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The Visible Man: A Novel - Hardcover

Klosterman, Chuck

 
9781439184462: The Visible Man: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1439184461 ISBN 13: 9781439184462
Verlag: Scribner, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

New York Times bestselling author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Downtown Owl, “the Ethicist” of the New York Times Magazine, Chuck Klosterman returns to fiction with his second novel—an imaginative page-turner about a therapist and her unusual patient, a man who can render himself invisible.

Therapist Victoria Vick is contacted by a cryptic, unlikable man who insists his situation is unique and unfathomable. As he slowly reveals himself, Vick becomes convinced that he suffers from a complex set of delusions: Y__, as she refers to him, claims to be a scientist who has stolen cloaking technology from an aborted government project in order to render himself nearly invisible. He says he uses this ability to observe random individuals within their daily lives, usually when they are alone and vulnerable. Unsure of his motives or honesty, Vick becomes obsessed with her patient and the disclosure of his increasingly bizarre and disturbing tales. Over time, it threatens her career, her marriage, and her own identity.

Interspersed with notes, correspondence, and transcriptions that catalog a relationship based on curiosity and fear, The Visible Man touches on all of Chuck Klosterman’s favorite themes—the consequence of culture, the influence of media, the complexity of voyeurism, and the existential contradiction of normalcy. Is this comedy, criticism, or horror? Not even Y__ seems to know for sure.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Chuck Klosterman is the bestselling author of many books of nonfiction (including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, I Wear the Black Hat, Fargo Rock City and Chuck Klosterman X) and two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man). He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Esquire, Spin, The Guardian, The Believer, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years, and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I was physically introduced to Y____ in the most standard of ways: There was a knock at my office door, and I told the knocker to enter. The entrance swung open and a man stepped into the room. I knew who he was before he told me. There were no surprises.

He was a man. A strange-looking man, but nothing more.

He was tall and he was thin. Cadaverous. Perhaps six feet five or six feet six, but no more than 175 pounds. His head was a skull on a stick; it was shaved to the skin, but I could see a subtle shadow where his hair would sprout. The hairline was receding. He wore an oversized black T-shirt, khaki pants, and garish white tennis shoes. His arms were wiry and unnaturally long. His nose was large, as were his Adam’s apple and his ears. His teeth were jagged and yellow. “Ichabod Crane,” I thought to myself. “He looks like an actor auditioning for the role of Ichabod Crane.” It was a sweltering day in May, but he was barely sweating. I can recall this because I asked him where he had parked his car (at the time, I was in the midst of a minor parking dispute with a neighboring office building and lived in constant fear that my patients might get towed). He mentioned that he had arrived on foot. I could not imagine how a man in a black T-shirt could walk any distance in the 90-degree Texas heat without perspiring, but Y____ was immune. When he shook my hand, it was cool and dry, like a brick from the cellar.

I turned on the tape recorder.

When I treat patients in my office, I never sit behind my desk. The desk creates a barrier, and barriers are the enemy. Instead, I sit in a white Eames chair. My patients have the option of sitting in an identical black Eames chair or on the couch. No one ever takes the couch, particularly during their first session (too overt). Y____ looked at both options and requested that he sit in my chair. I said, “No, that’s not how things work here.” I don’t know why I used those specific words. Y____ asked, “Does it matter where I sit? Can’t I sit in the white chair?”

“If it doesn’t matter,” I responded, “then why not sit in the black chair, like everyone else who comes here?”

“Because I have a preference,” said Y____. “I prefer white objects. If I express a preference for white objects, why not allow me to sit in the white chair?”

“Perhaps I have my own preference,” I said.

“Do you have a preference?”

“Yes. I prefer the white chair. The white chair is my preference.”

“Then by all means, take the white chair,” said Y____. “I would never interfere with your preference.”

We both sat. I smiled. He smiled back, but only for a moment.

“So here I am,” he said. “You wanted to see me, and now you have. This is your office, and I am here. I’m in your office.”

“You are,” I said. “Thank you for coming in. It’s really nice to see you.”

“Yes, yes. Of course. Of course it’s nice. Let’s talk about how nice it is. This is a wonderful office—you have plants, carpeting, a relatively quiet air conditioner. It’s contemporary in a classic way, or perhaps vice versa. Can we get to work now? Or do we still need to have a pretend conversation about how much your rent is?”

“We can absolutely get to work,” I said. “That’s a good attitude. I’ve really been enjoying our work thus far. The progress has been, you know—progressive. But let me ask you something, before we get going: You mentioned that you liked white objects. That’s an interesting thing to like.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Well, what if I think it’s interesting?”

“What if I think it’s not? There’s no meaning here, Vicky. My affinity for the color white doesn’t say anything about me. Look, we’re not going to do this. You need to accept that. I already understand the process. We both understand the process. I don’t need to slowly grow comfortable with the conceit, and you don’t need to understand why I like white objects. Let’s get to the provocation. Let’s start with what matters: You think I’m telling a fictional story. Your stomach tells you that I’m telling the truth, but your mind insists your stomach is crazy. I’ve been thinking about this all week. When we last spoke on the phone, I realized I misspoke. I said that I didn’t care if you believed me. That’s not accurate. That was my mistake. What I meant to say is that I don’t care if you think I’m an honest person. I don’t care if you think I’m a good person or a bad person. But I do need you to believe the specific things I’ve told you. If you don’t believe I’ve done the things I’ve done, it will derail our conversation. You will hear everything I say as an extension of a delusion, and the content will get ignored. I will say things like, ‘I once saw Event A happen to Subject Zed,’ and you will wonder, ‘What is his inner motive for telling that particular story about this particular fabrication? What does this story represent?’ But that won’t be what’s happening. Anything I elect to tell you won’t be theoretical or metaphorical. It will be something real that happened in my life. So I need you to believe that what I’ve said—and what I will continue to say—is not untrue.”

Y____ stood up from the chair, jarringly, throwing himself upward by pushing down on the armrests. It was like watching a giraffe awaken from a tranquilizer. “May I walk about,” he asked. He began to pace around the room, erratically, looking down at the floor while gesturing with his hands. This behavior is what I’d come to classify as “the Y____ Character.” Whenever Y____ became “the Y____ Character,” his dialogue would feel rehearsed. It was like watching a one-man show. Though I’d already experienced several of these moments over the phone, this was the first time I witnessed it with my eyes. Over time, I’ve come to accept that the Y____ Character was (probably) the real Y____. It was everything else that was (probably) the show.

“So how can we do this?” Y____ continued. He loved semirhetorical questions. “How can I make you believe me? What could I do, short of being cloaked in front of you, to make you accept my words at face value?”

“That’s an intriguing question,” I said. “Maybe it’s an impossible thing for me to accept. So if I never accept this, how will it make you feel?”

“Vicky, we’re not doing this,” he said. “We’re not doing some kind of exercise where I make a declarative statement and you ask me how I feel about that declaration. We’re not going to talk about my development or my primal memories. Maybe we will eventually, but not today. Right now, today, I need you to tell me how I can make you believe I’m not like other people. That I can do things other people cannot.”

He stopped pacing and looked at me, frozen, waiting, saying nothing. The moment I began to respond, he commenced his pace.

“If there were some witnesses to this partial invisibility,” I said, “and those witnesses came in here and verified what you had said, honestly and scientifically, I might believe you.”

“There are no witnesses to my life,” Y____ said. “That’s one of the keys to being unseen: If...

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Verlag
Scribner
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1439184461
ISBN 13 
9781439184462
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
240
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Verantwortliche Person
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