”
January 7, 2019
I kept trying to put Meghan O’Gieblyn in a box -- former Christian revealing weirdly oppressive childhood? Not quite. Secular intellectual intent on poling holes in Christian theology? No. Religious humanist extolling the beautiful intricacies of existence? Not exactly. Her essays defy categorization, and a collection of them, read back to back, is fascinating.
For me, the collection has a slow start. I was not as interested in O’Gieblyn's more regional musings, but this may be my own regional bias showing. In particular, "Contemporaries" seemed a little unaware of its own irony in terms of privilege. However, I'm really glad I didn't put this book down. The second half of the essays were brilliant.
In "A Species of Origin," O’Gieblyn visits a life-size Noah's Ark replica -- a bastion of conservatism, rife with opportunity for ridicule -- yet O’Gieblyn instead engages intellectually with the concept in a way that is both surprising and fascinating.
"On Subtlety" is a beautiful segmented essay that I'd like to use for my classes.
In "The End" and "Exiled," we see O’Gieblyn at her best when she examines the ways that remnants of Christian theology (particularly eschatology) seep their way into our political philosophies, not only in demonstrative ways, but in a more insidious manner.
I love how she refuses to dismiss or even poke fun at her evangelical past and instead embraces it as firm intellectual grounding for understanding American culture. I should mention that she's clear that she is no longer a Christian, but she is equally clear that her childhood and her time at Moody Bible Institute formed her in ways that are not antithetical to the way the rest of the U.S. grew up, at least ideologically. This is a perspective we almost never hear in literature, and it made me reconsider my own theological upbringing and its relevance to our national conversation.
Finally, my absolute favorite essay in the collection is "Sniffing Glue," in which O’Gieblyn examines contemporary Christian music culture of the 1990's. While this certainly is not her most complex essay in the collection, it resonated with my experience so profoundly that I just gobbled it up. It's a great example of taking a seemingly pointless knowledge base and transforming it into meaningful and resonant commentary.
For me, the collection has a slow start. I was not as interested in O’Gieblyn's more regional musings, but this may be my own regional bias showing. In particular, "Contemporaries" seemed a little unaware of its own irony in terms of privilege. However, I'm really glad I didn't put this book down. The second half of the essays were brilliant.
In "A Species of Origin," O’Gieblyn visits a life-size Noah's Ark replica -- a bastion of conservatism, rife with opportunity for ridicule -- yet O’Gieblyn instead engages intellectually with the concept in a way that is both surprising and fascinating.
"On Subtlety" is a beautiful segmented essay that I'd like to use for my classes.
In "The End" and "Exiled," we see O’Gieblyn at her best when she examines the ways that remnants of Christian theology (particularly eschatology) seep their way into our political philosophies, not only in demonstrative ways, but in a more insidious manner.
I love how she refuses to dismiss or even poke fun at her evangelical past and instead embraces it as firm intellectual grounding for understanding American culture. I should mention that she's clear that she is no longer a Christian, but she is equally clear that her childhood and her time at Moody Bible Institute formed her in ways that are not antithetical to the way the rest of the U.S. grew up, at least ideologically. This is a perspective we almost never hear in literature, and it made me reconsider my own theological upbringing and its relevance to our national conversation.
Finally, my absolute favorite essay in the collection is "Sniffing Glue," in which O’Gieblyn examines contemporary Christian music culture of the 1990's. While this certainly is not her most complex essay in the collection, it resonated with my experience so profoundly that I just gobbled it up. It's a great example of taking a seemingly pointless knowledge base and transforming it into meaningful and resonant commentary.
October 17, 2018
Yet once again, Nervous Breakdown Book Club drags me out of my reading comfort zone into a world of phenomenal essays touching on topics as disparate as John Updike, Christian Music, and Michigan. The author, now secular, was once a home-schooled evangelical who studied at a famous bible college. I was concerned in starting out that this would either be a scathing criticism of something I knew very little about (evangelical christianity) or some sort of confessional. It was neither. The author portrayed her faith in ways that made sense to me - not that I agreed with it - but her tone was reasoned, rational, and unlike much writing about the topic devoid, mostly, of politics or hyperbole. I specifically appreciated her co-opting the term "Jesus freak" as one of empowerment, not derision. As all great writing should do, this book leaves me with more questions than answers and wanting to read more of Ms. O'Gieblyn's writings.
January 30, 2019
This collection is stunning. A couple of essays reminded me a ton of Kristin Dombek's essay in The Paris Review (https://www.theparisreview.org/letter...). There's a kind of headiness and fever to religious experience that's hard to cast off, and I think anyone who grew up with faith finds themselves dipping in and out of various forms of belief for the rest of their life. As someone who's long been interested in religion and currently works in tech, it's really nice to see someone write about both with clarity and beauty.
February 9, 2019
In the future, the whole swath of late modernity will call to mind the image of the image of people eating delicacies and talking about the state of their souls --just as when someone mentions the medieval period, we picture people toiling in ditches. (From "Contemporaries")
Perhaps the central hypocrisy in the history of fundamentalist theology is the fact that white evangelicals managed to find signs of the apocalypse in every social evil except their own prejudices.
(From"The End")
Perhaps the central hypocrisy in the history of fundamentalist theology is the fact that white evangelicals managed to find signs of the apocalypse in every social evil except their own prejudices.
(From"The End")
Read
December 9, 2020Subtle yet incredibly on the nose collection of essays by a former christian zealot. I will be reading everything she publishes from now until eternity.
January 16, 2019
This is a superb collection of essays. The heart of the book is a set of reflections on various books, events, cultural trends in ways that tap the author's former but weirdly continuing experience from within evangelical Christianity -- I need to be a little careful here, because while she notes her background that way, I think it's really coming from a combined position: That she lost her faith, plus the fact that she was a deep student of Christianity (e.g., the way she talks about certain problems in Christianity would be familiar to anyone who has studied the Protestant tradition). [The back of the book says it is also a consideration of the Midwest / flyover country, but that is only an instrumental piece of the overall thrust of the book, if you ask me.] These two things are a little different and I think make the book appeal to different kinds of readers. The essays range from 2011 (about Christian music) to the near present (a frightening piece on Mike Pence, apparently not published elsewhere); she seems to have had an explosion of creativity and productivity between 2016 and 2017, and the essays in that period are the best ones.
The quality of writing is high and the author writes like a young fogey: There's a lot of sophistication here that I would associate with a much older writer.
I can't say too much more because even though these are non-fiction essays, to go into too much detail would amount to spoilers because I think every reader should make his or her own journey through the work.
One thing I will say that is that there is an autobiographical streak here: Pay attention to it, because it is told out-of-order and is as interesting as the forward argument of each essay.
The quality of writing is high and the author writes like a young fogey: There's a lot of sophistication here that I would associate with a much older writer.
I can't say too much more because even though these are non-fiction essays, to go into too much detail would amount to spoilers because I think every reader should make his or her own journey through the work.
One thing I will say that is that there is an autobiographical streak here: Pay attention to it, because it is told out-of-order and is as interesting as the forward argument of each essay.
June 10, 2024
A lot more research than I was expecting but really enjoyable.
October 8, 2023
It was good to know others have had the same questions I have and come to similar conclusions, but the book felt unfinished. These could not have been the only questions she had, right? I needed more. Maybe she’ll come up with a sequel…Hope so! Hers is a voice that is needed for blindly following MAGA evangelicals now more than ever because when talking about faith, critical thinking often goes out the window because it contradicts the definition of faith.
November 18, 2018
"It's a paradox of human nature that the sites of our unhappiness are precisely those that we come to trust most hardily, that we absorb most readily into our identity, and that we defend most vociferously when they come under attack."
"True compassion is possible not because we are ignorant that life can be hell, but because we know that it can be."
"True compassion is possible not because we are ignorant that life can be hell, but because we know that it can be."
December 26, 2019
A harrowing set of essays to read directly proceeding a return to West-Michigan and a visit to the church of my youth. I feel dizzy. I want everyone I know to read this book
August 13, 2023
beautiful, meditative essay collection that got me out of a two month reading drought. i love the way o’gieblyn writes about her captivation with christian thought and virtue, even as she recounts why she left the faith
March 27, 2019
loved this, reads like Joan Didion essays for the Midwest. Lots going on here and I'm now about to enter a Wikipedia hole about Michigan and theology and transhumanism.
July 13, 2023
With this and God Human Animal Machine, O’Gieblyn is easily one of my favorite contemporary writers. Beyond relating to her portraits of the Midwest, her religious background – while one I do not share in the slightest – was something I came into close contact with when I was growing up. You mention evangelicals or charismatic churches to the Northeast or NYC and they are this bizarre misguided group that populates the Midwest (and South – though that strain of evangelism - largely of the Southern Baptist variety – did not figure into the Midwest as far as my experience proved) consisting of brainless sheep essentially out to save your soul because they don’t know any better. Why waste time with the crazies? In defense, I tend to share that view – especially in the Trump era (more on that in a bit) where whatever manners or decorum used to be afforded to the very religious has been torn up and burnt as a sacrifice to the sheer accumulation of power. But is there a harmony to be found between secular humanism and the evangelicals?
The opening piece – “Dispatch from Flyover Country” – displays O’Gieblyn’s strengths in excelsis – an astute insightfulness chronicled with concise prose that allows her to dive into abstract and heady concepts all while displaying an astute empathy towards her subjects. The concluding piece on Mike Pence (“Exiles”) I kept waiting for O’Gieblyn to just rant at the hypocrisy (in a way) she saw in Pence, but instead of giving into her anger and frustration (which is an easier approach), she continues to (at least to my estimate) give Pence the benefit of the doubt until she can’t any more – and instead of being “what is wrong with this man” there’s more of a resigned sadness that comes from her own loss of faith. That aspect of O’Gieblyn – that she can speak from the viewpoint of someone who didn’t dip their toe into evangelism, but one who truly believed even into her adult life is what gives her resonance. Many of the essays in this collection state her loss of faith because reading these out of context it becomes necessary to her view and gives her observations power. The shallow conversations of those in her generation that have migrated to the coasts just don’t have the gravitas of someone who’d totally lost not just their way of seeing the world but their inner and outer selves be rocked by a new enlightenment. As so many of her family and former friends are assumed to still be within the faith, it’s not possible for her to write them off as mindless sheep (as is so much easier to do from the outside looking in) – she sees them as complex, loving, devoted individuals whose faith is just as intricate as any attempt to explain quantum physics.
The longest piece here – “Ghost in the Cloud” which feels like it had been expanded into God Human Animal Machine” – is where O’Gieblyn takes her former devotion and applies it to a secular vision: That of transhumanism. She sees that the hopes and beliefs of what is still an outlandish scientific theory (though theory might be a strong word – transhumanism as written has not come to pass and still won’t for another 20ish years, if ever) are not too different from an eschatological prophecy – that in the end the soul will transcend the body and we will live forever in some future state – in end-times Christianity that’s paradise for the saved, in transhumanism its some information-based technological advancement. O’Gieblyn – with the fervor of a believer (the aphorism “the convert sings loudest from the choir” comes to mind) delves into the origins of transhumanism and parallels them to the Rapture. I’m fascinated by this connection and felt “Ghost in the Cloud” proves to be an excellent primer to her follow up.
She also comes into some truths about conversing with the saved in “A Species of Origins” – that when someone whose viewpoint is completely shaped by their faith (which by nature is not provable because if you could prove faith, it wouldn’t be faith), trying to convince them of empirical facts is a lost cause. There is the wall of the Word of God that is impossible to scale – not the history of the Bible, not the nature of translation, nothing can sway the faithful unless the conclusion that they no longer believe comes from them and only them. Any attempt to prove your point becomes the devil testing them. With the piece on Pence she touches a bit on the Trump phenomenon – how so many Christians can support a man who is clearly not Christian (her metaphor also used by some Pence apologists has to do with Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel in Babylon). Being a midwest expat in NYC for over two decades, my own feeling on the subject (hi mom!) is that Trump’s sole attribute harnessed for years of being in the public eye is charisma. There’s nothing to him beyond that. There’s the NYC cynicism in him that if you believe in democracy, decency, the law, or anything other than yourself, you are a sucker and a fool ripe for being taken advantage of. There’s the assumption on that part that everyone is in on the con, but beyond the environment of NYC, I really don’t think a majority of people are in the position of privilege to be in on the con. We don’t have a coterie of lawyers to use the law like a weapon if we have a legal issue. And unfortunately the masses who are as far removed from the environment that created Trump (which most – including O’Gieblyn – dismiss as shallow and snobby) the veil of media onslaughts becomes some form of truth to grab on to, along with the conspiracy theories. I also thought that the Right looked to the evangelicals in the 70s as an untapped reservoir of voters – Jimmy Carter was a Southern Baptist but his liberal progressive sensibilities and somewhat limp presidency didn’t satiate the faithful who needed their faith coated in rabid patriotism and veiled racism and homophobia – the Internet has taken that veil and shattered it. When you have influential politicians espousing the semantics between racism and white nationalism you have proof that America if not the world was not prepared for technology’s democratization of information. Which goes beyond social media being bad for children – they felt the same way about television. This is something else & Trumpworld is its Frankenstein’s monster. (And Trump is the GOP’s Frankenstein’s monster – the base pursuit of power yields ugly results and here they are.)
As you can see – I just dig O’Gieblyn’s writing because it’s thought-provoking without being pedantic. I did also appreciated the piece on Christian rock – I swear I have a sixth sense when skipping through radio stations (usually in the Midwest) when Christian rock comes on – in a matter of seconds I can pick out a Christian song – not even from the lyrics. Something in the chord progression – the lyrics are what seal it. But O’Gieblyn talks about the Christian rock heyday in the 90s – I remember Jars of Clay and Lighthouse (I think Switchfoot was another one) – they vaguely sounded like Live or Pearl Jam so made they made their way into the Chicago radio stations. Christian rock’s mainstream popular seems to be on the wane, but would like to hear O’Gieblyn’s thoughts on faith-based (and right wing) movies that have become more popular – Sound of Freedom is unseating an Indiana Jones movie in the box office. (When she needs a breather from Kurzweil & Dostoevsky & the Old Testament.) But fear not, Sound of Freedom hasn’t quite toppled the latest Insidious sequel. The infidels still rule Hollywood. For now….
The opening piece – “Dispatch from Flyover Country” – displays O’Gieblyn’s strengths in excelsis – an astute insightfulness chronicled with concise prose that allows her to dive into abstract and heady concepts all while displaying an astute empathy towards her subjects. The concluding piece on Mike Pence (“Exiles”) I kept waiting for O’Gieblyn to just rant at the hypocrisy (in a way) she saw in Pence, but instead of giving into her anger and frustration (which is an easier approach), she continues to (at least to my estimate) give Pence the benefit of the doubt until she can’t any more – and instead of being “what is wrong with this man” there’s more of a resigned sadness that comes from her own loss of faith. That aspect of O’Gieblyn – that she can speak from the viewpoint of someone who didn’t dip their toe into evangelism, but one who truly believed even into her adult life is what gives her resonance. Many of the essays in this collection state her loss of faith because reading these out of context it becomes necessary to her view and gives her observations power. The shallow conversations of those in her generation that have migrated to the coasts just don’t have the gravitas of someone who’d totally lost not just their way of seeing the world but their inner and outer selves be rocked by a new enlightenment. As so many of her family and former friends are assumed to still be within the faith, it’s not possible for her to write them off as mindless sheep (as is so much easier to do from the outside looking in) – she sees them as complex, loving, devoted individuals whose faith is just as intricate as any attempt to explain quantum physics.
The longest piece here – “Ghost in the Cloud” which feels like it had been expanded into God Human Animal Machine” – is where O’Gieblyn takes her former devotion and applies it to a secular vision: That of transhumanism. She sees that the hopes and beliefs of what is still an outlandish scientific theory (though theory might be a strong word – transhumanism as written has not come to pass and still won’t for another 20ish years, if ever) are not too different from an eschatological prophecy – that in the end the soul will transcend the body and we will live forever in some future state – in end-times Christianity that’s paradise for the saved, in transhumanism its some information-based technological advancement. O’Gieblyn – with the fervor of a believer (the aphorism “the convert sings loudest from the choir” comes to mind) delves into the origins of transhumanism and parallels them to the Rapture. I’m fascinated by this connection and felt “Ghost in the Cloud” proves to be an excellent primer to her follow up.
She also comes into some truths about conversing with the saved in “A Species of Origins” – that when someone whose viewpoint is completely shaped by their faith (which by nature is not provable because if you could prove faith, it wouldn’t be faith), trying to convince them of empirical facts is a lost cause. There is the wall of the Word of God that is impossible to scale – not the history of the Bible, not the nature of translation, nothing can sway the faithful unless the conclusion that they no longer believe comes from them and only them. Any attempt to prove your point becomes the devil testing them. With the piece on Pence she touches a bit on the Trump phenomenon – how so many Christians can support a man who is clearly not Christian (her metaphor also used by some Pence apologists has to do with Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel in Babylon). Being a midwest expat in NYC for over two decades, my own feeling on the subject (hi mom!) is that Trump’s sole attribute harnessed for years of being in the public eye is charisma. There’s nothing to him beyond that. There’s the NYC cynicism in him that if you believe in democracy, decency, the law, or anything other than yourself, you are a sucker and a fool ripe for being taken advantage of. There’s the assumption on that part that everyone is in on the con, but beyond the environment of NYC, I really don’t think a majority of people are in the position of privilege to be in on the con. We don’t have a coterie of lawyers to use the law like a weapon if we have a legal issue. And unfortunately the masses who are as far removed from the environment that created Trump (which most – including O’Gieblyn – dismiss as shallow and snobby) the veil of media onslaughts becomes some form of truth to grab on to, along with the conspiracy theories. I also thought that the Right looked to the evangelicals in the 70s as an untapped reservoir of voters – Jimmy Carter was a Southern Baptist but his liberal progressive sensibilities and somewhat limp presidency didn’t satiate the faithful who needed their faith coated in rabid patriotism and veiled racism and homophobia – the Internet has taken that veil and shattered it. When you have influential politicians espousing the semantics between racism and white nationalism you have proof that America if not the world was not prepared for technology’s democratization of information. Which goes beyond social media being bad for children – they felt the same way about television. This is something else & Trumpworld is its Frankenstein’s monster. (And Trump is the GOP’s Frankenstein’s monster – the base pursuit of power yields ugly results and here they are.)
As you can see – I just dig O’Gieblyn’s writing because it’s thought-provoking without being pedantic. I did also appreciated the piece on Christian rock – I swear I have a sixth sense when skipping through radio stations (usually in the Midwest) when Christian rock comes on – in a matter of seconds I can pick out a Christian song – not even from the lyrics. Something in the chord progression – the lyrics are what seal it. But O’Gieblyn talks about the Christian rock heyday in the 90s – I remember Jars of Clay and Lighthouse (I think Switchfoot was another one) – they vaguely sounded like Live or Pearl Jam so made they made their way into the Chicago radio stations. Christian rock’s mainstream popular seems to be on the wane, but would like to hear O’Gieblyn’s thoughts on faith-based (and right wing) movies that have become more popular – Sound of Freedom is unseating an Indiana Jones movie in the box office. (When she needs a breather from Kurzweil & Dostoevsky & the Old Testament.) But fear not, Sound of Freedom hasn’t quite toppled the latest Insidious sequel. The infidels still rule Hollywood. For now….
March 19, 2019
Meghan is a strong writer and some of these essays were really good. The problem was, it wasn’t all memoir -- some of the essays were personal, but others weren’t. All of the essays were reprinted from other publications (instead of being written specifically to include in this book). Two of the essays were book reviews, written for the Los Angeles Review of Books...NO THANK YOU.
Meghan grew up in an Evangelical household, like I did, and was homeschooled for most of her life, which is true for me as well. She went on to do a few years at a religious college before she transferred elsewhere, which luckily I didn’t have to experience. I especially liked the first essay of the book, and the one where she talks about the contemporary Christian music scene of the 1990s (which I also knew quite well, since I wasn’t allowed to listen to anything “secular” back then).
She’s a very good writer so I hate to rank the book so low, but I just didn’t enjoy the essays that were non-memoir. I wish she’d written a book that was all about her.
Meghan grew up in an Evangelical household, like I did, and was homeschooled for most of her life, which is true for me as well. She went on to do a few years at a religious college before she transferred elsewhere, which luckily I didn’t have to experience. I especially liked the first essay of the book, and the one where she talks about the contemporary Christian music scene of the 1990s (which I also knew quite well, since I wasn’t allowed to listen to anything “secular” back then).
She’s a very good writer so I hate to rank the book so low, but I just didn’t enjoy the essays that were non-memoir. I wish she’d written a book that was all about her.
November 25, 2018
One of my favorite living essayists—one of our best writers speaking to faith, secularism, and mystery.
On “American Niceness”: “I live in Wisconsin, a place where niceness is so ubiquitous that it seems practically constitutional…In this part of the country, niceness is less an expression of generosity than it is of reserve: assuming an inoffensive blandness is a way to avoid drawing attention to oneself, and the most reliable means of keeping others at bay.”
On “American Niceness”: “I live in Wisconsin, a place where niceness is so ubiquitous that it seems practically constitutional…In this part of the country, niceness is less an expression of generosity than it is of reserve: assuming an inoffensive blandness is a way to avoid drawing attention to oneself, and the most reliable means of keeping others at bay.”
August 31, 2019
My review of Meghan O’Gieblyn’s debut collection of essays, Interior States, appears online in the Winter 2019 issue of Wisconsin People & Ideas.
August 29, 2021
Subtle.
April 20, 2020
While I did not grow up in the evangelical community, I have a longstanding fascination (or is it fascinated abhorrence?) with that culture. It's always struck me how indelibly growing up fundie affects people; no matter how far they may run from that worldview, it's always there in the background, vividly influencing their thoughts as both a traumatic wound and perhaps a fatal attraction. Like many of my friends, no matter how distant her connection to the church of her youth, O'Gieblyn cannot let it go completely. And how lucky we are in this, as she is an excellent guide to the evangelical world. Despite having left its embrace over a decade ago, she shows herself to be an intelligent and perspicacious guide to its strange folkways and internal logic. O'Gieblyn brings to her subjects a depth of theological and scriptural knowledge, as well as a keen psychological grasp of the power of the myths that drive evangelical thinking (and thus our culture at large).
Most of these pieces are collected from magazines and online publications, and it's often quite obvious. Some are book reviews, some are personal essays, and a few veer closer to a journalistic approach. However, O'Gieblyn always situates each piece from within her own personal perspective, and her experiences are the lens she never puts down. That sounds a little like a complaint, but I assure you it is not here: in every case, O'Gieblyn's background casts new light on the subjects she considers. There are a few places where the confessional mode feels a bit strained, but overall the approach is clear-eyed, matter-of-fact, and devoid of any trace of self-pity.
Some of the strongest pieces deal with the particular culture of the Midwest, and O'Gieblyn really skewers midwestern "niceness" by showing it to be the lowest common denominator of moral action, serving as a distancing mechanism that defers the need for true empathy and engagement with the Other. I also thought her piece on transhumanism and its relationship to Christian millenarian thinking was fantastic. It manages to provide interesting philosophical analysis and also mercilessly interrogates her own addiction to meaning-bearing systems. The piece on Pence and his biblical antecedents (or delusions of grandeur) in stories of advisors to wicked kings, exile, and persecution narratives is frightening and well-done, even if well-trod ground at this point.
This book isn't perfect, and there are times where you can see O'Gieblyn trying too hard to make a piece connect. This book also contains the most erroneous hot take on parenthood I've ever read. O'Gieblyn muses that the anxiety of existential reflection falls away after reproduction; a hilarious position that could only be voiced by the childless. If anything, having children only intensifies such perseverations. I've called parenthood an ongoing existential crisis, and I was only one-quarter-joking in a generous estimation.
My takeaway is that O'Gieblyn is a religiously or existentially passionate person, even when shorn of her faith. Her reflections on her new identity within secular humanism contain that seed of longing and struggle for something beautiful, transcendent and true. That's my kind of people, and I highly recommend reading this brief collection of essays.
Most of these pieces are collected from magazines and online publications, and it's often quite obvious. Some are book reviews, some are personal essays, and a few veer closer to a journalistic approach. However, O'Gieblyn always situates each piece from within her own personal perspective, and her experiences are the lens she never puts down. That sounds a little like a complaint, but I assure you it is not here: in every case, O'Gieblyn's background casts new light on the subjects she considers. There are a few places where the confessional mode feels a bit strained, but overall the approach is clear-eyed, matter-of-fact, and devoid of any trace of self-pity.
Some of the strongest pieces deal with the particular culture of the Midwest, and O'Gieblyn really skewers midwestern "niceness" by showing it to be the lowest common denominator of moral action, serving as a distancing mechanism that defers the need for true empathy and engagement with the Other. I also thought her piece on transhumanism and its relationship to Christian millenarian thinking was fantastic. It manages to provide interesting philosophical analysis and also mercilessly interrogates her own addiction to meaning-bearing systems. The piece on Pence and his biblical antecedents (or delusions of grandeur) in stories of advisors to wicked kings, exile, and persecution narratives is frightening and well-done, even if well-trod ground at this point.
This book isn't perfect, and there are times where you can see O'Gieblyn trying too hard to make a piece connect. This book also contains the most erroneous hot take on parenthood I've ever read. O'Gieblyn muses that the anxiety of existential reflection falls away after reproduction; a hilarious position that could only be voiced by the childless. If anything, having children only intensifies such perseverations. I've called parenthood an ongoing existential crisis, and I was only one-quarter-joking in a generous estimation.
My takeaway is that O'Gieblyn is a religiously or existentially passionate person, even when shorn of her faith. Her reflections on her new identity within secular humanism contain that seed of longing and struggle for something beautiful, transcendent and true. That's my kind of people, and I highly recommend reading this brief collection of essays.
March 17, 2020
Interior States is a splendid collection of essays from Meghan O’Gieblyn. I was entranced from start to finish by the beautiful prose and charitable nuance she afforded each subject-matter. Never content to resort to caricature, O’Gieblyn’s frequent writing around the early zeal and eventual loss of her Christian faith is particularly plaintive and moving.
I also noticed something intriguing and even a bit haunting at the heart of the book. As the title suggests, this is a work pervaded by the Midwest, about people and places in the center, the mystery in the middle. The median essay, right smack dab in the center of the book, is called “On Subtlety.” This essay was first published a couple months before the book released and is the only chapter numbered by Roman numerals. The original essay was divided into eight short sections, but the one appearing in the book contains an extra section, making it nine total. This median section, number five—added to the piece and only appearing in the book—is about a fiction writer who placed the interpretive key to her book in the middle chapter, hoping readers would pick up on this hermeneutical clue and “understand that it was the cipher.” O’Gieblyn ends the chapter with this paragraph: “Perhaps this is another way of saying that subtlety is a transaction of faith. The artist must have faith that her effects will be perceived in the way she intends; the reader must trust that what he detects, beneath the surface of the text, is not merely a figment of his imagination. The disciple must come to believe that the whispers he hears in the wilderness are not the wind, or the devil, but the voice of his Creator. All religion, all forms of love, depend on this leap.”
There is much more here than meets the eye. I look forward to more from the truly subtle voice of this gifted writer.
I also noticed something intriguing and even a bit haunting at the heart of the book. As the title suggests, this is a work pervaded by the Midwest, about people and places in the center, the mystery in the middle. The median essay, right smack dab in the center of the book, is called “On Subtlety.” This essay was first published a couple months before the book released and is the only chapter numbered by Roman numerals. The original essay was divided into eight short sections, but the one appearing in the book contains an extra section, making it nine total. This median section, number five—added to the piece and only appearing in the book—is about a fiction writer who placed the interpretive key to her book in the middle chapter, hoping readers would pick up on this hermeneutical clue and “understand that it was the cipher.” O’Gieblyn ends the chapter with this paragraph: “Perhaps this is another way of saying that subtlety is a transaction of faith. The artist must have faith that her effects will be perceived in the way she intends; the reader must trust that what he detects, beneath the surface of the text, is not merely a figment of his imagination. The disciple must come to believe that the whispers he hears in the wilderness are not the wind, or the devil, but the voice of his Creator. All religion, all forms of love, depend on this leap.”
There is much more here than meets the eye. I look forward to more from the truly subtle voice of this gifted writer.
February 14, 2025
I was turned onto O'Gieblyn after I read her delightful essay in _Believer_ called "Good Shepherds." That essay was about AI, but managed to weave in commentary on the biblical book of Job, The Brothers Karamazov, and the Unabomber's manifesto. It was awesome. I realized I wanted to be an essayist like O'Gieblyn: someone who could show the persistent relevance of religious ideas in the larger culture.
I don't think any essay in this collection is as good as "Good Shepherds," but there are some that are nevertheless very good. My favorites were "Hell" (about the problem of eternal hell, and Evangelicalism's move away from open talk about hell); "The Insane Idea" (about William James and the spiritual underpinnings of Alcoholic's Anonymous); "The End" (about end-times prophecy); "Sniffing Glue" (about Contemporary Christian Music); "Ghost in the Cloud" (about the religious underpinnings of transhumanism); and "Exile" (about Pence and the religious right). The best of these, also the most similar to "Good Shepherds," was "Ghost in the Cloud"-- also about the hidden religious impulse embedded in new technologies. It seems possible I should have picked up her other book, _God, Human, Animal, Machine_ instead of this one.
My only irritation is that there is just the slightest trace of smugness detectable in this former/lapsed Christian. But she's very worth reading!
I don't think any essay in this collection is as good as "Good Shepherds," but there are some that are nevertheless very good. My favorites were "Hell" (about the problem of eternal hell, and Evangelicalism's move away from open talk about hell); "The Insane Idea" (about William James and the spiritual underpinnings of Alcoholic's Anonymous); "The End" (about end-times prophecy); "Sniffing Glue" (about Contemporary Christian Music); "Ghost in the Cloud" (about the religious underpinnings of transhumanism); and "Exile" (about Pence and the religious right). The best of these, also the most similar to "Good Shepherds," was "Ghost in the Cloud"-- also about the hidden religious impulse embedded in new technologies. It seems possible I should have picked up her other book, _God, Human, Animal, Machine_ instead of this one.
My only irritation is that there is just the slightest trace of smugness detectable in this former/lapsed Christian. But she's very worth reading!
July 23, 2019
Great collection of essays about evangelical Christian culture and the Midwest in general. I especially appreciated the essay titled “sniffing glue” about CCM music and the church’s obsession with consumer capitalism.
October 30, 2018
Great book on the midwestern mindset and the author's loss of faith.
July 5, 2019
Loved this book. These essays grapple with some big questions and several of them feature Michigan. Highly recommend.
March 11, 2020
I really enjoyed this. I'd encountered some of these essays previously in n+1 and The Point. The n+1 essay (Ghost in the Cloud) is by far my favourite.
May 26, 2020
Smart essays about the Midwest and losing faith after being raised deep within the evangelical fold (homeschooled, Bible college, the works). The familiarity of the territory was enjoyable to me. And O'Gieblyn avoids the rancor and bitterness that often flavors apostate memoirs; instead, she is meditative and thoughtful and eager to dive deeper into what drew her away from the faith.
June 9, 2023
I really enjoyed this collection.
There are many things to say about this collection of essays; that Meghan is a talented writer is not in doubt, that they are engaging and informative, that they are fair...many things but the abiding memory I have of reading them is the matter of faith mostly Christian faith presented in good light or at least fair light.
Meghan is best placed to comment on Christianity and matters faith. She was for the most part of her life what we might call "a Christian fundamentalist" and even attended a conservative Christian theology college before her faculties of reason and doubt became too strong and seized control over the ship of her life adjusting the sails and the intended destination. Rather than these facts being the main act in most of these essays, they became background items while Meghan reported on things like how mainstream Christian preachers gave sermons after 9/11, the creeping suspicion that is afforded to Alcoholics Anonymous simply because it has faith undertones as part of its healing process... Meghan also had time to write stories about her home state, the beliefs, myths and reality and many things.
Highly recommended and on the sole ground that we need matters of faith to be talked about by sober voices rather the zealots that have occupied the current airspace. There is a really good essay on visiting the creationist museum and an argument between a believer and a sceptic. This and many more can be found here. Highly recommended especially if your life is divided into two eras: the one of being a believer and whatever you choose to call where you are at now.
There are many things to say about this collection of essays; that Meghan is a talented writer is not in doubt, that they are engaging and informative, that they are fair...many things but the abiding memory I have of reading them is the matter of faith mostly Christian faith presented in good light or at least fair light.
Meghan is best placed to comment on Christianity and matters faith. She was for the most part of her life what we might call "a Christian fundamentalist" and even attended a conservative Christian theology college before her faculties of reason and doubt became too strong and seized control over the ship of her life adjusting the sails and the intended destination. Rather than these facts being the main act in most of these essays, they became background items while Meghan reported on things like how mainstream Christian preachers gave sermons after 9/11, the creeping suspicion that is afforded to Alcoholics Anonymous simply because it has faith undertones as part of its healing process... Meghan also had time to write stories about her home state, the beliefs, myths and reality and many things.
Highly recommended and on the sole ground that we need matters of faith to be talked about by sober voices rather the zealots that have occupied the current airspace. There is a really good essay on visiting the creationist museum and an argument between a believer and a sceptic. This and many more can be found here. Highly recommended especially if your life is divided into two eras: the one of being a believer and whatever you choose to call where you are at now.
April 5, 2019
Loved it!! She put words to so many things I’ve been wrestling through with religious ideology.
May 9, 2024
Ehhh unremarkable writing, don’t go out of your way for this
February 4, 2019
I didn't plan to finish this book in two days, but I found it irresistible. This is an absolutely stunning set of essays that treat what are generally considered to be cultural embarrassments (evangelical Christianity, the midwest) with a dignity and respect, but O'Gieblyn (an ex-Christian and lifelong midwesterner) doesn't shy away from criticizing either. Like many people who leave a faith and love a region they don't particularly fit in with, she is cognizant of existing between two places — rejecting her faith but unable (or not desiring) to shed its contours or metanarrative, cutting against both midwestern niceness and secular hubris. She steers each of these essays through incredibly tight turns, and does so without ever coming close to the edge of the road. Very highly recommended for fans of Joan Didion, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Walker Percy, etc.
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