Lifting Weights

Jordan Castro made his name in the US “alt lit” scene with The Novelist, a cult debut that follows an aspiring writer over the course of a distracted morning. Castro’s signature knack is in creating a realistic and funny rhythm of compulsivity, which his new novel, Muscle Man, transposes onto Harold: a non-tenured English professor who’d rather lift weights than give lectures. Castro wears his Dostoevsky influence on his sleeve: both The Novelist and Muscle Man unfold over a single autumn or winter’s day, circling petty rivalries, refused invitations, and characters bent out of shape by bureaucracy and ego. Harold is at odds with his university’s “glassy-eyed” administrators, zombified students, and liberal colleagues.