The Story of O

Perversion is altering something from its original course. Perversion of justice, for instance. Something is perverse when it begins this process. Perverts are those who enjoy such derailments and a perversion, when it comes to sex is defined as abnormality. "What is normal?" is the complaint of every pervert from the Marquis de Sade on. One walks a slippery slope in trying to lower or raise the bar in reference to that which some deem to be a form of pleasure. There are those who may derive their kicks from getting their leg pulled. That train has left the station means an inalterable process has begun. A pervert trying to reverse course is similar to a fish swimming upstream. Yes salmon return home to die, but the average tuna will find itself canned. You'd think perversion would be an easy thing to cure. Just give the person the correct directions. Easier said than done. It's hard to eradicate an idea.

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star

The Wild One

It may seem odd in this age of Jeffrey Epstein to remember America is a puritanical society. The Scarlet Letter is worn by every American. Sexuality not only results in humiliation, it’s predicated on it. Shame was the 2011 Michael Fassbinder movie about a sex addict. America isn’t the only country where transgression fuels arousal. Catholicism and fascism were the cocktail that formed Pasolini’s sensibility, but America is a secular society where there's at least the illusion of freedom. So the outlying forces, the attraction between positive and negative plus and minus in fact create the buzz. In The Wild One (1953), Marlon Brando auditions as America’s great heartthrob by leading a motorcycle gang into town. James Dean, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and their female counterparts Janet Leigh, Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe all become stars by defying the mores of society.

Read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy with a painting by Hallie Cohen in The East Hampton Star

How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel

Can an inward turning figure be an activist? What revolution would Proust lead? There has famously been a conservatism to great 20th  Century modernism, Ezra Poind ended up in St. Elizabeth’s in the wake of his fascist broadcasts during the Second War. Tolstoy is an exception particularly with regard to the Christianity which infused his writing in the latter part of his career. Andre Malraux, a Gaullist political figure, wrote both Man’s Fate and Man’s Hope (if manifest content is significant, the titles tell part of the story). Camus, the editor of the famed resistance paper Combat, was the author of The Stranger, a unique combination of interiority with intention and there were Koestler, Silone and, indubitably, George Orwell whose complex convictions are an essay in consciousness itself. Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Save Your Life  fuses the how-to genre with a Proust's excavations of memory in both its voluntary and involuntary forms (as exemplified by the iconic madeleine). The potential humor and even silliness of the endeavor is belied by acuteness of the author's insights.

Read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy with a painting by Hallie Cohen in The East Hampton Star

The Full-Service Replacement Division of Andersen

 

Plato

You may have seen the television ads about the years of training installers of The Full-Service Division of Andersen receive. There are is also the PhD and of course the post graduate division located in Frankfurt where famous for philosophers like Herbert Marcuse whose notion of "repressive desublimation" is an important element of his One Dimensional Man. Can a one-dimensional man install a three-dimensional window? As was once said about Clairol, "only your hairdresser knows for sure." In their first year most students will take Contemporary Civilization, a survey of Greco-Roman and classical culture that plays a major role in the kind of installing that clients enjoy. If nothing else a graduate should be able to converse freely with the kind of highly educated customer who can afford a top quality window replacement job.

Read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy with a painting by Hallie Cohen in The East Hampton Star

The Great Dictator

 

Cut to the famous scene in the Charlie Chaplin classic where Chaplin, impersonating Hitler, is throwing the world around like it's a rubber ball. Trump vows to nationalize elections in violation of the constitution. He declares war on Venezuela and Iran without the consent of congress. He attempts to grab Greenland, a relatively minor gambit whose failure he sloughs off. Emoluments. His current earnings as president are nearing 1.8 billion and he has sent the FBI into the office of Fulton County to illegally vet ballots. Is that Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, making a guest appearance? The FBI under $Cash Patel and the DOJ under Pam Bondi, whose past role was in Surfer Girl, have now been merged with The White House, whose East Wing has been torn down to build a $300 million ballroom, without wasting time to confer with the NCPC (National Capitol Planning Commission). Who cares?

The Phone

"Midway upon the journey of our life
  I found myself within a forest dark,
  For the straightforward pathway had been lost."--Canto I, The Inferno

"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi' ch'intrate"--reads the sign above the gate--Canto III

But what is hell? Is it everyday life with its disillusion, disappointments and boredom? And with the ephemeral pleasures of the flesh like eating and passion. Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso all have 33 cantos each. So hell doesn't dominate existence, but for the unrepentant sinner it's the last stop. Tolstoy ran away from Yasnaya Polyana and died alone in the Astopovo Station "He who is without sin cast the first stone"--John 8:7 . Waiting is the human predicament. No one is free of it and salvation is rarely what is sought.

Life

At birth, one is sentenced to life with no time off for good behavior. Parole? It’s the one case where it would not necessarily be desirable. Commutation is tantamount to death.  No one has the benefit of awareness of the birth or death which bookend existence. Supernal events inevitably convey mystery since they traffic in both the invisible and ineffable. Time is a light spectrum filled with signposts such as the advent of consciousness—which however elusive tantalize with their potential knowability. Personhood follows the vacuum which leads to nothing.

Read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy with a painting by Hallie Cohen in The East Hampton Star