There are three Sebastian Castillos. One is the narrator of the novel Fresh, Green Life, who is lured to his professor’s apartment on New Year’s Eve on the promise of a reunion with his classmates from graduate school, particularly his crush Maria, only to be held captive by the professor rambling about Sebastián Castillo, an obscure Spanish writer he has spent his entire life translating. The third is an adjunct professor who is the author of said novel and three previous others, who I meet on a sunny Philadelphia day to discuss his book with.
Fresh, Green Life is an absorbing, thoughtful exploration as to how a year of stillness can culminate in one fateful night, spurned by hubris and solitude and made relatable by Castillo’s humor and storytelling.
Over decaf iced lattes, I talked with Castillo about the influence of reality, manhood, and philosophy.
SAM FRANZINI: You clearly wink at the parallels of reality in Fresh, Green Life. The narrator published a book called 57 Colombian Novels and you’ve published 49 Venezuelan Novels. It is passé to ask an autofiction writer where his life ends and a book begins?
SEBASTIAN CASTILLO: I wouldn’t consider it autofiction, strictly speaking, because it’s purely fictional. None of this stuff has happened. But as you put it, it absolutely does gesture at the autobiographical, which was intentional. There are a number of parallels between me and this character, one being our names are the same. Although it’s a very common name in South America! One of the things I’ve found conceptually interesting about autofiction is how a writer can traffic on their own image to what their readers already know about the writer. The 57 Colombian Novels is a bit of a joke. I put one of my own tweets, word for word, in the book.
SF: The “shitting/pissing cum out of my own dick” one?
SC: No, the Walugi one.
SF: Ah.
SC: Anyway, there are a number of things that are sort of braided with real life. I’ve always found it an interesting gesture. Cêsar Aira, the Argentinian writer, does this a lot. His books are all super fantastical and surreal, and half the time his narrators are “Cêsar Aira.” There are all these sorts of divergences from reality. In a certain way, I like envisioning this is a version of me in a totally separate reality. Which, of course, isn’t anything new — that’s the basis of most fiction.
SF: I ask because Sebastián’s year of solitude felt so detailed and personal, but also could have been a winding character study.
SC: Definitely, especially the first half, because he’s so solitary; he’s just immobile, basically, in his own apartment. A few people have mentioned the influence of Thomas Bernhardt on this book, which is definitely a part of it. I like how he’s able to create this sense of movement purely through thoughts. In Woodcutters, for example, two thirds of the novel takes place with the main character sitting in a chair at a party, not doing anything, not talking to anyone. But there’s this real sense of momentum, and obviously it’s revealing of who that narrator is. So the first half of this book functions as a character study, and for the second half, I wanted it to be the opposite — I wanted him out in the world, moving.
SF: My friend read a little bit of the book on a road trip and she thought Sebastián was an incel. Thoughts?
SC: [Laughs] It’s funny, I tried to be very careful to not make him an incel, in that I think of an incel as a dangerous person, a misogynist capable of real violence. The prototypical incel becomes a mass shooter. The distinction I’d make is that this guy’s just sort of a loser. He’s the greatest threat to himself rather than any other person. One of the things I made sure to do was that there’s a moment where he’s maybe going to message Maria, and doesn’t actually do it. So maybe he’s a volcel.
SF: Since his solitude was self-imposed, and because he has empathy that comes from writing and reading fiction, I didn’t think he’s an incel. But his life certainly has the cadence of one — he goes to the gym, drinks beer, posts, and watches fitness videos. Someone left in this environment could certainly come out different.
SC: Absolutely. Another thing too, is that one of the ironies I’m trying to draw out with this character is that he should know better than to be how he is. Towards the end of the book, he has this altercation with this kid who’s reading a “manosphere” sort of book, but of course, the irony is he’s fallen for the same traps. He’s bought into the cottage industry of self-improvement, by a different door.
SF: He also fantasizes about this long-lost graduate crush, and pictures her complimenting his improved physique.
SC: Not only does he picture it, he has an entire speech prepared, with this convoluted explanation how it doesn’t matter what his body looks like, it’s more that he’s committed himself to something.
SF: Yeah, he wants a physique that reflects his internal self, the “real version.” Tell me about this idea.
SC: One of this character’s delusions — which I can sometimes share and I think a lot of people do — is taking this model of personal aspiration as the promise of fulfillment. The idea being, ‘Once I have a certain kind of diet, once I am the kind of person who takes a cold shower at 5 a.m. or journals…’ whatever. The thing you do is almost arbitrary, but there’s this improved vision of yourself, where you tell yourself a story — that version of you is the one that will allow you to feel fulfillment, or self-actualization. It’s almost a secular salvation. And of course, all of these things are typically being sold to you. He’s unaware that he’s a consumer. All of those ironies are things I wanted to play with. Speaking of character studies, I wanted this narrator to be smart, but very stupid.
SF: Definitely, and Sebastián notes that the men in these videos are convincing. It’s funny this year of loneliness is guided by YouTube men.
SC: It’s funny you mention that — a friend of mine once said that [Fresh, Green Life] is My Year of Rest and Relaxation for boys.
SF: Oh, totally! I feel like the book orbits the concept of masculinity. What drew you to it?
SC: For me, whenever I start a new project, it never originates from thematic concern. It’s typically a voice or, once in a while, a concept. And then I just write into that. I feel like a lot of the [themes], that this is sort of a masculine book, arise as a consequence of the process of writing. I think with this character, it’s maybe another component of his self-delusion that I think he’d probably describe himself as not very masculine or not trying to seek masculinity in the way that the stuff we were talking about before typically encourages. But I think he’s doing it in all these other ways he’s not totally aware of, everything from exercise or the way that he treats philosophy, almost as a cudgel against somebody else. Like, ‘I can be the guy who knows more about the subject than you.’ I would say philosophy in general is a pretty masculine discipline, unfortunately. So philosophy, exercise stuff — all of these are ways of expressing his masculinity without really knowing. But it’s clearly something he does want, a little bit.
SF: As a homebody, I relate to the Pascal quote the narrator finds solace in: “All of humanity’s problems stem from a man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” I’m assuming you agree.
SC: Yeah, in the case of the narrator, it’s a bit of a Pyrrhic victory. He reveals right at the end of part one that he hasn’t spoken aloud in a year, so he’s taken it to this extreme for the ends of self-improvement, but you could make the argument that he’s probably made himself much worse. Taken writ large, I do think there’s something beneficial to solitude in measured doses. I’m also a homebody.
SF: Tell me about Rainer Maria Rilke, whom the epigraphs are from and whose work shows up in the story.
SC: The epigraphs are a bit of a joke — the first is this very well-known line, “You must change your life.” It’s famous enough where you can probably find it on postcards. But from the same book, Letters to a Young Poet, he says, “No one can help or counsel you. No one.” [Laughs] I wanted to set them right next to each other, like, ‘You must change your life but no one’s gonna help you.’
He does show up later — [Sebastián] steals Letters to a Young Poet from the professor’s house and later gives it to the kid on the subway. In that book, a young poet is writing to Rilke, seeking advice because they want to know how to be a great writer. Rilke responds sort of loftily and philosophically. He almost gives spiritual counsel rather than how to write a good poem. It felt like an appropriate book to include in this one, because it’s so much about mentor/student relationships, seeking fulfillment, failure.
SF: The whole book feels pretty classic, pulling from these older writers. Even the back cover feels vintage. Is this a correct read?
SC: Yeah, I would say that in general a lot of my literary influences tend to be writers from a past generation. There’s certainly a lot of contemporary writers I admire but the writers I feel like I most engage with, it’s certainly stuff from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. It’s actually one of my reading goals for next year — I try to come up with some game every year — and since it’ll be 2026, it’s to not read any book published after 1926.
SF: I enjoyed the realism of the first part that immediately gave way to absurdity, the reason for the year of solitude: an amphetamine-induced heart attack during a leprechaun lecture. Where did this idea come from?
SC: I will say that’s one of the things in the novel I took from a friend. Not the amphetamine thing, though. He’s an adjunct teaching in New York City, a class on Irish literature, and he had to prepare this lecture on the history of the leprechaun, then take the bus across town to teach business writing 101. But because he was so wrapped up in this Irish class, he didn’t have time to do a lesson plan, so he said he just repeated the leprechaun lecture to these business students. I just died laughing. He was good with me using that idea of an overworked adjunct, and I wanted to, of course, amplify it.
SF: That’s incredible. So Sebastián accepts his professor’s invitation because “I had my speeches to deliver” to Maria, even though ostensibly, he’s attempting to remain silent. Why is Maria such a big pull in his life?
SC: He says that he’s willing to forgo this great resolution — it still means he did it for the majority of the year — but he wants a witness to his efforts. It hasn’t been made real yet until someone can vouch and say, ‘You are successful, you are improved.’ He sees this party as an opportunity to have witnesses deliver to him the satisfaction he’s looking for. And one of the ironies of the book is that he just needs people. But he’s convinced there’s all these internal things he has to change that can make him better.
SF: When Sebastián gets to the professor’s house, he goes on an uninterrupted tangent about philosophy, reality, authorship, suicide. Did you get into a didactic, wistful headspace before writing or were these ideas always around?
SC: In terms of the structure, I wanted the first half of the book to be a monologue from the narrator, and the second half to be the professor delivering a monologue to the narrator. Two monologues in a very Socratic tradition. I knew that the professor’s would be a bit more heady, intellectually-oriented, so when I was writing, if I had some thread or idea for it, I’d put it in a separate document and riff. Just little ideas like him having a book called Deleuze for Dummies. Some of that stuff was maybe influenced by the second book of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, where this former professor who moved to Mexico is slowly losing it.
SF: I liked when he said philosophy is fake, boring nonsense, faker than grocery store paperbacks. It had an honest bite to it.
SC: I feel like there’s a literary tradition of the self-effacing philosopher, the person who has put a lot of themselves into this intellectual pursuit, and at the end, feeling a lot of resentment towards it. Nietzche is a classic example of that. There’s also the Lars Iyer trilogy, Spurious, that is also very much in that tradition.
SF: Why do you think Sebastián stays for as long as he does? Even though the professor is a good speaker, Sebastián is clearly uncomfortable, and the promise wasn’t real.
SC: I wanted there to be this element of hypnotism or something. Tonally, the book reminds me of the early Ingmar Bergman movies from the 60s and late 50s, which are centered on conversations that last implausibly long. Another is Éric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s — this super Catholic guy goes over to this girl’s house, and she’s married, and they talk about whether they’re going to have sex or not. They don’t, and the entire movie is just them in the apartment, talking. I just wanted there to be a tonal similarity — it’s late at night, there’s this gravity pulling these people together.
SF: The book ends with what I think most of us have been wanting to do for a while: a public outburst. Like we talked about before, Sebastián loses it on this kid reading a right-wing public figure’s shitty book, which breaks his silent streak. Is this what has been building from his year of watching asinine fitness YouTubers and thinking, or is it more of-the-moment?
SC: I wanted the book to have an explosive but anticlimactic end. When I was thinking through the story, like, he leaves the professor’s house, but what else? ‘And then I went home and I was sad.’ So the idea of yet another encounter, where the roles were reversed — he’s now the older person, dispensing advice to a younger person, but doing it in a chaotic way, and still feeling a sense of responsibility. He has this outburst with this ridiculous scene where he hoists the book over his head and throws it. Then he comes to his senses and realizes he’s basically assaulting a kid on the subway. In that moment, he reverts back to the professorial model. Like, ‘Here, read this book! You’re gonna write poetry, life’s gonna be great.’ The book has a slapstick-y ending. He leans over and bundles of cash flow out, he gathers it up, like, ‘Don’t worry about that, just take the Rilke.’ So it’s both... this has been building up for a year. And the silliness of the first thing he says in a year being pure hatred.
SF: If you’re the kid here, what are you thinking about this guy? I feel like he’s trained to see Sebastián only as a loony leftist, but if someone rampaged this hard against something I thought was the truth, I’d rethink things a little.
SC: That’s a good question, I haven’t thought about that. I will say that’s by far the most unrealistic part of the book, because if you fuck with someone on the subways of Philadelphia, they will definitely get in your face. He’s a kid, but that wouldn’t stop him. I’ve seen some bellicose children. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I do like the idea that he goes off and becomes a poet because of this encounter.
SFL: Write a spinoff!
SC: Yes, there you go! “Greener, Fresher Life.”
SF: There’s three sets of twins here: You and the narrator, and the narrator and the Spanish author, and you and the Spanish author. Did these lines ever blur together?
SC: Definitely. It reminds me of the writer W. G. Sebald, who also taught creative writing, and one of his former students compiled all of the stuff he said in class. One of which was that if you want to make a scene stranger, just include twins. Kafka does it all the time. I think that’s hilarious. The idea of doubles plays a larger part in the book, in that the professor and the narrator are doubles of themselves in some way. Maybe one thing I’m gesturing towards is that the double invokes the possible — this is a version of you that’s slightly different. Those two things connect in the book’s bigger themes of aspiration and changing yourself and hoping to become a better version of yourself, typically unsuccessfully.
SF: Finally, what are you working on now?
SC: I’m working on a new novel, which sort of takes place in a dream-like environment. Both of my parents were ballet dancers. Before I was born, they danced this ballet called After Eden, which is the name of the book. It’s a pas de deux, for a man and a woman, and they’re Adam and Eve after they’re cast out of the garden. I always found this an auspicious story about my parents. So the narrator lands in Caracas, Venezuela, the city where I’m from, and immediately sees a huge poster for After Eden starring his parents, playing later that day. The whole novel takes place with him trying to get to the theater to see his parents, since he’s never seen them dance before. I’m using this dream-like atmosphere to do autobiography, but because it’s gauzy I’m able to include things from the far and recent past and put them all together. Sort of Proust-y. Recently I read In Search of Lost Time and it was sort of life changing. It’ll be my Proust book, but shorter.
