We live in an era of constant reinvention and self-documentation, the careful crafting of an exterior life. But can we truly write our own life story? That’s the question author Ross Barkan poses in his new novel, Colossus, and one he might have asked himself throughout his varied career. Barkan has worn many hats, including novelist, journalist, essayist, teacher, politician, magazine founder, and editor. But he doesn’t consider these shifts as reinventions. “I’m proud of who I am and where I’m from,” he said. Instead, as an author, he gets to invent other people’s identities. “That’s the fun of being an author. You get to dream and satiate your curiosity.”
Colossus protagonist Teddy Starr, a wealthy pastor in a small Michigan town, might disagree. He asserts to his son, “We aren’t writers of reality… Mankind can strain to invent, to write—but the realities aren’t realities, only pale imitations.” The words are ironic coming from a character with a dark secret and a rewritten past, who does everything he can to control his reality, including his own name. Teddy Starr is a compelling protagonist, referencing biblical passages and brand names with equal fluency, as if Patrick Bateman went to Catholic camp. Teddy’s story is the foundation of Colossus, but the book builds a layered narrative about the structures we all create to shape and contain our lives.
We spoke about Colossus on Zoom ahead of its release.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Denise S. Robbins
The main character in this book, Teddy Starr, has very pointed political opinions, which many people may strongly agree or disagree with. Did you worry about how he would be received by the reader?
Ross Barkan
I wanted to create a character that could stand on his own. Readers today can be simplistic about how they consume fiction, where they’ll read a protagonist and assume the author must completely agree with what the protagonist thinks and says. While there are books like that, there’s also a long history of novelists creating characters that have little to do with themselves. That’s part of the excitement of being a writer—you can get outside of yourself. I am Jewish and from New York. I’m not a religious leader. But there are aspects of Teddy Starr’s past that might overlap with mine—though I won’t spoil it too much.
I fully expect some people to read Teddy Starr and see the mind of a conservative, someone supportive of or intrigued by Trump, and perhaps express displeasure about that. But I also think that’s what fiction should be doing. Fiction shouldn’t just reflect one point of view. This is a man of means in a fairly conservative town. He’s not going to think like a highly educated person from Brooklyn. So I anticipate everything. Teddy is very flawed, but not someone I roundly condemn. I don’t like it when authors have disdain for their characters. I don’t condone Teddy’s actions—he’s a philanderer and a predatory real estate mogul—but I’m here to inhabit another viewpoint and create a world.
Denise S. Robbins
Do you feel differently after having inhabited that viewpoint?
Ross Barkan
Not necessarily. I’ve always enjoyed writing and creating. I’ve been writing fiction since I was 18, and even before that, I had a very active imagination. I would create my own Pokémon characters and imagine different scenarios. I was always someone who had my head in the clouds. I never had too much trouble imagining characters, situations, and narratives, and also being able to go in and out of them. The writing process is very difficult, but I don’t feel that Teddy Starr has scarred me in any way. When you’re in it, you have to try as much as possible not to just have a character do what you would do. You have to think, what would Teddy do? What would his approach be?
Denise S. Robbins
You alluded to a secret in the main character’s past. Does the secret, once uncovered, reframe the first part of the story?
Ross Barkan
I think it does. When you learn about Teddy’s past, you think more about how he behaves in the present day. It won’t be too much of a spoiler to say Teddy’s not who he says he is. In some ways, he shares a lot with Don Draper in Mad Men, which is one of my favorite shows—someone who takes on a new identity and creates a new life for himself. America is a country of reinvention. There’s something very American about Teddy Starr. It’s an American story to me.
If you look at the history of this country, it’s people coming from other places and trying to build anew. I’m Jewish, many of my ancestors came here in the 19th century, and many Jews changed their names wholesale. The Warner brothers were Jewish immigrants; their last names are not Warner. There are many other examples like that. Reinvention on its own is not nefarious—although it’s not incorrect to call Teddy Starr nefarious—but I was thinking a lot about how people create new identities for themselves and try to outrun the past, and the difficulty of throwing off that past.
We are a country of ambitious people, often desperate to remake and reinvent and reimagine. There’s a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald that I absolutely disagree with: that there are no second acts in American lives. There are second, third, and fourth acts. Witness the President of the United States, I’ve lost count of the number of acts he’s on.
Denise S. Robbins
Do you consider this a social novel or a systems novel? It involves religion, politics, and landlord structures.
Ross Barkan
Both. It’s a good point. I’m someone who thinks in systems and larger forces greater than the individual bearing down upon them. I wouldn’t reject the label of systems. I can speak to the writers who influenced this novel. The sorts of novels that sought to portray life in a particular time period were influential on me. I would start with Richard Ford, Philip Roth, and, to an extent, John Updike. Going back, too, to Sinclair Lewis and Elmer Gantry. American books were on my mind. Religion, too. I’m Jewish, but I’ve been to church, spent time in the Midwest, so I thought a lot about religion, the power of religion and God, both in the spiritual sense, but also the temporal sense, the everyday power of religion in this country, for good or ill. That is a large part of this book.
Denise S. Robbins
Do you believe in fate?
Ross Barkan
I’ve struggled with that. I don’t think I do, except in cases like genetic conditions that shorten someone’s life or hang over them forever. I don’t think we’re born onto a fixed track. I tend to be more in the free will camp, even when thinking about it in the context of faith, where God grants the individual free will. How deists might have perceived the universe as a clockmaker setting the clock in motion. Perhaps there’s fate in the mechanics of all that, but we are free to make decisions. There are certainly restraints around us, restraints of class, of gender, of our political moments. But I do believe humans have agency, and it can be dangerous to forget that.
Denise S. Robbins
There’s a riveting scene with handball in the book. Your last book, Glass Century, included many wonderful scenes about tennis matches. What draws you to writing about those kinds of sports?
Ross Barkan
That’s the most autobiographical aspect of my fiction. I grew up playing tennis and handball. Handball is very much a New York sport—you hit a rubber ball against a wall with your hand. It’s a mix of tennis, boxing, and paddleball. I played a lot of handball in my teens and early twenties, and tennis competitively in high school. I had less personal fondness for tennis at the time, but I’ve grown to appreciate it more.
Both sports are individual and deeply psychological. From a writing perspective, they offer rich terrain. They capture both physical and mental struggle. It’s easy to unravel and defeat yourself in those sports, which makes them compelling to write about.
Denise S. Robbins
Teddy’s story reminded me of Superman stories, which aren’t about how Superman changes, but how the world changes around him. Is that what you were going for?
Ross Barkan
It’s true that there is not a great deal of character evolution in Superman. With Teddy Starr, I was thinking about how someone like Donald Trump has found his second and third acts, and how he seems to come back again and again. History would have suggested that this time he would be defeated, and yet he was able to worm his way back, find his version of redemption, and find his audience anew.
So there is something very Trumpian about Teddy Starr. At the end of the novel, there are nods to what a Trump-like figure would do or be when they are exposed, and it seems like they’re down for the count, but then they find a way back.
I’ll put on my pundit hat for a second and say I don’t think it will end well for Donald Trump. You know the quote: the arc of the universe bends toward justice—I tend to think over time it does. The problem is it’s not a quick arc. It can be a very long arc, and it can twist and turn, making it seem like justice is not at hand. Even when Teddy thinks he’s out of the woods, he never really is.
FICTION
Colossus
By Ross Barkan
Arcade
Published April 28, 2026
