Flesh

David Szalay's Flesh received a Booker before the judges could say "boo." The subject is Istvan, a Hungarian version of Kosinski's Chance in Being Time, (played by Peter Sellers in the Ray Ashby movie. Szalay's main has what might be called "out-of-body, body experiences." In other words, lots of sex for which he is "here because he is not all there," to coin a phrase used by 12 steppers. He is seduced by a neighbor at the beginning. At first, he isn't attracted, but the sex is an awakening particularly to her anatomy which includes an alluring bit of hair that runs up from her vagina to her belly button. He is rebuffed in his first love experiences and ends up in juvenile detention after accidentally or not so accidentally killing the woman's husband, by pushing him down a flight of stairs. This question of intention is of course essential in determining culpability, but it's a metaphor for Istvan's condition, which vacillates between the conscious and unconscious. You may recognize this personality type from an adolescent reading of The Stranger, It may even register more intimately, but that is also the problem. The book is sexy and hard to put down, but is it original? Does it expand the readers horizons? Or does it leave them trapped like a rat on the behavioral  or even psychoanalytic treadmill? (to be continued).

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Digital Insertiveness

Young men are taught to assertive though not necessarily digitally insertive, vaginally speaking. Speaking of which Trump Tower is going to standard issue federal architecture say like the ubiquitous red brick of NYC public schools. If Pete Hegseth has his way all warriors will sport their leaders yellow duck bill hair style. Which brings up a non sequitur. Economic inequality is growing and what is one of its causes? 

Answer: racism. What better way to create a servant class whose wages are so comparatively low that they’re essentially slaves.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

The Pathetic Fallacy

John Ruskin

The pathetic fallacy, a term coined by the English art critic, John Ruskin, often lives up to Its name. It takes work to leap to the conclusion that thunder and lightening signify anything other the presence of an electrical storm. Lake effect snow is nothing more than beauteous meteorology. A tsunami is often the result of Vulcanology. Sorrowfully humankind are wanderers whose connection to the storm is that they may require an umbrella.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Diarrhea and Dysphoria

Big Brother (Bob Flag)

Surely you have made mistakes? Perhaps one of them is blurting out an inanity. If you're a writer, you have scribbled one that falls  deafeningly on deaf ears. Perhaps you have even gone so far as to make matters even worse, by digging yourself even more deeply into a hole. Perhaps this kind of behavior has emerged in the middle of one of those high-minded gatherings filled with like-minded folks which tend to make you, as a great man or woman of historical importance, uneasy. You don't want to be a member of a lynch mob, even a well-intentioned one, you argue. You're opposed to collectivities of any sort, unless, of course, the collectivity is the face of your own dysphoria. You could go on but you won't.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Nostalgie

 

"Nostalgie de la boue" is longing for shit--en Francais. But the expression is also "loaded." Nostalgie connotes something more than mere nostalgia. It is also aspirational in its romantic agony. You wish for something sad and dour and difficult, but ostensibly this Inferno, or to expropriate the Huysman's titled A Rebours or going back, which in English translates as Against Nature, is a form of replenishment, a Fleurs du Mal a la Baudelaire. The notion of diving deep into Hades is part of ancient mythology. Orpheus in Hell, Offenbach's comic opera. It is only Sade's 120 Days of Sodom and the Pasolini movie it inspired, Salo, that preclude the illusion of faith or belief.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Trainspotting

filming Trainspotting toilet scene

Remember the iconic scene in Trainspotting (1995) when the drugs disappear down the toilet. The moment sets off a hallucination as iconic as the horrified nurse in the Odessa Steps sequence of Einstein's Potemkin. Cataclysmic discombobulation that sets one's life in a tailspin is something you know if you've ever fallen asleep at the wheel, waking up suddenly to screams at the terror of the incipient path of destruction that you've wreaked. Have you hit or even killed someone? "Down the tubes." That's where you're headed is something you've undoubtedly felt. One door closes and another opens is dispelled by the reality that when one door closes another likely closes too. In fact, if you are like the bag of junk in the Danny Boyle film, you are just another domino  falling.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Silent Retreat

 

Mont St. Michel

Most creatives seek an audience. Writers and poets want be to read. Playwrights want their work performed, but in the age of AI, the role of the artist is recusal. Remember Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four? Now in 2026 it is hard to find authenticity. Inadvertent plagiarism was a problem long before the advent of AI. Without meaning to, many writers found themselves bombarded with memes and tropes whose provenance was hard to recognize. Now, ThinkSpeak has taken over. SSRIs are tantamount to Soma, the excising of personality being the price one has to pay for quieting depression and anxiety. In "The Double," Dostoevsky's alter-ego appropriates the life of its foundational self. Art in the 21st Century will be practiced by monastic orders which protect expression, by limiting its diffusion. You probably have already heard about people who go off to silent cell phone free retreats where electronic devices are not permitted.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star