Faith, Fantasy, and the Fractured Self: Ethan Goffman's The Church of the Oversoul and Other Stories

The Church of the Oversoul and Other Stories

Author’s name: Ethan Goffman

Publication: Uncollected Press

Year of Publication: 2025

Pages: 180

ISBN: 979-8-9905585-6-4

Reviewed by Ritu Kamra Kumar

Ethan Goffman’s The Church of the Oversoul and Other Stories is a compelling mosaic of modern anxieties, satirical excursions, and dystopian spiritual quests, grounded in contemporary social commentary and psychological realism. The stories unfurl like a map of modern America’s existential contradictions—of techno-futurism colliding with spiritual hollowness, of adolescent mischief veiling adult despair, of inner searches for meaning in a world where noise overwhelms nuance. With a diction that is functional, economical, and sharply observant, Goffman weaves a web of stories that engage deeply with the unconscious, the absurd, and the absurdly human.

Ritu Kamra Kumar

The Incident: Adolescent Angst and Epiphanic Fatherhood

In The Incident, Goffman taps into the universally awkward rites of teenage boys: sneaking into basements, sharing beer, nicknames like Wingman and Fruitcake, hormonal chatter about girls, and peer bullying. Mike, Fred, and the unnamed narrator are not merely characters but archetypes—emblems of that strange cocktail of bravado and vulnerability that defines male adolescence. The narrator, now a parent to teenagers himself, undergoes a reflective transformation. Parenthood, it seems, enforces a retrospective wisdom. His fear is not moral judgment but inherited recklessness. The story’s circular structure reinforces its emotional resonance—what began as innocent mischief ends with existential anxiety. As in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, epiphany arises not in grandeur but in quiet, cumulative moments.

Ethan Goffman

Meltdown: A Lament for a Fractured World

Meltdown is a particularly poignant tale that veers into eco-dystopian terrain, focusing on Alfred and Eva, a couple whose summer cottage burns down due to a wildfire—a grim symptom of global climate trauma. As the story progresses, Alfred’s despair intensifies. “Humanity today is like a person with multiple diseases all at once,” he proclaims, juxtaposing environmental collapse with the war in Ukraine and the moral decay of human society. His sermon at the club echoes the impassioned, desperate voices of Eliot’s The Hollow Men, crying out in a spiritual wasteland.

Eva, witnessing Alfred’s disintegration, knows that his obsession with myths and folklore is not escapism but a frantic search for meaning in a world spiraling toward entropy. His dream—preaching from a mountaintop—is abruptly eclipsed by a surreal nuclear rain that dissolves his tablets, symbolizing the death of truth. The vivid imagery and elegiac tone elevate the story to a prophetic lament. It is both political and poetic—a modern-day Apocalypse Now fused with Jeremiah’s wailing.

The Return: Prejudice in Post-Truth America

In The Return, Goffman exposes the latent racial bias that continues to plague supposedly progressive societies. Through the vehicle of a computer game, Sylvia’s disdain for black characters leads to a terse yet revealing conversation with Nate. His rational appeal—“You have to be open to different kinds of people”—falls on deaf ears. The futility of dialogue and the narrator's resigned conclusion, “Nothing will change...little volcanoes wait for eruption,” serves as a caustic indictment of liberal complacency.

This brief yet potent piece channels the spirit of George Orwell’s realism—direct, emotionally subdued, but ideologically searing. The satire cuts deeper because it does not exaggerate; it merely holds up a mirror.

A Real Man: The Policing of Masculinity

This story attacks the totalitarian policing of thought and gender norms. Surveillance extends beyond physical space into the very interiority of individuals, reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984 or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Authenticity is no longer an aspiration but a regulated performance. In this world, even being a “real man” becomes an algorithmic mandate, a coded expectation devoid of emotional truth. Goffman’s minimalism here is potent—every sentence lands like a command, or a suppressed scream.

Limbo Is a Happenin’ Place: Bureaucracy in the Afterlife

Perhaps the most overtly satirical of the stories, Limbo Is a Happenin’ Place envisions the afterlife as a bureaucratic purgatory. Identity is reduced to paperwork, freedom becomes procedural, and spiritual transcendence is mediated through absurd regulations. The narrative is rich with Kafkaesque echoes: a dead man forced to wait in line, fill forms, and prove his “limbonic eligibility.” Yet Goffman infuses this bleakness with Vonnegutian wit, transforming metaphysical uncertainty into humor.

The narrator’s voice—bewildered, sardonic, and strangely hopeful—guides the reader through this spiritual DMV, where no one seems quite alive or dead. This story functions as both parody and parable, its absurdity mirroring the dehumanizing rituals of modern existence.

The New Melissa: Identity, AI, and Emotional Dislocation

A deeply philosophical tale, The New Melissa follows Ivan’s spiral from academic promise to emotional and moral disillusionment. His relationships—with Melissa, then Julia, and eventually with a humanoid AI modeled on Melissa—trace a journey of failed intimacy and self-delusion. His confession that he might be a sociopath yet craves redemption invites comparisons to Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. As he weeps for Melissa, he finally acknowledges the poverty of his soul.

The AI-Melissa, programmed to be “better in all the best ways,” raises disturbing questions about identity: can artificial memory ever replace emotional complexity? Could the soul be downloaded, revised, and played back in upgraded software? Ivan’s tears—delayed, fractured, and guilt-ridden—suggest that no machine can code the human need for forgiveness. The story critiques the techno-utopian impulse to remake lost love without grief. It is, at once, science fiction and psychological elegy.

The Church of the Oversoul: Faith, Failure, and Fragmentation

The titular novella is the most ambitious in scope and complexity. The narrative is kaleidoscopic: environmental catastrophes, failed utopias, gender fluidity, interfaith awakenings, and AI-driven spirituality all jostle for attention. Kristiana—a priestess, mother, and mystic—emerges as a tragic heroine. Her Church of the Oversoul begins as a dream of redemption but collapses into ash and addiction.

Xochitl, her intersex daughter, dies from a fentanyl overdose, symbolizing the ultimate collapse of ideals in the face of societal and personal chaos. The narrator, captivated by Kristiana’s aura, ends the story clutching his cat Fluffy, craving comfort. The story moves like stream-of-consciousness but is peppered with surreal reportage, giving it a fragmented, labyrinthine structure akin to Virginia Woolf’s The Waves.

Itzamatul, Lynn, Verne—all emerge briefly, each carrying their own tormented pasts, as if the Church has become a mausoleum for the spiritually wounded. Goffman’s prose here turns more experimental, blending dream sequences, dialogue, sermons, and diary-like introspections. It demands active engagement from the reader—fragmentation as both theme and method.

Pifflemeyer: The Anatomy of Alienation

Alvin Pifflemeyer is perhaps Goffman’s most introspective and symbolically rich character. Wandering through laundromats, parties, malls, and failed relationships, Alvin is a tragicomic figure reminiscent of Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus or Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon. He fantasizes about Jeanine but cannot emotionally connect. His thoughts are nonlinear, peppered with existential brooding, epistemological digressions, and sudden melancholia.

The narrative is elliptical—chronology collapses into thematic association. He contemplates suicide, drifts through conversations about viruses, economics, lesbian culture, and literary modernism. Life becomes “a nothing day—chaos.” He moves to Chicago, studies theology, flirts with faith, fails to resurrect intimacy, and finally flings the gun into a river—perhaps the only symbolic action that contains both despair and release.

In Pifflemeyer, Goffman’s use of interior monologue is most pronounced. Like Woolf or Joyce, he captures the inner cacophony of consciousness, where thoughts layer over one another in contradictory spirals. The narrative form itself reflects Alvin’s fragmented identity: “Alvin felt that his mind was tied up in knots...a maze going nowhere.” This formal mimicry of the psyche elevates the story into literary modernism.

---

Narrative Techniques: Structure and Style

Goffman employs a range of narrative techniques across the collection:

Stream of Consciousness: Particularly in Pifflemeyer and The Church of the Oversoul, he dives into characters’ minds, presenting layered, nonlinear introspection.

Circular and Fragmented Structures: Stories like The Incident and The Return use circular framing; others like The New Melissa and Oversoul employ fragmented chronology to reflect thematic disintegration.

Satirical Realism: Through ironic juxtaposition and bureaucratic absurdity, Goffman critiques societal systems (Limbo, A Real Man).

Symbolic Minimalism: Often, a single image—nuclear rain, a robotic Melissa, a flung gun—encapsulates a universe of meaning.

Stylistic Economy: His prose is sharp and economical, rarely florid, allowing metaphor and irony to do the heavy lifting.

---

Conclusion: Literary Lineage and Legacy

The Church of the Oversoul and Other Stories may be a contemporary creation, but its soul vibrates with the echoes of literary masters. Goffman dialogues with James Joyce’s existential interiority, Virginia Woolf’s emotional depth, George Orwell’s political skepticism, and Franz Kafka’s surreal dread. In Limbo, we feel Vonnegut’s satire; in Meltdown, T.S. Eliot’s spiritual dryness; in Pifflemeyer, Beckett’s absurdity and Graham Greene’s moral despair.

But Goffman is no mere mimic. He fuses these influences into a distinctly 21st-century voice—irreverent, introspective, and ethically alert. His characters are fragmented, not simply by trauma or ideology, but by overstimulation, digital seduction, and the breakdown of communal rituals. Faith, in his world, is not lost—it is scrambled.

In the end, The Church of the Oversoul is not just a book of stories. It is a collective lament, a philosophical inquiry, and a literary experiment. Goffman exposes not only what we have become, but what we have refused to confront: that humanity’s greatest peril lies not in external collapse but in our vanishing ability to feel it.The collection, though uneven in density, is rich in insight and style. It calls readers not merely to observe but to introspect—into our fears, our follies, and the fragile faith we place in systems, selves, and salvations. In the end, Goffman does what literature must: he makes us pause, ponder, and perhaps, prepare for a better—if uncertain—tomorrow.

---

Setu, July 2025