Captive Audience

On Love and Reality TV

By: Lucas Mann

Narrated by: Lucas Mann

From the national bestselling author of Lord Fear and Class A comes "a tender, humane, comic, brainy, unsettling achievement” (Paul Lisicky, author of The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship) about what it means to live an authentic life and what it means to love a person. 

In Lucas Mann's trademark vein—fiercely intelligent, self-deprecating, brilliantly observed, idiosyncratic, personal, funny, and infuriating—Captive Audience is an appreciation of reality television wrapped inside a love letter to his wife, with whom he shares the guilty pleasure of watching "real" people bare their souls in search of celebrity. Captive Audience resides at the intersection of popular culture with the personal; the exhibitionist impulse, with the schadenfreude of the vicarious, and in confronting some of our most suspect impulses reveals surprising connections and the meaning of an authentic life.

Are they even trying?

I got this as my free download and I feel ripped off. My grandmother reading a shopping list has more inflection than the VO person. What a 💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 show. I’d be embarrassed if I was the author and this was the audio book.

What a way to alienate your "audience"

Within 5 minutes I knew the author must have an MFA. I was 100% sure because it’s that kind of writing. I googled. Yep, MFA. I almost stopped there. Then it got worse, he switched to the second person. You, you, you, you. Had I known that, I would never have gotten this book. It’s a letter to his wife, a very literary memoir/meditation on reality TV, and very literary academic writing. The three do not work together.

I’d’ve preferred a straight memoir in the first person or a less literary academic book about reality TV—not a letter to his wife. The “you” was an insurmountable issue for me and I had absolutely zero interest in his wife or any story that had to do with her because we as the reader are excluded by the fact that it’s addressed to her. He doesn’t have to fill in any blanks for her, but as the reader, I was completely unmoored. I had very little idea when and where this took place, who his wife was (I’m not sure he ever names her, though I confess I was lulled to sleep more than once by the author’s monotone narration. The upside is that he reads very fast.), etc.

The book was very fractured. Even within chapters it felt like vignettes. Yes, there were some through-lines (the author’s self-loathing was one of them, the “gaze” was another), but nothing seemed to hang together very well—my utter annoyance (and falling asleep) may have prevented me from feeling like the book was in any way cohesive, but I doubt it.

It’s too bad because there were some little chunks now and then that were very interesting (none of which included “you”), such as the parts when he’s teaching, the parts about the Kardashians, which surprised me because I have never watched that show and have no interest in it. Most of the shows Mann is obsessed with I’ve never seen but his thoughts, analysis, description of them were usually the most interesting part of the book if he didn’t go too far off into lovely, lyrical, literary language land. But unfortunately, a lot of the time he did.

I should give it more stars because Mann can really write and analyze. Those who like more "experimental" forms of writing and lovely language will probably quite like the book.