Muscle Man: A Novel

A hilarious, suspenseful metaphysical thriller following a day in the life of an English professor who would rather be lifting weights from the author of the cult hit The Novelist

Harold, a middling literature professor at a liberal arts college, lives in a state of dissatisfaction and fear. His colleagues and students evoke nothing but disgust and disdain. None of them understand strength, power, and spiritual actualization like he does. His university’s campus—seemingly picturesque—constantly threatens to reveal something sinister.

Over the course of a single afternoon, he wanders the halls, sits in meetings, steals from a student, and goes to the gym—all while reflecting on his professional and existential situation. With every line of Harold’s frenetic consciousness, his mundane routine transforms into something more foreboding, culminating in an ingenious twist.

Brilliantly imagined and darkly funny, Muscle Man is as much a critique of resentment and contemporary masculinity as a satire on the state of higher education, exploring weakness and strength, rationality and irrationality, the spirit and the flesh, and the individual and the collective.

With his minute-to-minute occupation of Harold’s existential disquietude, Castro imbues the novel’s philosophical inquiries with thrilling suspense. Is Harold a raving lunatic whose disdain stems from his own perilous inadequacies, or is there something truly sinister about his colleagues? When all is said and done, is strength a virtue, or a mirage?

JORDAN CASTRO is the author of The Novelist, and two poetry books. His fiction and non-fiction has been published in Harper’s, The Point, Tin House, Muumuu House, and more. He is the Deputy Director of the Cluny Institute, and on the board of the Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation for Literature and the Arts.