On Jordan Castro’s 'Muscle Man'

In Nathalie Sarraute’s brief forward to her novel, Tropisms, she writes “For no literary work can be a mere illustration of principles, however convincing.” Jordan Castro’s recently published Muscle Man is led by a character, Harold, who is driven by his principles (only to renege on them at the very end) and at all turns lambasts the degradation of university campuses and the demise of strong men in the world. “Society, particularly in the West, existed solely to keep exceptional men from living out their destiny…” he thinks at one point. It is, in effect, a Walter Kirn tweet come to life, and in its own right, a thoroughly accomplished satire of what many men perceive their existence to be today.