". . . a detailed and seemingly experience-based portrait of what it's like to strut one's stuff onstage--be it at a comedy club or on a basketball court--for all to see and judge. . . . an impressively solid debut . . . ."--Chicago Sun-Times"In Captive Audience, Dave Reidy collects fictional stories of performers on the fringes of the entertainment world and deftly mixes in cameos from real celebrities (from R.E.M. to Abe Vigoda). This heartfelt collection highlights Reidy's empathy for his characters, and portends a bright future for the author."--David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy "Captive Audience is wonderful. These stories--understated, honest and always touching--limn the many small perils that await a young man today on his way to settling in the world. This is an immensely rewarding book."--Scott Turow "Dave Reidy's stories remind us that even when we're composing our Song of Everyone Else, we're creating a distinctive Song of Ourselves, and continually gathering others into us, in a way that Walt Whitman would recognize, and celebrate."--Jim Shepard "Dave Reidy's matchless reports from the heart of twenty-first century America, a landscape of technological obsession and performance anxiety (in many forms), are elegant, precise, cool, and funny. Here is a young writer from whom we can expect much in the future."--David Leavitt