Two Writing Projects

Rachel Cusk

Yiyun Li

Rachel Cusk wrote a novel about the break up of her marriage Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation (2012) after which she produced her trilogy, Outline (2014), Transit (2016) and Kudos (2018) in which individual character appears to disintegrate.  What if there were no more “I” in literature and the author is still beholden to concrete a world? The suicides of Yiyun Li’s two sons is the all consuming passion of her work—similar to the binding of Isaac in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. Yiyun Li has written two books about these tragedies. Where Reason Ends (2019) deals with the death of her son Vincent in 2017 at the age of 16. Things in Nature Merely Grow (2025) is about the suicide of her son James in 2024 at the age of 19. 

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Night of the Living Dead

The fact that disaffection and even disembodiment are the lingua franca of cultural discourse is not particularly germane to this particular era. One factoid does play a role, however, and that's the extent to which the political situation has burrowed itself into even the most well-defended psyches. You may be in the middle of Swann's Way or The Four Quartets, and find the infection of spurious discourse and gaslighting spreading through the system say like worms in a dog. Just as you're about to catch your metaphysical breath, Trump, like one of the zombies from George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, opens his ghoulish maw, his used car dealer hairdo and hideous unchanging semantic drawl, hammering hope in a coffin. Sometimes people go into therapy with the mistaken belief that external conditions are what is making them unhappy. The process of treatment is to disabuse them of these defenses. Trump mockingly refers to his critics as suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. In fact, it's the one thing he says that's true. He is singlehandedly driving the collective unconscious of society nuts.

Helen of Nowhere

 

"Cusky" could be an adjective used to describe the muted disenchantment that afflicts a new generation of fictional characters. The style of Rachel Cusk's trilogy, Outline, Transit and Kudos has become a cultural meme, though there's a roman a clef luring in her latest Life of M ("'Life of M' Rachel Cusk's New Book Has a Protagonist With An Uncanny Resemblance to Natalie Portman," NYT, 8/23/26). Makenna Goodman's Helen of Nowhere, which has been longlisted for the Booker, is similarly reflective of fragile human connection. Here is a passage from the novel which is structured as a six act play. "I have been thinking about the day my wife left me. I had just come back from my morning walk. It was terribly cold in our house, and because of the wind from my walk, I remember I had tears on my face. I came in from my walk, cold and colder, and my wife was sitting at the table, dressed and upright, formal. She told me she was leaving me." Cuskiness is stark and knife sharp. Entropy rules and there isn't a hint of the erotic in the before or after of these failed connections.

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Banking

 

Do you bank experience? A bad experience can pay off if it leads to the production of a poem or novel. Take James Jones' war classic From Here to Eternity.  The only problem is actuarial. The older you get, the shorter the time to repeat the reward, which justifies suffering. And of course there are experiences which break the bank. The notion that artists are exempted from the downsides others experience, because they they may profit (or even claim fame and/or notoriety) from them is a great default concept, until you find yourself drowning.

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Eight Million Ways to Die

A cat has nine lives. Humans only have one though there is You Only Live Twice, which is why fiction is more appealing than reality. “You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face,” is the author's  haiku. BTW it's the last James Bond novel published in Ian Fleming's lifetime. Not to be outdone, Lawrence Block wrote Eight Million Ways to Die. If indeed you only lived twice you would never know it. When you’re about to be reincarnated god makes that indentation above the upper lip which makes way for the life to come.

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Loss Aversion

Is the fear of death a form of loss aversion, similar to that, say, of losing money? Of course this refers not only to one’s own mortality, but that of others who are part of the pod. Such phobias naturally have an effect on behavior. You're unlikely to undertake certain activities until your concern has passed. When you go to the beach, you wait for the swells to become manageable or the riptide to recede. You’ll perhaps delay a return trip until the threat of “weather” is rescinded. Potential gains are also freighted with the possibility of punishment, the obvious one being that one’s newfound prosperity will be taken away. Ultimately, however, the questions is mute. Why live, if someday one’s life is bound to end?

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

View From the South Meadow

'View From the South Meadow" by Fairfield Porter (1969)

Those who constantly feel pain are enjoined to change their inspirations. Imaging is one method that can be suggested. Think of something which catalyzes positive thoughts. It's like trying a new route to the destination when you're facing delays. Some drivers only follow Google maps while others may choose a more arduous path that circumvents traffic and adds different scenery along way. Freud compared free association to looking out of the window of a train. Fairfield Porter, an exhibit of whose work has recently completed a run at the Art Student's League, adhered to the notion that "the real is specific." What is there to look for, when the present lurks right before one's eyes? He chose to paint the empty field above offering no anodyne for its emptiness.