Raised in Captivity by Chuck Klosterman (August 2019)
Longtime TOA favorite Chuck Klosterman’s first short story collection proved to be among the more interesting books I read in 2019. His status – celebrity? – means his new releases are accompanied by book tours and I was lucky to see him read for a third time (1). He said this collection was ‘fictional nonfiction’, a series of very short stories written as if they were true, and although I admit I have no idea what distinction he was trying to describe it does seem like a very appropriate summary of the book.
It’s possible that he simply meant his writing would be no different than his past work, mostly essay collections about pop culture topics like music, sports, and television, except that he would untether himself from the constraint of facts. This might explain why these stories felt more like his essays than anyone else’s short fiction, Etgar Keret perhaps excepted (Chuck's ‘Not That Kind of Person’ reminded me of Keret’s ‘Good Intentions’). Ambiguity aside, I liked reading it, and the nine I chose to reread this time only bolstered my resolve to reread the entire collection someday.
A personal challenge for short story collections is the lack of continuity in my notes. However, some ideas were far too good, jumping out at me throughout the fall and reminding me of some basic truths in my life. The observation that we miss our old friends the most when we finally see them again inspired this post while an autumn conversation demonstrated why pretending can sometimes become our worst feature.
An insight I am still trying to work out is how although most people are right in their beliefs, they rarely understand how they are right. Perhaps it's because we rarely need to tell others about the things we understand perfectly and therefore we never practice expressing ourselves in such matters, preferring to share instead those ideas we have yet to fully grasp.
Footnotes / endnotes
1. Pod alert!
He also promoted his book on a number of podcasts I regularly listen to - since I forgot to keep track, I just Googled it, only to discover that he seems to have appeared on around 425 pods to promote the book's release. Nice job, I guess?
