The Thousands

Chuck Klosterman‘s latest novel features an almost invisible man named Y____, an unremarkable therapist named Victoria and a “heavy dude” named Zug, who seems to know an awful lot about 10th century Iceland.

The Visible Man is only the second piece of fiction from a bloke who normally pays his bills writing pithy essays about MTV‘s The Real World, rock n‘ roll odysseys or why the Unabomber wasn‘t entirely nuts. It’s chockablock full of Klosterman’s favourite things: music, drugs, longwinded treatises on the nature of mediated culture – but it is the unconventional structure that makes it worth reading.

The book is presented as a manuscript submitted for publication by Y____’s therapist. It’s a series of transcripts, suppositions, extra-textual notes and self-reflective ponderings. The implausible nature of an almost invisible man is openly addressed, and a good portion of the tension lies in the fact that we are receiving an edited, second hand, potentially unreliable account of a thoroughly unbelievable story.

The Visible Man is a little bit sci-fi, a little bit experimental, and a lot bit readable.