Chuck Klosterman on the Couch

Fargo Rock City aside, Chuck Klosterman’s work has generally consisted of riffing on whatever subject occupies his attention for as long as he feels like it. In that respect, Visible Man, his second novel, is closer to his essays than his previous stabs at fiction: The narrative framework is less compelling than the pop-cultural theorizing it includes. Unlike his first novel, Downtown Owl, which offered panoramic tales of a diverse sampling of midwestern small-town life, Visible Man has fewer characters: it’s a claustrophobic duet between an unnamed therapy patient with a strange secret and his incautiously curious therapist, mostly consisting of the man (referred to as “Y___.”) ranting.