An intimate portrait of a marriage intertwined with a meditation on reality TV that reveals surprising connections and the meaning of an authentic life. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.
Lucas Mann received his MFA from the University of Iowa, where he was the Provost's Visiting Writer in Nonfiction. He is the author of Lord Fear- A Memoir and Class A- Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere. His essays and stories have appeared in many publications, including TriQuarterly, Slate, and The Kenyon Review. He teaches writing at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
“If Mann doesn't quite elevate reality TV to an art form—and that’s
unlikely his intention—he makes a persuasive argument for readers
to sit up and take notice. The cultural implications are perhaps
more potent than we’d like to believe. An immensely captivating
consideration of reality TV and a moving reflection on
marriage.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“What other book goes so boldly into the insatiable need to be
seen? Who else is as tough on his own perceptions? I already knew
Lucas Mann was a wonder of a writer, but Captive Audience is his
best book yet: a tender, humane, comic, brainy, unsettling
achievement.” —Paul Lisicky, author of The Narrow Door: A Memoir of
Friendship
“I’m an ardent admirer of Lucas Mann’s work. Captive Audience shows
us how to do ‘media criticism’ the right way or rather the wrong
way, the more electric and exciting way: The target is never out
there; it’s in here. A galvanizing, illuminating, and nervy book.”
—David Shields, author of Other People and Reality Hunger
“Exuberantly intelligent and thoughtfully romantic, Captive
Audience is an ode to two of America’s favorite pastimes: falling
in love, and watching ourselves on TV. With uncommon insight
and humor, Lucas Mann weaves a textile of analysis, feeling, and
good old-fashioned voyeurism that not only captivates but
entertains.” —Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body
Like Mine
“I was initially drawn to Captive Audience’s smashing critical
analysis and savvy pop culture apologies, but what I ended up
cherishing most of all is this book’s vivid portraiture. Mann has
written a soulful recounting of not just a decade of watching
reality TV as it has evolved past entertainment into something more
complex, public, and even sinister, but a story of doing so
alongside another person—a beloved life partner, nonetheless, with
whom his shared reality also evolves and deepens. Who could have
imagined that one of the most evocative love stories I’ve read in
ages would be mixed into heady investigations of Joe Millionaire,
COPS, and Vanderpump Rules?” —Elena Passarello, author of
Animals Strike Curious Poses
“Over and over again, while reading Captive Audience, I was struck
by Lucas Mann’s refusal to be satisfied by the insights that might
satisfy another writer. Instead, he questions each of these
insights: digs under it, complicates it, wonders why he felt
inspired to utter it, wonders if its opposite might be just as
true. The idea of epiphany makes him restless, but this
restlessness is a gift to the rest of us. And running like a
passionate ribbon through all of his ferocious questioning—about
authenticity, presence, self-awareness and self-possession—is an
unapologetic love story, full of the daily performances and
unexpected grace of reality itself.” —Leslie Jamison, author
of The Empathy Exams
“This is book is about what it means to see and be seen. And more:
it is about what it means to see and be seen in love. Lucas Mann
always writes openly, even ecstatically, at the boundaries of the
essay form. Captive Audience offers the pleasure of reading all
these things: memoir, lucid cultural analysis, TV Guide,
journalism, and, most of all, glorious love letters hurting with
shared joys and naked vulnerability.” —Amitava Kumar, author of
Immigrant, Montana
“Lucas Mann’s Captive Audience is brilliant. From his funny,
poignant ruminations on trashy TV to his quest to truly know his
wife and to see himself through her eyes, Mann has deftly created a
new kind of entertainment: a relationship that’s as addictive to
witness as the best kinds of reality television, only real.”
—Lindsay Hunter, author of Eat Only When You’re Hungry
“There is no cultural critic in America like Lucas Mann. Perhaps
that’s because he turns on the television and sees what you
don’t—in the vulgar and striving world of reality television, he
finds beauty and heart in the ambition that drove these over-tanned
and underfed people to perform for us—and that brought us in to
watch. Mann’s voice is filled with empathy, irony, and a tenderness
that will make you laugh and then ache, sometimes within the span
of a single, perfectly constructed sentence. Captive Audience is
the definitive book on the aging but perennially renewed genre of
reality TV, and there isn’t an author alive who could have written
it better.” —Kristen Radtke, author of Imagine Only Wanting
This
“Epistolary writing is custom-made for immodesty and oversharing,
the kinds of filter-less self-display, as Lucas Mann shows us, that
we happen to want from reality TV stars. But in this epistle to his
wife, Mann explores their shared enthusiasm for reality television
and proves there is insight and virtue to be found in examining the
desire to be seen. He gets closer to that dimension of intimacy and
love, in fact, than any spotlight-seeker yet who has beguiled us
from our most private screens.” —Gregory Pardlo, author of Air
Traffic
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