Hello, you've made it to the back of the book, your new favorite arts and culture podcast. I'm your host, Christopher Scalia of the American

Enterprise Institute. My guest for this episode is Jordan Castro, a novelist, essayist, and the

deputy director of the Clooney Institute. He's here today to talk about his recent novel, Muscleman,

which was published this past fall by Catapult.

Jordan, welcome to the back of the book. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about your novel,

Muscle Man, available at Find Bookstores Everywhere. For the listeners who aren't yet readers of the novel,

what's Muscle Man about? It's about an English professor who hates being English professor

and loves lifting weights. There you go. That English professor is Harold, and the novel is told

almost entirely through his point of view. It's third person limited.

He is, yeah, as you mentioned, a disgruntled English professor and adamant weightlifter.

And the novel follows him over the course of a single day. And really, it's divided up into three primary scenes. In the first

scene, which is the first hundred or so pages of the novel, he's preparing for a departmental

meeting. It's the highlight of any English professor's job. The second scene, he's lifting weights,

and the last scene is another highlight of a professor's job. The second scene, he's lifting weights, and the last scene is another

highlight of a professor's job, an administrative meeting. And I should add an investigatory meeting.

But as you just describe the novel, these seem like two very different worlds, weightlifting and

being an English professor, the life of the mind and the life of the

body. What inspired you to write a novel that focused that brought these two disparate worlds

together in a single character? It's a good question. I mean, I'm always tempted to, you know,

look, I feel like the novel sort of emerged in the sort of nonlinear, very messy way.

And so people ask a question like, well, you know, what inspired this novel?

And I'm just making it up.

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