In Jordan Castro’s inventive, funny, and surprisingly tender first novel, we follow a young man over the course of a single morning as he tries and fails to write an autobiographical novel, finding himself instead drawn into the infinite spaces of Twitter, quotidian rituals, and his own mind.
The act of making coffee prompts a reflection on the limits of self-knowledge; an editor’s embarrassing tweet sparks rage at the literary establishment; a meditation on first person versus third examines choice and action; an Instagram post about the ethics of having children triggers mimetic rivalry; the act of doing the dishes is at once ordinary and profound: one of the many small commitments that make up a life of stability.
The Novelist: A Novel pays tribute to Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine and Thomas Bernhard’s Woodcutters, but in the end is a wholly original novel about language and consciousness, the internet and social media, and addiction and recovery.
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“No vacuous fad nor commonplace hypocrisy is safe from Jordan Castro. With prose as relentless as it is rhythmic, The Novelist gouges into the status-quo, laying bare the futility of both art and meaningful subversion against a culture of narcissism and instant gratification…The Novelist not only establishes Castro as a fresh force to be reckoned with, but one with rare heart, too.”
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Jakob Guanzon, National Book Award–nominated author