“There’s no I in team,” admits LangPo academia on Naked and Afraid. “It takes two to tango,” declares the twittering virgin to the bootstrap chad. These confession statements were written by a caricature of Steinian genius in the tense of “to be continued.” Okay, let’s run the senescent sentences through a lie detector and then double-check Dictionary.com. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the non-narrator of this non-novel is a has-been who has been a have and a have-not. He’s a Buddhist Houdini with “sad charisma.” Now for the backstory, a bastion of colloquial bits, his successes and their unraveling, and the clownishly anti-climactic final act. The past: a diminishing context for “relationships” and “regrets.” The future: a petty parade of fat suits. The present: Sebastian presents us with a primer of lines to rehearse and rehearse. Know better, do better; see something, say something; hurt people hurt people; worse comes to worst. Not I by Sebastian Castillo (Word West Press, 2020).
