From Twitter to the Toilet

A review of "The Novelist" by Jordan Castro

Apr 26, 2025

It’s

’s fault. I was happy reading my classics. But he came along and asked me a question: What did I make of the current state of outlaw literature? Up until that point Murakami, who as of this writing is 76 years-old, was as contemporary as I was willing to get. I had no interest in new novels written by young men and women. I could hardly make it through their short stories, how was I supposed to handle an entire book?

But then I started thinking that, if I want to guide literature in some small or big way, I should be familiar with what my contemporaries are writing. So I went from reading The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky) to The Fight (Norman Mailer) to The Complete Works of Arthur Rimbaud (guess who) to The Novelist (Jordan Castro). That sentence physically upsets me. It turns my stomach. It reminds me of all that we’ve lost, and how depressing it is. Before Sam’s message I’d planned the order with deliberation. I was like Bono sequencing The Joshua Tree album. First Where the Streets Have No Name; then I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For; then With or Without You—and then, all of a sudden, I tacked on Billy by Six9ine.

One could argue that I picked the wrong book. No shit. But, in my defense, I did not pick it at random. The reviewers I respect have mentioned The Novelist more than other contemporary stories. I have less respect for those writers’ taste now. It will be as difficult for them to win back my trust as it would be for a wife to regain her husband’s after sleeping with the plumber, the gardener, and the Verizon Fios technician. At that point it’s no longer about the simple act of infidelity—there’s something much stranger going on.

In my mind it is nearly impossible that anyone who is well-read and has good taste could earnestly praise this book. The very best one could do is state that Castro tried to do something new. But anything more than that—I just don’t know. And I am saying all this after intentionally waiting three weeks to cool off. The moment after I finished the book it would have been irresponsible to put anything on paper. Don’t send the text when drunk; wait until the next morning and see. As of this writing twenty-one mornings have passed. This is my sober state. This is my tone.

There was something else I did too. After the initial existential dread passed, I told myself that I must have missed something. They didn’t like Gatsby in their time, did they? So I picked up another book, The Stranger (Albert Camus), because I’ve never been naturally attracted to it and it’s written in a style similar to the one that Castro employs in terms of affectlessness and sparseness. I’m physically sick again, comparing these two. I probably should have read Ellis because he’s the one who influenced an entire generation of shitty knock-offs. I’m starting to hate him for that. But, in any case, the point is that I tried—I really tried—to give Castro’s novel some credit. To that end The Stranger served as a wonderful contrast, one which helped me more precisely identify all that is wrong with The Novelist.

To start, in 196 pages, there isn’t a single beautiful sentence. Not one worth highlighting, noting, or sharing. (Please, those who have perused this book, send me them, if they exist, and I will add them as a footnote here.) After a quick scan through my notes, the most euphonious and poetic phrase I can find is:

My face felt warm, the sun sedating; spots of light zoomed bouncily like angry beers behind my eyelids.

But there are hundreds and hundreds of paragraphs constructed entirely of sentences much worse than that. In even more depressing news, there are pages and pages of Castro describing how he shits without humor or skill:

I made sure to apply pressure carefully while wiping, once from front to back; my legs buzzed as I leaned forward, my thighs pressing into the rounded edge of the seat; the nerve endings in my hamstrings sent vibrations through my legs, up through my arms, then briefly to my face; my entire body microscopically quivered for one or two seconds. I checked.
The toilet paper was clean!
Still, I wanted to double check. Preparing to tear off a few more squares, I noted unhappily, and not for the first time, that the roll was unusually small. Was the thickness of the individual squares an attempt to keep one buying more? A small roll, made even smaller due to the thickness of the ostensibly two-play toilet paper, would surely increase sales; perhaps the cyclical trap I fell into when I purchased this toilet paper had been 7-Eleven’s sinister plan all along…

The book is rarely—if ever—more profound, humorous, poetic, tender, or captivating than this passage. It is a perfect representation of the work. If you crave 200 more pages that recount a man’s most inane thoughts and actions, then go buy it now.

To the author’s credit, this second-by-second examination of the mundane is original in the modern context. I am not aware of another book that so meticulously and precisely documents the interplay between mind, body, and technology. Castro accurately depicts the scarcity and insignificance of the modern “problems” that afflict well-off millennials. He draws attention to why we turn to our phones when we do; what the effects of our endless scrolling are; and how poorly internet-speak sits on the page.

But Castro could have accomplished the same result in one-tenth the time. After the 20th page, one is painfully aware of his dull, singular insight: We are all idiots addicted to miniature pleasures that make it nearly impossible to accomplish anything of worth. One could argue that that idea is the point of the book—it’s intentionally shitty to reveal what the internet is doing to our brains—but if that is the case then, once again, why 200 instead of 100 pages? Why any pages at all? Why not a long tweet? Anyone with one introspective neuron is already aware of the point Castro repeatedly makes. These endless descriptions do not elucidate already-understood truths in new, resonant shapes. They do not make the reader feel less alone because the unnamed protagonist has proven, beyond all doubt, that someone else on this planet is filled with equally vapid thoughts for much of the day. They do not have the force required to create lasting changes in behavior.

Castro’s approach to technology would have been stronger if he’d more frequently and effectively moved from the minute to the grand. Instead of reporting an endless series of empty musings, he would have done well to mix in a few intellectually-stimulating or emotionally-resonant insights. For me the high point of the novel (excluding the final page) was a paragraph in which Castro regurgitates a fascinating fact that he himself plundered from a podcast:

There was a second or so after the general layout loaded that the notifications hadn’t yet appeared—a moment when the notifications button was visible, but the number of notifications was not—and I felt a microburst of yearning as I waited. This was an intentional feature of Twitter, I’d learned from a podcast, which I recalled abstractedly as I sat there—this slightly delayed gratification, coupled with the varied reward of the number of notifications, activated the same area in one’s brain as a slot machine—while feeling dimly aware of my having immediately done something I specifically hadn’t wanted to do to start the day.

For a fleeting moment the author moves to an interesting, deep examination of how technology works. If he’d continued further in this vein, the book would have been more compelling. But, for the most part, of course, he doesn’t.

After a certain point the casual reader becomes grateful to him for this failure because he can happily zone out knowing that he will miss nothing. Never once does he experience the emotion that arises continuously during great books: self-disappointment that follows from insufficient attention to passages of worth. This feeling compels the reader to return to those “missed” pages with a renewed dedication, focus, and persistence. If he doesn’t go back, he knows he’ll regret it at the end. But when the reader of The Novelist realizes that, for the last five minutes, he’s been thinking about the optimal time to do his laundry instead of reading, he feels joy and relief. He has missed nothing and is now a little closer to the end. Unfortunately I did not even get a taste of that pleasure because I knew I was going to write this review. So, like the villain in the movie who is riddled with bullet holes but will not quit, I kept going back before staggering forward.

Look, honestly, I could go on, but I’m already upset with myself for spending as much time and money on this novel as I have. The book should have been a Substack post; this review should have been a tweet.