Interview: Sebastian Castillo

Sebastian Castillo is a writer and teacher who lives in Philadelphia, PA. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and grew up in Mount Vernon, New York. He is the author of 49 Venezuelan Novels (Bottlecap Press, 2017), Not I (Word West, 2020), SALMON (Shabby Doll House, 2023), and, most recently, Fresh, Green Life (Soft Skull, 2025), “a meditation on literature, education, and philosophy,” which is “compulsively readable,” as Emily Adrian says on the back flap.

Since the book came out in June 2025, I’ve heard many readers talk about one of the two main characters, Sebastian Castillo, who shares his name with the book’s author. This winter, I chatted with Sebastian over email about the other main character, the philosophy professor—Sebastian’s other, and perhaps more essential, double, who sometimes makes me think about my father, even though they have nothing in common on the most obvious level. We also talked about the writing and the writer’s experience, as well as the correlation between the two.

Sijing Yang: One thing that struck me most about the Professor is his extravagant ideas on philosophy and fiction. He said, “a philosopher is a writer of prose texts who uses concepts much the same way a novelist uses characters,” and that if Cervantes was a philosopher, he would have written the Don Quixote concept, “a man ruined by his reading.”

Can I ask you this: If Sebastian (the author) was a philosopher, what would be the concept of the Professor?

Sebastian Castillo: The concept would probably be Kant’s injunction against suicide, which if I recall correctly is something about how people can only dispose of “things,” and a person is not a thing, so they should not dispose of themselves. I think he also says something like “Just stay positive,” but I don’t remember exactly.

SY: Ah! If only the Professor could “just stay positive…”

In a previous interview you said that Sebastian wants a witness. I guess the Professor wants a witness, too—someone who can testify that he has cracked his concept? (It seems nauseating to think that he’d want a witness to his struggle.)

SC: A good question! And I would say that maybe his biggest fault is that he thinks of an audience as a witness.

SY: Can I ask what you think of the audience? Some writers believe it’s suggestive of some sort of performance.

SC: I think of myself as my first audience member when I write. I try to please him, or amuse him. He needs help.

SY: I also believe that the first duty of the writer is to make the audience less bored!

Who else do you have in the audience? Are there friends, enemies, dead writers, living writers, etc.? 

SC: Just me! But when I write, I think of whatever I’m doing as existing in a self-selected constellation. I usually make a private canon of books I’d like for my own to be related to. For my current project, that’s Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies, Kafka’s The Castle, and Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled. And Proust.

SY: I love a self-selected constellation. It is where I want to exist!

Because sometimes you have to teach, and sometimes you don’t get to select :). So the Professor was teaching this class on Dante’s Divine Comedy, which was listed by their university as a course of philosophy, and in which Sebastian “ultimately studied for four years, lazily and haphazardly reading Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Hegel (who he, [the Professor], was made to teach against his will, he said).”

There’s so much to unpack about this class! And why was it against his will to teach Hegel?

SC: One of the very few details in the book that is autobiographical actually—in 2008 I took a class on Dante’s Divine Comedy that was listed under philosophy, not literature. I had a great time. I’m due for a reread; bought the NYRB editions just a few days ago.

The Hegel bit is a joke—often in philosophy people like to take sides, you know. If you’re a Deleuze-Spinoza person (as I happen to be, in fact), you are not a Hegel person. You are allergic to Hegel and his science-fiction pablum.

SY: Ah, I would definitely sign up for a class like that!

One more gossipy question about philosophy. The Professor thinks Lacan is “merely a performer,” “a lout,” and “awful sheep-like people somehow seem to take him seriously.” It seems to me this is a kind of hatred different from his allergy to Hegel?

SC: More than anything I wanted to do a light parody of how people draw intellectual lines among different writers and philosophers. I’ve indulged in this a bit, mostly for fun.

One of my favorite books, Javier Marías’ Written Lives, is a collection of essay-length biographies of famous writers. You can tell which writers he doesn’t like by how he writes about their life. On Mishima: “The death of Yukio Mishima was so spectacular that it has almost succeeded in obliterating the many other stupid things he did in his life.”

SY: I wish every writer I love would draw some lines like that! Maybe some diagram where the x-axis is “sentence length,” and the y-axis is “number of things that happened.” Or, “stupidity” vs. “spectacularity” (with Mishima on the upper right corner).

SC: For some people, it’s unavoidable. 

SY: Can the same thing he said of Lacan be said of the Professor himself—that he is a performer, a lout, and only awful sheep-like people (like Sebastian?) seem to take him seriously?

SC: Oh, absolutely, and his inability to realize this (or if he does realize, care) is maybe what makes him so dislikable, no?

SY: I don’t dislike him though! A certain part of me finds him quite…relatable.

SC: Even with the most dislikable characters there’s something about them we must feel attracted to, or at the very least, they need a gravitational force that moves us toward them, however much we might be ambivalent about their presence. But I’ve never even felt so terribly against a particular character. It’s just a story, and stories need their devices.

SY: I think the character I find the most dislikable is probably the kid who appears in the end. My friend read the book and said this about the ending: that’s the only way to get some kid reading Jordan Peterson on the subway to read some Rilke these days. Any thoughts?

SC: At a certain point you have to bring out the big guns, it’s true. No more mister nice guy.

SY: You also said that “one of the ironies of the book is that he [Sebastian] just needs people.” What would you say the Professor needs? Does he need people, too?

SC: Perhaps his issue is a more common one, which is that you have to treat people well, and he doesn’t. But yes, we all do need people certainly... 

SY: I’ve heard many writers say that they need “solitary confinement” instead :).

SC: I can only write in silence and alone, yes. I mostly write at home, in bed. Sometimes I’ll go to a library and find a little solitary corner. Have never been able to go to crowded and noisy coffee shops to write; feels absurd to me, almost.

SY: Talking about writing in bed­­­—I recently read an essay written by Proust (the Preface to his translation of Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies) in which he described his bedroom for a few pages with an air of astounding significance (it begins with “above all, if the day was rather warm, one went up ‘to retire to one’s room,’ which permitted me, by the little staircase with steps close together, to reach mine immediately, on the only upper story, so low that from the windows with but one child’s jump you would have found yourself in the street.”) It makes me want to ask: Could you describe what your writing room is like?

SC: It is really remarkable how he’s able to do that. Mine is simple. I sit currently on a Queen size bed. To my right is a reclining faux-leather plush chair I purchased on Facebook Marketplace. In front of me are two desks—one has a computer, the other various music equipment (keyboard, sampler, speakers). There’s also a full-sized digital piano opposite the desks. Three bookshelves, all too full. Flowers.

SY: How does music, listening to and creating it, influence your writing? What are some of your favorite pieces of music?

And how important is the sound and feel of language to you? I ask because some writers, I believe, have this anxiety about trying and failing to find the right word and put the sentence together, to an extent that it becomes an obstacle and the writing loses momentum. Your writing always has this propulsive, musical beat about it, and I wonder if you could share some thoughts on how you did it.

SC: Thank you! That’s kind of you to say. It’s very important. My answer, however, is maybe disappointing—I read everything I write out loud. That’s it. If it sounds good, it goes.

The influence of music has only been indirect, really. I think of them as very separate, most of the time. Music has taught my writing that it is important to develop the ability to trust your instinct, and to have confidence with that instinct, even when you can’t explain from where that confidence arises. Right now, I’m listening to a playlist I made of some of my favorite songs I listened to in 2025: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF406VtkH4BjDNo1_rnI6TBrWbgBa978d

SY: Nice! And I want to ask about other, perhaps more direct, influences.

In Fresh, Green Life, the Professor mentioned a man who “begins hanging books on the clothesline outside.” That’s Amalfitano in Bolaño’s 2666, right? Could you talk a little bit about Bolaño’s influence on you as a writer? I’ve seen readers talk a lot about Bernhard and Aira, but nobody seems to be talking (enough) about Bolaño despite the direct reference.

SC: The reference is indeed to Amalfitano from 2666. And I’ll offer a simple answer: I read 2666 when it first appeared in English, and after finishing it decided I wanted to try to be a writer. It helped me become devoted to literature as a life practice. I haven’t read it now in nearly 15 years, so I don’t know what I’d think of it presently, but I can’t deny its long-term influence on my life.

SY: Thank you for sharing that! 2666 is also the book that got me into writing fiction. Sometimes talking about it feels like a betrayal—of what I’m not exactly sure, maybe my own sweet naivete?

What are some of the books that made you want to read literature when you were younger, whether it’s literature itself or something else?

SC: I actually disliked reading as a child; I found it boring. I preferred video games, music. But in high school I read Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and that felt significant to me. I read it wildly and of my own volition. In college, I felt the same about Frank O’Hara and the New York School poets.

SY: I remember some random lines by Frank O’Hara, like “no more fountains and no more rain, and the stores stay open terribly late,” and “the elements of disbelief are very strong in the morning.” It makes me want to live in the city.

Are there poems written by the New York School poets that you liked back then and still remember today?

SC: The NY School poet who has influenced me most—in fact, the poet who has influenced me most—is John Ashbery. I think, at this point, I’ve read nearly every book he’s published, which is a lot. Here’s a random poem; I steal a few lines from it for my current novel:

The Problem of Anxiety

John Ashbery

Fifty years have passed

since I started living in those dark towns

I was telling you about.

Well, not much has changed. I still can’t figure out

how to get from the post office to the swings in the park.

Apple trees blossom in the cold, not from conviction,

and my hair is the color of dandelion fluff.

Suppose this poem were about you—would you

put in the things I’ve carefully left out:

descriptions of pain, and sex, and how shiftily

people behave toward each other? Naw, that’s

all in some book it seems. For you

I’ve saved the descriptions of chicken sandwiches,

and the glass eye that stares at me in amazement

from the bronze mantel and will never be appeased.

SY: What would you say has influenced your writing the most—poetry, video games, books, etc.—over the years and more recently?

P.S. I love “The Problem of Anxiety.” I think I’m going to get some Ashbery from the library. 

SC: Certainly literature, by a wide margin. But the images of video games from my youth, and the feeling they provided me, have also influenced me. It’s less about the games themselves and more about my relationship to them from ages, say, 8 to 16.

SY: Ah, that reminds me…Those late summer nights playing Contra, Salamander, Mappy, etc. on the XBW Learning Machine (a Chinese version of Famicom) and with my parents—that’s probably the time I want to live in forever.

Do you remember some of the video games you played from 8 to 16?

SC: I was very big into the Final Fantasy series and was lucky to have grown up during its golden era. I first played Final Fantasy VII when I was 10, which would have been 1998, only a year after it came out in the US. I became almost devotional toward these games—I got VIII when it came out (I still remember the date—9/9/99), then IX, then X. After this one my love of video games began to peter out. I played a bunch of other things, but these games (and especially at that time) are the ones that stand out to me most.

SY: I’m curious about the two-part structure. Like Fresh, Green Life, your 2023 novel, SALMON, also has two parts.

SC: I’ve enjoyed the two-part structure for a simple reason: you think a book is going to be about one thing, and it turns out to be about the other.

SY: Oh, I think that’s one of the most enjoyable—for the writer, and for the reader—things a novel can do. As the writer, do you typically know or have some instinct for what the other thing will be from the beginning?

SC: I do! Whenever a creative writing student asks for advice on how to draft a novel, I typically say: know how it ends. Even if the ending in draft 1 is a false ending (as often happens), knowing where you’re going and how things are going to change is often the engine that can help you get from point A to Z.

SY: And can you tell us how you go about drafting a novel? Your writing has this rhythm or tension in the sentences that always makes me want to write more.

SC: I have a bit of a journeyman attitude toward it: I have set writing days, and I try to hit a minimum of 750 words for that day. Sometimes I exceed this by a great amount; other times I barely make it. I try to go into these sessions with a clear idea of what I must attend to but also grant myself permission to veer off this path should something present itself.

SY: Do you think a beginning fiction writer should study some philosophy? What are some of your favorite philosophy books?

SC: Not particularly! I mean, I think a beginning fiction writer should read vociferously, as much as possible, until they are almost sick to their stomach with literature. They should be permanently nauseous. And they should feel a little curious about what philosophy could offer them, but only a little. I happened to already have a background with it before I started writing fiction. I don’t have a favorite book, though. But for the sake of a straightforward answer, I’ll say Spinoza’s Ethics, which I wrote about recently.

SY: “Union with other people, oneness with the universe, an acceptance of the paths our lives had taken”—yes! People should read big, dense, difficult books, and with friends. Any advice on how to run a difficult reading group like this?

SC: It’s pretty simple: I divide whatever book we’re reading evenly and intuitively, and then we read the assigned section(s) that week. We meet on Sundays over Zoom; I have a big email chain where I message everyone and give them all the necessary info. Anyone can do it! I’ve really enjoyed the experience. We’re reading Lucretius’ The Nature of Things next.

SY: Nice! I think I might start something like this in the spring.

Can you talk a little bit about your current project? Will we see Sebastian again?

SC: ​​You will, but it is perhaps a different Sebastian. It’s a novel about a man who returns to Venezuela for a single day, accidentally, during a layover. When he arrives, he learns that his parents are performing a ballet that night in the center of the city—a ballet titled After Eden (the title of the book), which my own parents actually did dance, in 1986, two years before I was born (it is how they met). He resolves to see this performance, as he hopes it will be instructional.

SY: What is Sebastian’s New Year’s Resolution for 2026?

SC: It’s January 2nd; I quit smoking yesterday, so that’s going well as far as New Year’s resolutions go. What else? I’d like to watch movies, on days off, as soon as I wake up—that seems wonderfully indulgent. Eat more pickled vegetables and be sweet to the sweet. Finally read Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, the whole huge-big thing. Live a little.