Teddy Starr, A Man Reinvented: Ross Barkan's ‘Colossus’

 

 

Ross Barkan's recent novel, Colossus, returns to a theme he explored in Glass Century: concealed family relationships and the reinvention of self in an unmoored America.

 

The subject is clearly a personal one for Barkan, but unlike Glass Century, which often felt driven by emotion, Colossus initially seems more intellectual than heartfelt. Only about halfway through does the novel reveal the emotional core that has been hidden beneath its portrait of a declining Americana. I found myself wondering whether Barkan might have developed the story more chronologically rather than withholding so much of Teddy Starr's back story until Part Two. Yet there is method in the structure. By delaying the revelation of Starr's origins, Barkan creates a mystery that sustains the reader through the novel's opening movement.

 

Teddy Starr is the pastor of Trinity Church in Pine Haven, a fictional Michigan town. At first he resembles a fox among the hens of his congregation, pursuing unhappy parishioners' wives with a confidence that John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom might have admired while simultaneously cashing in on local real estate opportunities in a manner reminiscent of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe.

 

The Richard Ford influence is impossible to miss. Barkan even opens with an epigram from The Sportswriter: "All we really want is to get to the point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life."  Indeed, Teddy Starr has shut the door on his past and like Bascombe, Starr also becomes a real estate agent, giving him a unique vantage point on his community (and ability to profit on it): “A realtor is a showman, a handmaiden, and advertiser for your arriving life, the one you want to live.”

 

And it is in his depiction of Pine Haven that Barkan’s writing truly excels. The town becomes a miniature America, where affluent retirees and struggling laborers live only blocks apart, and where chain restaurants, economic anxieties, and cultural fragmentation define the landscape. The novel's greatest strength may be its portrait of contemporary middle-America, observed with both affection and skepticism.  The area’s annual Flapjack Festival is its entertainment pinnacle.

 

Starr himself is not particularly admirable. He is married to Daniella and the father of three children, yet he moves through life in the community assuming privileges he has never earned. He cheats almost casually, regarding temptation as one of the benefits of being Teddy Starr. His rationalizations are often revealing, particularly when he reflects on the limitations facing women in Pine Haven and quietly congratulates himself for having "sought my advantages."

 

Yet Starr does not entirely escape consequences. His relationship with his pubescent son Theodore is strained, and the estrangement between fathers and sons becomes one of the novel's recurring concerns. Here again one hears echoes of Richard Ford.

 

There are comparisons to Sinclair Lewis as well. Although Starr is no Elmer Gantry, Lewis's skeptical eye toward Main Street America hovers over much of the first half of the novel. Then comes the event that changes everything: a mysterious man begins following Starr and claims to be his brother.

 

From that moment the novel pivots.

 

Barkan signals the turn with one of the book's most powerful passages, a meditation on secrets, reinvention, and the curtains we draw between ourselves and the past:

 

“Imagine Daniella now what she would say, another man calling the only child, Theodore Starr a brother. Imagine, really, what Daniella would say if she knew it all, even this afternoon with Guinevere, if whatever she suspects matches up against vertiginous reality, if she can even produce a notion. But few can. Few can fathom what waits behind the curtain. Curtains are thick, after all, and it’s a greater feat than it looks to pull one back, to force one back.  And what if only disease and rot are behind them? What if, by closing the curtain, you escaped it all, as any individual with a modicum of intellect and ambition would? This is the pioneer spirit, the American Mundus, reinvention to starve or perdition, to work your way closer to God, the true God. And my brother, and his people, knew nothing of that.“

 

Suddenly the reader is thrust backward into another life entirely.

 

Without venturing too far into spoiler territory, Part Two reveals that Teddy Starr (né Reuvain Gantz) was raised in Brooklyn and that his origins are far removed from the evangelical Protestant identity he has constructed. The details emerge gradually, but the central conflict is familiar: family expectations versus personal freedom.

 

His father, an overbearing, workaholic collector of apartment buildings and something of a slumlord, expects his son to inherit the business (one of course can draw parallels to a certain contemporary figure). The prospect repels him. Ironically, it is his brother who is being groomed for scholarship and religious life. The burden of expectation hangs heavily over the household.

 

How Reuvain becomes Teddy Starr is the heart of the novel. Two figures shape that transformation: Talia, his first youthful love, and Teddy, an extraordinary Asian handball player whose influence proves even more significant.

 

The handball sequences are among the finest passages in the book. Much as tennis functioned as a metaphor in Glass Century, handball becomes a metaphor for life itself—competition, discipline, courage, and self-definition. On the handball court even the Mexicans and Puerto Ricans defer to Teddy.  “It was fury, and it was a dance.  With balletic rage, he rearranged the geometry of the courts, his ball cracking low against the wall, unreachable every time.”

 

Eventually Reuvain must confront his father: “I anticipated, always, my father‘s rage. I was like a mariner reading the clouds for a rainstorm. I had chosen the handball courts over him, and I would pay.“ He accuses his father of running “a gutter empire” and soon the confrontation becomes deadly.

 

He flees Brooklyn.  He borrows his new first name from his handball court mentor and as he boards a random bus to Detroit, he sees a neon sign “Starr and Co., Deli” and so life changes for the reborn “Teddy Starr” and he ultimately begins the life we have already seen unfolding in Pine Haven.

 

Part Three examines the consequences of that reinvention. The truths Starr has concealed are exposed to his wife, his congregation, and his community. Daniella's furious assessment of him as a fraudulent outsider cuts directly to the novel's central concern: how much of a life can be built upon invention before the structure collapses?

 

Forced to confront his congregation, Starr prepares to deliver his sermon and confession: “they shimmer, my flock, even as they begin to bend my way, their wet lips crinkling, curiosity, commingling with fury… I feel oxidized and ancient like the same statue was striding the Rhodesian Harbor, my brassy flesh, collapsing into the brine. They gape at my crumbling.”   

 

Yet this is also a novel about America, and America has always had a remarkable capacity for reinvention. Time passes. Wounds heal. The disgraced pastor discovers that public life remains open to him. Indeed, he is even offered an even greater opportunity: a run for Congress.

 

The irony is unmistakable. The man who built his life on concealment and reinvention is rewarded rather than punished. One might even view his ascent as a metaphorical ride UP the escalator to seize the golden ring of success. Yet Barkan's point is not simply political. Teddy Starr embodies a distinctly American belief that identity is endlessly renewable, that the past can be escaped, rewritten, or transformed into advantage, no matter how corrupt that past might have been.  Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby similarly tried to hide a past in his delusional pursuit of the American Dream. 

 

In Colossus, Ross Barkan has produced a worthy successor to Glass Century and an impressive second installment in what appears to be an emerging trilogy examining authenticity, family, ambition, and American political life.

 

One final note. I found the hardcover's overall low-contrast typographical design and leading to be tiring on older eyes during extended reading. A minor complaint, but one worth mentioning.

 

And a coda, totally unrelated, sunrise this morning during my daily early walk…

 

The "Anti-Weaponization Fund," a Grafter Government Unhinged, and the Final Arrival of ‘1984’

 

 

It’s been reported on, but from my perspective without the glacial shock wave it deserves: the so-called “slush fund” ostensibly targeted toward January 6 perpetrators. The act itself feels almost like trolling by this “president,” but more than that, a smokescreen while potentially making him and his family millions of dollars richer by granting immunity from past and present IRS scrutiny.

 

I begin with my favorite political cartoonist’s take on the subject. Mike Luckovich not only points out the hypocrisy of it all, but, more subtly, the press’s lack of focus on the real issue. It is not merely the contrast with the relatively minor transgressions of prior administrations, but the failure of the Fourth Estate to shake its own foundations loudly enough to affect change. At least we still have independent journalists metaphorically riding as Paul Revere, such as Paul Krugman.  In “The Looting of America; MAGA corruption reaches the point of no return,” he writes that “few things shock me these days, but this development — in which a Justice Department that works for Trump is paying a vast sum to ‘settle’ a lawsuit brought by Trump himself — is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people.”

 

His is only one of many similar voices one can now find on Substack, independent historians, political scientists, ex-government officials, and even perceptive humorists. While the traditional news media may report the same facts, few institutional voices seem willing to say so directly. Heaven forbid Dear Leader be offended or, especially, be laughed at.

 

The broader normalization of conflicts of interest surfaced again when Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times, on a related issue, wrote in his newsletter: “…thanks for all of your notes regarding President Trump’s 3,700 trades. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what trading policy for federal officials should look like. For example, should trading be banned entirely? Restricted to specific windows? Managed through blind trusts? Furthermore, should public disclosures be immediate or delayed, and how should the policy address family members?”

 

I dashed off my response, recognizing that he is perhaps walking on institutionally mandated eggshells: “Andrew, the fact that you can even ask whether there should be a trading policy for federal officials shows the erosion of the core principles on which this country was founded. Of course they should be banned from trading individually, or at the very least required to place investments in blind trusts, as other officials have done in the past. It goes without saying, or once would have. The potential conflicts of interest are simply too numerous, and the temptation too great, as we have witnessed time and again with the current administration.

 

“And what has happened to the rule of law, with the arbitrary establishment of a $1.776 billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ to ‘compensate’ individuals involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack? This is American justice at work?

 

“It is bad enough that an entire political culture seems increasingly comfortable with graft. The mere fact that we are now publicly debating whether elected officials should trade stocks while possessing inside knowledge and the ability to influence day-to-day market movements, not to mention accepting lobby money to favor industries or causes, makes me lose hope.”

 

In spite of being one of Trump’s most obsequious supporters, perhaps this “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was a bridge too far even for Pam Bondi who resigned as AG. How convenient, then, to have Todd Blanche step in, without Congress now having a further say to block his becoming Acting AG (not that they would if they could). As Trump’s personal lawyer, Blanche represented him in criminal cases including the New York hush money case, which ended with convictions on 34 felony counts, as well as the federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith, now abandoned. Apparently Blanche works tirelessly to satisfy his direct report, the President of the United States and not the Constitution.

 

On to other dystopian developments, arriving with such rapidity one can hardly hold them in one’s head long enough to think about them. Among the latest architectural impositions proposed for the White House and Washington, D.C. is the “United States Triumphal Arch,” supposedly commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence, though in reality seeming more like a monument to Trump himself.

 

It immediately recalls George Orwell’s 1984 and its “enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete,” bearing “the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

 

Might this be just one of others planned? In 1984 “scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.”

 

And there it is again: the fusion of power, propaganda, and intimidation disguised as patriotism in massive concrete. Orwell understood that authoritarianism eventually expresses itself physically. Not content merely to dominate language and thought, it seeks permanence in gigantic buildings, and endless spectacles celebrating the Leader and the State.

 

What once seemed satirical exaggeration now arrives incrementally, proposal by proposal, outrage by outrage, each one quickly replaced by the next before we have time to absorb it. One becomes exhausted not only by the events themselves, but by the sheer velocity of them. That, perhaps, is part of the strategy, essentially a Gish Gallop applied to governance itself: a torrential inundation of events, too many to process.

 

Anything is now possible with this administration. So, as a citizen, I turned to my two Senators and Representative, sending them the New York Times Op-Ed piece “Trump Just Took Us Somewhere the Country Had Never Been Before.”

Not that I expected them to actually read it, but at least to register my concern. I did get one reply. It was 1984-ish in its own small bureaucratic way:

 

“Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups: Senator Rick Scott (receipt@rickscott.senate.gov); The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending your message later, or contact the recipient directly.”

 

Instead I heard:  “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Open Letter to Brian Mast on the Iran Conflict

 

 

I sent the following letter to Florida Representative Brian Mast today. I’m publishing it here in the interest of transparency, as well as his letter to me which initiated this response.  Also, as this is yet another political piece, I turn to Mike Luckovich again for cartoon clarity.

 

Dear Representative Mast,

 

Thank you for your response and for directly addressing the concerns I raised in my March 16 email. As I wrote then, quoting Paul Krugman, there is a growing perception abroad that the United States has shifted from a nation admired for its moral leadership and respect for international law to one increasingly willing to act outside it. That concern remains at the heart of my response.

 

We likely agree on the objective: reducing the threat posed by Iran’s regime. However, its 47-year history of hostile rhetoric and actions does not, in itself, constitute an “imminent” threat to the United States homeland. Indeed, one could argue that actions which destabilize the region—militarily, economically, and politically—risk increasing, rather than diminishing, the likelihood of terrorism directed at Americans.

 

Equally troubling is the unilateral nature of recent U.S. actions. For decades, we carefully built alliances—particularly in Europe—grounded not only in shared security interests but in shared commitments to international norms. Those relationships have been strained. Acting as the world’s policeman without broad international support risks alienating both long-standing allies and newer partners in the Middle East and Asia.

 

This raises a broader question of consistency. You and Donald Trump both campaigned against entanglement in such conflicts. What has changed? When Iranian nuclear facilities were previously targeted and declared neutralized, how do we now justify renewed escalation? And how do we propose to address more direct nuclear threats—such as North Korea—without the kind of international coalition that current policy seems to undermine?

 

It is worth recalling that in 2015 the United States, under Barack Obama, helped negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a multilateral agreement that included not only European allies but also China and Russia. It was not perfect, but it provided a framework for inspection, accountability, and cooperation. The decision to withdraw in 2018 weakened that framework and, with it, our ability to manage the issue collectively.

 

Finally, I am concerned by the degree of deference Congress appears willing to grant the executive in matters of war. While the need for swift action in genuine emergencies is clear, so too is the danger of concentrating too much discretionary power in a single individual. The rhetoric surrounding these actions—including threats of extreme retaliation—only heightens that concern.

 

You are half my age, and I respect your service. But from a longer vantage point, I would urge caution: strength is not measured solely by force, but by restraint, credibility, and the ability to lead others with us.

 

Thank you for considering my views.

 

From Representative Brian Mast 4/14/26

Thank you for contacting me regarding Operation Epic Fury and the ongoing U.S. military operations involving Iran. I appreciate you taking the time to share your concerns on this important national security issue.

 

First and foremost, my priority in Congress is the safety of the American people, our service members, and our allies. The Iranian regime has spent over 47 years funding terrorism, targeting Americans, and threatening stability across the Middle East. For years, Iran has developed ballistic missiles, supported proxy militias, and pursued capabilities that put U.S. forces and civilians at risk, killing thousands. As Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I believe the United States cannot ignore those imminent threats.

 

The objective of Operation Epic Fury is clear. As I have stated publicly, the mission is to eliminate Iran’s ability to strike Americans and our allies. That means dismantling every piece of military hardware, missile systems, and other capabilities that allow the Iranian regime to carry out attacks against Americans across the region. The goal is not ongoing conflict, but to ensure that Americans are no longer under threat from a regime that has targeted our people for nearly half a century.

 

I also introduced legislation to reaffirm that Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and backed the President’s constitutional authority to respond to threats against the United States. This resolution passed with an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 372 to 53. When our nation faces a direct threat, the Commander-in-Chief must have the ability to act swiftly to protect American lives. I believe Operation Epic Fury demonstrates the principle of peace through strength—making it clear that the United States will not back down when our citizens are in harm’s way.

 

I understand that military action is never something to be taken lightly. As a combat veteran, I know personally the cost of war and the sacrifices made by those who serve. That is why I believe any use of force must have a clear objective, a defined threat, and the goal of protecting American lives. In this case, I believe the action taken was necessary to prevent greater danger to our troops, our homeland, and our allies.

 

Please know that I will continue working in Congress to ensure that our national security decisions remain focused on defending the American people and supporting the men and women who wear the uniform.

 

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.  If you’d like to receive updates about this issue and other news that’s important to our community, please  sign up here .  To follow along with my work on your behalf, please join me on  Facebook ,  Twitter ,  Instagram   and  YouTube .  If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to  contact me again .  As always it is an honor to represent you in the United States Congress.

 

Sincerely,

 

Brian Mast

Member of Congress