It's very hit or miss, really a collection of very short stories but written like many of Klosterman's essays, although the stories that had more of a sci-fi premise seemed to work for me more than most of the "stories". ( )

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

This is my first time reading Kolsterman's work. I had not even really heard of him prior to hearing about this collection Raised in Captivity. Reading Chuck Klosterman was like a cocktail made up of various portions of: This American Life, RadioLab, Joe Frank, The Twilight Zone, and David Foster Wallace. The stories are quick and weird. The brevity makes for snippits of fiction that explore american-life, relationships, parenting, our relationship to technology, sports and an admix of those topics that all seem to make more commentary than full-on story characterization. Its not a bad thing at all if that is what it sounds like I am implying but it's just a very different sort of fiction. Thus; Fictional nonfiction. Very different. A blast to read. It's a total hybrid of journalism - podcastiness - and New Yorkeresqe fiction (the past 10 years or so of New Yorker fiction).

Raised in Captivity is a very quick read. The stories move super fast and its pretty unputdownable. I read the whole thing in just about two long sittings. It's one of the perfect summer reads to blow through and the stories have that feel where its kinda easy to relate to a friend - they are fun to retell to friends. As in: Hey I just read this Klosterman story and its xyz and this and that and so forth. They suit the kind of retelling that I wont do here because, spoilers, that would I think resist that eyes glazing over look that tends to happen when relating any particular thing at length. The stories may not all be home runs but that's the nature of collections. I enjoyed most of them and that is enough for me.

All in all as I said a very fine collection. Super enjoyable. Deep but not too deep. Very funny. Recommended. ( )

This collection of short stories is incredibly clever, and hilariously ridiculous. “fiction non-fiction” is the perfect description. I’ve read out aloud some of these stories to friends and family, and telling others about it gets funnier every time.
Honestly I’d prescribe this as part of everyone’s self care routine- especially the story of the man wondering if his life is heaven, hell or purgatory! ( )

Chuck Klosterman is an interesting and creative guy. As a writer of both long-form fiction (Downtown Owl, The Visible Man) and non-fictional essays (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Eating the Dinosaur, But What If We’re Wrong?), he has proven to be a consistently insightful and out-of-the-box thinker about our modern popular culture. Which begs the question, where exactly does Raised in Captivity fit into his overall catalog of work? Having just finished reading it, I am honestly not really sure.

Subtitled “fictional nonfiction,” the book comprises an assortment of about three dozen short pieces that capture made-up situations which seem as if they could be true, in the same sense that some of the classic episodes from the television series The Twilight Zone could have possibly been true. Each brief story reads like a lightly fleshed-out narrative around a provocative central idea, such as “What if something in the world shifted so that coin flips no longer had 50-50 outcomes?,” or “What happens when political correctness on college campuses reaches the point where professors are responsible for what students think they heard?,” or “What if someone flying in first class for the first time goes to the restroom and finds a live puma sitting on the toilet?” (That last notion is the title story for the volume, by the way.)

So, it would be fair to think about Raised in Captivity as short stories that explore concepts that would not otherwise fit into Klosterman’s longer non-fictional essays. That is a reasonable goal and one that potentially expands the author’s palette in an intriguing way. The problem I had, however, is that none of the stories were developed in a sufficient way to make them compelling as stand-alone contributions; in fact, it might be better to call them “vignettes” rather than “stories” in the same sense as Alice Munro’s angsty character studies or the wild, off-center fiction of George Saunders. Consequently, although I liked about half of these stories for their humor and viewpoint, I did not find the overall collection to be a wholly successful effort that I can recommend without reservation. ( )