Fresh, Green Life

A study of interiority and inferiority, written in the vein of Lars Iyer and Ben Marcus, that takes place over the course of a single, snowy night

After resigning from an adjunct teaching position, our narrator Sebastian Castillo, who shares a name with our author, Sebastian Castillo, and also with a translated Spanish writer, Sebastián Castillo, resolves to spend an entire year without speaking, passing the time by exercising each day and watching self-improvement videos.

But, come New Year's Eve, Sebastian (the narrator)—whose rich interiority in precontemplation alone is curiously and addictively easy to read—will break his silence by accepting an invitation to the home of a former professor for a reunion amongst his cohort, one decade after graduating. This invitation surely would have been ignored if not for the promised attendance of Maria, Sebastian’s former classmate and love interest. What follows is an inexplicable series of fascinating events charting the erosion of young, male hope.

Inside a world with a peripheral understanding of Rilke, Descartes, Kant, Deleuze, Derrida, Lacan, and more, Castillo has written a short epic that is curiously addictive and unexpectedly delightful. FRESH, GREEN LIFE is a meditation on literature, academia, and philosophy; a trek through the past that forecasts a mediocre future; and a compact miracle of the fake-real.

SEBASTIAN CASTILLO is a writer and teacher living in Philadelphia. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela and grew up in New York. His work has appeared in NY Tyrant, Peach Mag, Electric Literature, The Fanzine, BOMB, and elsewhere. He is the author of 49 Venezuelan Novels (Bottlecap press, 2017), NOT I (word west, 2020), and SALMON (Shabby Doll House 2023).