Raised in Captivity

Fictional Nonfiction

By: Chuck Klosterman

Narrated by: Chuck Klosterman, James Urbaniak, Bill Wise, Eddie Huang, Jon Wurster, H. Jon Benjamin, Jon Dolan, Mike Birbiglia, Kurt Loder, John Hodgman, Sloane Crosley, Chris Gethard, Will Brill, Various

Microdoses of the straight dope, stories so true they had to be wrapped in fiction for our own protection, from the best-selling author of But What if We're Wrong?

A man flying first class discovers a puma in the lavatory. A new coach of a small-town Oklahoma high school football team installs an offense comprised of only one, very special, play. A man explains to the police why he told the employee of his local bodega that his colleague looked like the lead singer of Depeche Mode, a statement that may or may not have led in some way to a violent crime. A college professor discusses with his friend his difficulties with the new generation of students. An obscure power pop band wrestles with its new-found fame when its song "Blizzard of Summer" becomes an anthem for white supremacists. A couple considers getting a medical procedure that will transfer the pain of childbirth from the woman to her husband. A woman interviews a hit man about killing her husband but is shocked by the method he proposes. A man is recruited to join a secret government research team investigating why coin flips are no longer exactly 50/50. A man sees a whale struck by lightning, and knows that everything about his life has to change. A lawyer grapples with the unintended side effects of a veterinarian's rabies vaccination.

Fair warning: Raised in Captivity does not slot into a smooth preexisting groove. If Saul Steinberg and Italo Calvino had adopted a child from a Romanian orphanage and raised him on Gary Larsen and Thomas Bernhard, he would still be nothing like Chuck Klosterman. They might be good company, though. Funny, wise and weird in equal measure, Raised in Captivity bids fair to be one of the most original and exciting story collections in recent memory, a fever graph of our deepest unvoiced hopes, fears and preoccupations. Ceaselessly inventive, hostile to corniness in all its forms, and mean only to the things that really deserve it, it marks a cosmic leap forward for one of our most consistently interesting writers.

Read by Chuck Klosterman, James Urbaniak, Bill Wise, Eddie Huang, Jon Wurster, H. Jon Benjamin, Jon Dolan, Mike Birbiglia, Kurt Loder, John Hodgman, Sloane Crosley, Chris Gethard, Will Brill, Dennis Boutsikaris, Melissa Maerz, Jeremy Bobb, Scott Shepherd, Brent Musburger, and Vincent Kartheiser

love Klosterman!

Short stories that make you reflect on our modern age. I've liked some of his other books more, but this was highly enjoyable. There was a point in the book where either a direction or something can be heard talking instead of the narrator.

Really REALLY good book

I wasn't too impressed with Klosterman's other fiction, "Downtown Owl" nor "The Visible Man", but this blew me away. My only complaint is that I wish it were longer, which could be taken as praise as well I guess.
I highly recommend you check this one out.

9.5 / 10.0

Pretty Good

I prefer when Chuck reads the entire book. But most of the performances were solid.

Hurry up and Read

Not sure how well this book will age but it is one of the most relevant and contemporary collection-short stories. Some of them will sit with you and some you forget as you are hearing them but it leaves readers smirking, wincing, or empathizing the whole time.

Finding the mundane in the mundane.

If social commentary were bubble gum. Some good ideas, a few stories have potential, but eventually you end up chewing the same stale piece of gum. Absurdity for the sake of absurdity at times, no underlying theme, or heaven forbid, wit. Mostly social observations the listener wishes would go somewhere, rather than regurgitate feeble pop culture references and old worn-out tropes. Who knew listening to Morrissey was synonymous with depression? I wonder why nobody ever came up with that idea before. Not really even worth the time to be a bridge book to something better.