No Exit

Hubert Selby: "I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn't be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again. This terrified me. The thought that I would live my entire life, look at it and realize I blew it forced me to do something with my life."

Among the numerous other indignities of the present war between good and evil is the attack on interiority. 

Thank God for Howard Jacobson whose most recent broadsheet/novel about "the war" (aka chthonic battle between medieval notions of good and evil) is titled Howl.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

The Man Who Couldn't Feel Anything

CIP, Congenital Insensitivity to Pain is life-threatening. How many time can you pound your head into a brick wall? The Man Who Couldn’t Feel Anything sounds just like another super hero until you realize that the strength hides a weakness. The Kryptonite in this case is a neurological condition which allows one the ability to painlessly self-destruct.Such a fictional character is also a metaphor for the institutionalization of forgetting. People don't realize they're time bombs. What goes around comes around. It’s the law of the conservation of energy. One of the chief methods of beheading a population is by convincing them that some atrocity is life as usual. Atrocity can be normalized. You can comvince humans of anything. Evil is truly banal. Like Kafka’s Hungerkunstler, it's the genius, the proclivity that's also is the undoing.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Civilization

 Kohneh Square, Isfahan (photo: Franco Pecchio)

Is the destruction of a civilization not too high a price to pay to turn attention away from the Epstein files? But from a world historical point of view, the real question is: who is the greatest authoritarian? The field is tight with KimJong-un, Recep Erdogan, MBS, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump all in the running. A Quinnipiac poll indicates most Americans feel Kim Jomg-un is most repressive with his ceremonial displays of strength in Kim II Sung Square. But fascism is on the upswing with Trump’s goon squad of masked agents bringing back the glory days of Kristallnacht when Black Shirts roamed freely through the streets of Berlin.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Half-Lives

"Half-life" is an odd term since it emanates from the elements. Humans have short half-lives. Here today gone tomorrow. It's stunning how quickly people pickup their things and leave the consciousness of other human beings forever. What’s the rush? Sorry to inform you, life goes on very nicely without you. No need to fret, thank you. One good thing is that most people are like Miss Havisham, cloaked in clutter. However, a quick exit from the stage, enables the minions to get rid of remains. Oh yes, now and then you will come to mind,  say when the word “soup” is mentioned. You like your soup "hot!"

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Fountain

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp (1917)

You have the found object or “objet Trouvé” epitomized most famously by Duchamp’s "Fountain." Then there are the the lost objects that people try to recover. Are you someone who is always crying out “where’s my phone?” There are those who would lose their heads if they weren't attached to their necks and some who routinely lose their minds. There are valued items that are stolen as is the case with the bike in De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. But what about those things that disappear of their own volition? You can’t find  them anywhere. If you leave your cellphone in your freezer, you may want to discuss it in therapy. Are the things that refuse to show up part of an unconscious deaccessioning project that has yet to reveal itself. No sooner had you purchased Dan Simmon’s Hyperion at the advice of a friend than that piece of sci-fi went into outer space, into an orbit comprising space/time coordinates that were no longer part of your universe.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

En Plein Air

 

South Fork Poetry: ‘En Plein Air’

“En Plein Air,” mixed media, 2026, by Hallie Cohen.

Courtesy of the Artist

By Francis Levy

April 2, 2026 

I am standing by my

easel en plein air

right here on Main

 

usually there is a group of us down by the inlet

but I don’t see any of those

“No painting from life” signs

the source of the trepidation is:

am I getting things right?

am I exploiting their pain?

is this a justification for art?

 

solitary figure under street lamp

go blank

dark light to draw the figure

 

Nardy Pest Control

Yardley & Pino Funeral Home

 

Valhalla is where everybody who is anybody’s going

the L.I.E. is one those conversations that goes on forever

 

You’re all

over town

without spreading yourself thin

or being unfaithful

and the ripples of the current,

Swann’s Way on Circle Beach

always the mad honking

flocks of geese over Georgica Pond

country cousin of herds of yellow cabs

I started in the sad light

when everyone was still sleeping

the houses were

tombstones in my mind

shadow dancing is what I call these kinds of strokes it’s nothing new

for me

 

I could have just taken a shot with my cell

but it’s not the same

it’s complex

 

I’m the town crier

he finally died is where my art begins

but it’s a tale of estrangement, and love

this one loved him

that one not

then there’ll be the church

I won’t be able to paint the service

and how this one was or was not talking

to whom

---

Francis Levy is a Wainscott resident. “En Plein Air” is part of a recently completed poetry collection, “The Unavoidable Imminence of the Inexplicable.”

 

Taste

Focus groups are used by advertisers and purveyors to psyche out the desires of populations. Vance Packard the author of books like The Status Seekers epitomized the world of 50s advertising. His version of popularized sociology epitomized the  post-war consumer culture. Dwight McDonald famously wrote Mass Cult and Mid Cult. Mad Men presented another look at the attempt to survey and profit from consumerism. Taste is the common phenomenon. Lionel Trilling ‘s The Liberal Imagination is an attempt to help readers of literature examine good from bad. The Dow and The Pulitzer are both forms of measurement and certain bestsellers represent the meeting point between commerce and art.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star