book , the essay collection -LRB- 2009 's `` Eating the Dinosaur '' -RRB- . I had to reread H.G. Wells ' `` The Time Machine '' for an essay I was writing . I was living in Germany at the time , teaching for the University of Leipzig , so I got it through Amazon Europe or whatever , and it was an edition of the book that was `` The Time Machine '' and `` The Invisible Man . '' So I decided I would read `` The Invisible Man '' too , since I had n't read it since fifth or sixth grade . It was a totally different book than I 'd remembered -LRB- which is what happens when -RRB- you 're an adult . The thing that was most interesting to me was that the invisible man was such a jerk . He was just this kind of egocentric , weird person . Of course , as I thought it over , what type of personality would pursue something like invisibility ? It would have to be someone who was both very smart and really sort of egocentric -- would lack the normal boundaries a
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Chuck Klosterman 's seventh book and second novel , `` The Visible Man '' -LRB- Scribner -RRB- , is out Tuesday . Its story is told by an Austin , Texas , therapist named Victoria Vick and centers around one of her clients , Y ___ , a man whose name we never learn and who , more importantly , has an unusual talent . Thanks to a suit and some cream he helped develop , Y ___ can basically render himself invisible to the untrained eye . But more than simply a book about a guy with a special ability , `` The Visible Man '' is about how people act when they 're not being watched , and the sketchy moral line that 's crossed by the watcher . CNN spoke with Klosterman about the inspiration for the book , writing about and participating in the interview process , and how no one is going to relate to the two main characters in his new novel . CNN : What was the inspiration for `` The Visible Man '' ? Chuck Klosterman : I think it was probably when I was writing the previous