Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction, Klosterman’s first collection of short stories, extends his trademark curiosity and whirring intelligence to the realm of fiction. The short stories here, 34 in total, are truly short, fewer than 10 pages on average. But what they may lack in development or structure, they make up for in originality and humor ... Klosterman’s work is motivated by his interest in ideas or, rather, his interest in society’s interest in ideas: how we come to them, experience them and abandon them. In these short pieces, he uses largely faceless characters to test accepted realities, such as time, technology, death and football, to an extent well beyond the reach of nonfiction. The effect of these almost scrollable-length stories is at once familiar and uncanny. It feels like a replication of the fractured way we are forced, in the age of technology, to mediate reality and attempt to understand the world around us.
... the vignettes touch on everything from class, gender, and race to the anxieties that talking about those things can stir up. They are also delightfully unsettling ... as funny, thoughtful, and unhinged as it is slightly uncomfortable to read, and if that isn't the ethos of the current pop culture moment, what is?
They sound like jokes, these stories. Barroom tales saved up for that hour before last call when everyone has run out of interesting things to say about their jobs, their kids, their fantasy football league ... short stories that stretch from the vaguely science fictional to the vaguely thriller-y to the vaguely vague. And that's not an insult. That's design. That's deliberate, this sense of disconnection. Of extreme oddity cloaked in muffling banality ... taken in the aggregate, Klosterman's microdoses of reality present something larger than the sum of their parts: A clear-eyed vision of consensus reality as a breakable construct, easily manipulated by those who can see the complicated workings inside and come up with the one great play that bends those rules and works every time.
... [an] often contrarian, pop culture-obsessed and often awe-inspiringly granular writing style ... Even to Klosterman, his curiosities aren’t for everyone. But this is the kind of strange, sharply detailed and often slyly funny examination of cultural behavior and norms he does unlike anyone else ... there is no subject too ephemeral or superficial to pull at from all angles ... With most stories rising out of an unexpected situation or the consideration of a single question or idea over the span of just a few pages, the book’s scattershot style earns its front cover label as 'fictional nonfiction' ... With that kind of playful self-awareness, it’s hard to begrudge the bite-size ideas explored here, especially peppered with Klosterman’s sharp wit and deep-cut descriptions that will be exceptionally vivid to some but useless to those not already in his tribe ... Klosterman’s interrogative nature sometimes means these stories yield little more than premises for wry jokes while others unfortunately feel as if they’re cut off too soon ... Consider these stories the products of the kind of specific, unexpectedly divergent conversations that can come up between old friends as the hours grow late. Some are rich enough to reward further exploration, while others trail off to nowhere, but all are pleasant enough to have around. This friend just enjoys the push and pull of arguments, whether they’re based in reality or not.
A beach read...for late-stage capitalism ... Calling them teaching stories or contemporary parables also works ... Sartre would definitely approve. Whether their settings are fantastic or realistic, Mr. Klosterman’s stories gleefully skewer contemporary human behavior with the sharpest metaphorical sticks he can find. Middle class professional people and situations are his main targets, but Mr. Klosterman throws everyone and everything under the bus as needed to prove a point or land a joke ... On the whole, Raised in Captivity reads like the collected sermons of a manic street preacher in clown makeup. Readers who already enjoy Mr. Klosterman’s writing will happily devour this sizzling plate of sacred cow, and those who can laugh in the face of despair will find both validation and tonic in its pages ... Highly recommended for sophisticated readers who aren’t afraid of cutting themselves on the edge of contemporary literature.
Not only is Chuck Klosterman one of those writers whose distinctive style gets lodged in your brain, but one whose ideas initiate fresh and often zany manners of thinking you might not have encountered if you hadn't read him. His brand of junk-food intellectualism weaves together disparate pop-culture subject matter in prose that's both blunt and conversational ... On first read, some stories are so spit-take funny that the fundamental questions driving them are almost obscured by their downright nuttiness ... The short-fiction format employed throughout the book offers Klosterman a fresh way to write on many of the same subjects he tackles in his nonfiction, so it makes sense that the best stories in Raised in Captivity are the ones that most closely resemble thinly-veiled essays. The front cover deems these stories 'Fictional Nonfiction', a clunky term that seems too much like a far-reaching marketing device. Really, this is just Klosterman being Klosterman, witty and perceptive in his doggedly consistent way. The approach is different, but the voice and ideas presented are undoubtedly his, couldn't come from anyone else, and this is where the book's value lies.
Klosterman has assembled a series of 'weird thoughts' and presents each one through a short story or microfiction. The technique could be a revelation, except that this 'fictional nonfiction' approach is, of course, the foundation of contemporary science fiction. And while Klosterman resists science fiction as a label, his concepts wouldn’t be out of place in many science fiction anthologies ... the problem with resisting 'science fiction' as a label is how clearly it demonstrates a lack of awareness of science fiction as a genre. The intelligence, insight, and complexity of modern scifi is nothing to be sneered at. Klosterman does occasionally gesture at scifi, but it’s through a simplified pop culture lens ... seldom play out complete stories. Instead, they raise possibilities and end on unresolved notes. The characters experience and observe, but don’t grow or change. Klosterman assumes that observation is sufficient, and that his insights are satisfying in and of themselves which, unfortunately, they aren’t, quite ... Where Klosterman isn’t writing about sports, though, he’s out of his depth. His cultural knowledge isn’t sufficiently wide-ranging, nor is his grasp of genre sufficiently complex, to bring anything new to the table. The stories that might be subtly parodic in more adept hands falter in his ... a book for people who don’t read much. Readers without much context are likely to be drawn to its observations, which are fairly vivid, even if they’re not original or complex. In that sense, it’s a book that would be damaged by satire or even deep parody. It meets its target audience where it is: in Urban Outfitters, startled by the oddness of the present and beginning to consider what that might mean.
Klosterman comes across as familiarly irreverent ... while its tone may be alluring to fans, the collection is less clever, incisive short stories than it is akin to a series of premises pitched in a precocious TV writers’ room. Pilot season might do well to have Klosterman relate such jumping-off points, which is to say that the book sounds fun, but as a collection, it’s undercooked ... as soon as things start to get interesting, Klosterman shuts it all down ... Klosterman’s best stories are those that deal with the ethics of his premise in a more meaningful way ... The only problem is that for every good story in this collection of 34, there are far too many middling ones, and more than a couple bad ones. One story in particular is almost offensive in its belief of its own cleverness ... may as well be titled Nonfictional Fiction.
... [Klosterman] paints incredible alternate realities through which he can explore, obliquely, what it means to be alive today ... This is a short-order short story collection, a series of skits cooked up for the here and now ... The best stories here are the ones that fall on or near the line of plausibility, exposing the fault lines in our current mode ... the irony of a political system where the line between fiction and nonfiction has been effaced to the point of meaninglessness is felt throughout ... If this flavor of zeitgeist feels overpowering, be assured at least that Klosterman zips through these tales with such vigor, such celerity (most don’t exceed seven or eight pages), that the reader has little time to question their conceptual novelty or integrity; at any rate, insufficient time to tire of them ... Not all the stories work, and sometimes the concept is too thin, the joke too parochial. Technique at the local level — the firework sentence, the quick laugh — always seems to trump the quality of the idea ... for the most part, Raised in Captivity is an engagingly sardonic collection that will leave you, like one of Klosterman’s own bewildered characters, 'relaxed and confused.'
Few writers today have been working the cultural criticism beat as long and as successfully as Chuck Klosterman ... strange and offbeat, small and skewed glimpses of the zeitgeist through weird-colored glasses – think Twilight Zone or Black Mirror, only in a much bigger hurry. And while they vary in length, style and tone, all of them ring loudly with the author’s distinctive voice ... Pure Klosterman, all of it ... shot through with cleverness and an element of the absurd, capturing the unique inquisitiveness that is a Klosterman hallmark. There’s an ironic detachment throughout the collection, a sense of remove that comes through even when a narrative is unfolding in the first person ... not all of these stories are home runs; some suffer due to Klosterman’s tendency toward abrupt endings, others never quite get sufficient room for their ideas to flower. But even the relative misfires are entertaining despite whatever flaws they might have. He’s throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, a kitchen sink approach that is enjoyable even when less successful ... a fun, fast-moving collection of quick hits. No one looks at the world quite like Chuck Klosterman does; for him to turn that vision in a slightly different direction is a welcome change. Shining that perspective through the prism of fiction makes for a grand and strange good time. There’s wisdom and a surprising amount of pathos as well.
... the sort of fiction that I’d typically call vignettes, a word too highfalutin to describe these pieces. Most of them are light-hearted, zany and crazy bordering on comic-sociopathic, which makes them fun to read, almost like watching squirrels fighting over their walnut treasures. Or not — depending on your temperament ... A few of the stories broach a serious social topic or two, but most read like anecdotes. I suppose the subtitle 'Fictional Nonfiction' is intended as a clever oxymoron, but it comes across as a gimmicky way to sell more books, since nonfiction generally sells better than fiction ... Klosterman is a fine, popular nonfiction writer. His fiction, though, is a grab-bag of gags, gimmicks and jokes, most of which are entertaining. Some stand up as more than just light entertainment; others fall with barely a thud. But each is short enough to parse through, chuckle, and continue reading the next gag, even on the hottest summer day.
... a delightful grab-bag of ideas, characters, and fantastical plots, all in prose that jumps off the page ... these vignettes, often with Twilight Zone- or Black Mirror-like premises, are both profoundly weird and weirdly profound. Some take the form of long-form jokes, some are more like parables, but in each, despite its brevity, Klosterman develops a stunningly complete world. At times it feels like Klosterman is channeling David Foster Wallace, Lorrie Moore, and/or Tom Robbins, and though some stories feel a bit gimmicky, the collection is, overall, quite remarkable. Designed to be dipped in and out of in short bursts, this book of quirky tales from a supremely confident writer is moving, funny, and ceaselessly entertaining.
Billed as 'Fictional Nonfiction,' in this we get more echoes of the creative process behind Gen X icon Klosterman’s two absurdist novels than we do from his tart essays and meandering nonfiction ... It’s a bit worrisome that the collection is absolutely laced with confessions, but they’re acidly funny ... Klosterman not only excels at character and dialogue, as the people and conversations in the book seem very organic, but he’s also keen on setting up offbeat scenarios, which often drift toward the bizarre ... Armed with everything from existential crises to a robot dinosaur, there’s really something for everyone in this crisp collection of imaginative snippets ... A colorful, somewhat wicked collection of stories that are touching as often as they are laugh-out-loud funny.
... a multitude of clever scenarios ... In these 34 stories, most featuring a hilarious denouement, the author takes on racism, diets, cults, white privilege, and life with Trump as president. Standouts include Execute Again,Of Course It Is, and Pain is a Concept by Which We Measure Our God. No matter the topic, Klosterman’s gimlet eye and trenchant prose bedazzle.
... astonished, astounded, shocked and sometimes confounded me ... succinct, filled with clarity, with mystery or enigma hovering around the outside edges ... I have never read a book quite like Raised in Captivity. Klosterman is a highly unusual storyteller, unlike any other author I have ever read. If I described him as a mixture of Stephen King, poet T.S. Eliot and journalist Meyer Berger, with a dash of J.D. Salinger and Flannery O’Connor, you’d get the general idea. But I’d still be missing something to describe this man and his writing. If you’re looking for an intelligent book that will bring a different tone to your reading, I’d recommend this one. You’ll come away from it having had an unusual yet thoroughly satisfying experience --- one that you’ll want to repeat by rereading.
