Nineteen Eighty-Four

One Hundred Years of Solitude is the famous Marquez novel but it's an almost biblical expression of an age of interiority. Now there is little privacy and still less quiet. Social media forces one's hand and identities are stolen as ubiquitously as gold in the Wild West. You may read about Chinese hackers getting into phones but consciousness itself is no longer sacrosanct. Claudius is almost murdered in prayer but thought itself is no longer sacrosanct. Tik Tok hath murdered sleep. Big Brother is the famous invocation from 1984, but the frightening truth is that today's Winston Smiths exhaust all possible escapes when the mind no longer provides a safe harbor.

"God Bless Pig Latin America" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Superconductivity

 

"Leon N. Cooper, 94, Who Unlocked Secrets of Superconductivity, Dies"--NYT, 10/27/24

"He surmised that electrons attract positive ions in the lattices of the atoms that make up certain metals.That creates a charge imbalance in the lattices, making one side of them slightly more positive. In superconductivity, that is enough to attract other electrons flowing through the metals towards the lattices."

"At Brown he became interested I neuroscience..."

"Their theory was that as synapses approach saturated levels of activity, the electrical signals that were driving them would become less effective and the synaptic connections would revert to less saturated levels. The connections would thus oscillate between being saturated and unsaturated, like a skier gliding between two fences but never hitting either."

"Phil Lesh, Bassist Who Anchored the Grateful Dead, Is Dead at 84"--NYT, 10/27/24

"In his autobiography, Mr. Lesh compared the Grateful Dead's music to life itself. 'Both,' he said, 'were a series of recurring themes, transpositions, repetitions, unexpected developments, all converging to define form that is not necessarily apparent until its ending has come and gone.'"

read "Why Big German Words Like Vergangenbangenheit Carry Weight" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

Kim Jong-un

Eddie Adams/Associated Press

 Kim Jong-un famous executed his uncle, Jang Song-thaek with a mortar (and he thereby posed the question of whether a more advanced mortar could do the job more efficiently).That was "un" for the books. Now that the subject of retribution is so much in the news with Trump threatening long sentences exile snd even worse to his his enemies at CBS ABC and in congress ( Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi have been mentioned) the weapons which some of these punishments will be meted out becomes relevant. In Puritan times, the stocks were popular and Saudi Arabia still sentences offenders to public lashings. Of course, Trump's close friend KimJong- un who is currently supplying troops to the Russians will be able to offer practical suggestions. If you remember an American student, Otto Frederick Warmbler, who stole a North Korean flag died in the labor camp to which he was sentenced. Illegal immigrants can expect worse when they are interned in America and Trump has said it will be actually bloody for everyone. Even his supporters are likely to get splattered by ICE. What more is there to do to people who don't behave and do what you want? One reason for Trump's popularity is that he expresses all the things that other folks are afraid to say, one of which is I'd like to kill you.

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and read "Ultimate Rejection!" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Intelligent Life on Earth

Without being facetious, one can safely say there will be a more intelligent form of life tomorrow. Hopefully evolution will occur in the next 13 days! What seemed frightening may even appear "weird" with MAGA Retrumplicans in their red hats like the bearded  women that were exhibited in traveling fairs. Visitors to the MAGA house at the Central Park Zoo will be able to feed these creatures and adopt one as you might an ass. But what will descendants of man look like? Will their cranial cavities be enlarged to fit data or simply landscaping and plants? The fact is from the standpoint if the present it is difficult nigh impossible to predict what the future bodes. Primitive man discovered fire. The self-driving car already is a common piece of equipment. Who knows if roles won't be reversed. Perhaps a car will arrive at aTesla showroom to buy purchase its driver.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and read "Ultimate Rejection!" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Law and Order

Afghanistan, inflation, immigration on one side of the ledger. Abortion, January 6, loss of faith in democracy,  Supreme Court, truth--on the other. Titrating the issue, there is the general concept of gaslighting. One way to deal with truth is to turn it on its head. In answer to being called a fascist for threatening political retribution, you simply say "you're the one who is." Post hoc ergo propter hoc. There are certain regimes that thrive on solipsism. Empiricism is the philosophy upon which democracy is predicated. The best way to disenfranchise an electorate is to doubt it exists.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and read "Ultimate Rejection!" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Voting Rights

Bloody Sunday, Selma 1965

Americans may confer on themselves the dubious honor of voting against the right to vote. Donald Trump urged an evangelical group to vote saying it would be the last time they would have to. Democracy indeed seems to be a foreign term when you listen to some Retrumplicans who rail against it, without any understanding of the hard fought rights it confers. Indeed democracy is a complex institution that involves understanding terms like "inalienable rights." Still voting oneself out of power is a bizarre impulse. The only comparison is with certain religions in which one totally turns one's (free) will and life over to a punishing God.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and read "Ultimate Rejection!" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Bed

Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in The Fourposter

You make your own bed. Now you've got to sleep in it" is the country cousin of "we aim to please. Will you aim too please?"--a saying that's prominently displayed above some toilets. The latter is a computer printout of the pluses and minuses of the epigrammatic imagination. Concision and  compression rank as two if the greatest aspirations of the human spirits while redundancy and prolixity truly suffer fools. On the other hand, there's a whole world of abbreviation mongers who speak only in short hand. "It sounds like a plan," "being on the same page" and "at the end of the day" are the greatest offenders,  constituting a lingua Franca that's tantamount to a couple exchanging vows of eternal silence.

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and read "Ultimate Rejection!" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

The Marshall Plan

Konrad Adenauer

After the Second World War Germans repudiated Naziism. The Marshall Plan hearkened material prosperity and the rebuilding of the country but also the prospect of assimilation and reentry into the society of Western humanism--however delusive and fraught such a term might seem. Konrad Adenauer exemplifies the new Germany of whom Angel Merkel was also a product. The problem with the Middle East is that such accommodation does not appear to be in the offing. Jihad is not an ideology which will be eradicated. To use Max Weber's term. It's a "beruf" or calling. At the UN Netanyahu pulled out a map of dualities or antinomies with material progress (he literally alluded to fiber optic cables between the Mideast and Europe) counterposed to Iran and its axis of evil. Even the threats of material prosperity and peace are probably not enough to move followers of Hezbollah and Hamas from their ultimate goals--which are not looked at as anything like the nefarious and dark ideology of fascism. Hitler believed in a superior Aryan race while the lingua franca of resistance in the Middle East (actually on many fronts including Iran and Syria as well as Gaza and the West Bank) is freedom from oppression.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and also read "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

The Wild One

Bicyclists get doored and kid gangs on their GTXs, pockets filled with crab apples, retaliate. Lucky there is Safelite and the  friendly teams of uniformed installers the country cousins of the Replacement Division of Windows by Anderson. You may have encountered the covens of drag racers dangerously zigzagging on the LIE. Have you ever been short-stopped by a  punk tailgater? There's a science to traffic that goes back to hydraulics and has to do with viscosity. If you've ever driven by one of those barges that floats its passengers luxuriously down the Marne, you understand. Critics gang  up on playwrights. Remember Moose Murders which was a legendary flop? Remember Paris in 68 from whose graffiti splattered walls, Milan Kundera snatched the title Life is Elsewhere. 

read the review of The Kafka Studies Department by Francis Levy in Booklife

Carrie

Have you ever been at one of those tony events where someone's head does a 180 when you try to talk to them? If you remember that's what Sissy Spacek's head does in Carrie. Of course the difference is that King's original character was a victim too, having had to endure a degree of exclusion that led to the possession of demonic powers. Oh that you could inflict such pain on all the tormentors who have been indifferent to you, ignored you and consigned you into the bowels of cosmic indifference aka "pre-snubual bliss." These hurts never leave and you never forgive those who have not recognized your worth. In fact, such moments are tattooed on your soul. You wish that all of those who ever ignored you to burn in hell!

read "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Tomas Transtromer

Tomas Tranströmer (1931-2015)

From "The Baltic Seas" by Nobel prize winner,  Tomas Transtromer: "So when you're with someone you don't know well: control. Some frankness is fine/as long as you don't lose sight of what's drifting there on the edges of the conversation: that darkness, that dark strain/it can drift in and destroy everything."

From To the Finland Station where Edmund Wilson is discussing Marx's early feeling that "the code of the feudal world has no relation to human justice... with the exception that among the bees, at least, it was the workers who killed the drones and not the drones that killed the workers." 

From Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals. "The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short." 

read "Frankel" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Racism

The origin of racism is economic. Disenfranchising a minority leads to subserviance. In many instances the employer/ employee relationship is thinly veiled master/slave. Scrooge legendarily paying Crachit a pittance is a robber baron in microcosm--the factory owner paying his worker the smallest amount possible to guarantee ever larger profits which in turn will increase stock price. Lo, have things really changed? Has some genie magically humanized the profit motive? Racism takes on all kinds of cultural guises one of which is a nefarious invisibility aka Ellison's The Invisible Man and Percival Everett's Erasure (the book on which the film American Fiction is based). For instance, a benevolent despot like Frederick II or Tito is a pater familias providing the anodyne of liberalism to the wound. Still dominance and submission define any system in which there is an underclass who lack the same benefits rights and privileges as the manager or "boss." Even after the Russian Revolution in which there was ostensibly a "dictatorship of the proletariat," you had a relatively small but privileged Nomenklatura, de facto aristocrats who exploited their serfs.

read "Frankel" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Two State Solution For US

 

map based on last senate race as of 2024

What the United States requires is a "two state solution." Trump has said he won't accept defeat--no matter what the results. Actually the same is true of Dems. What person who has voted for Kamala Harris is going to accept project 2025 and go softly into the night? What liberal-minded American will go along with Trump's bloody mass deportations, his weaponizing the DOJ for retribution, his national abortion ban or his surrender of Ukraine, not to mention his insane tariffs and tax plans and his replacement for Obama care which is still "a concept." The fact is as Trump has always said he could go down Fifth Avenue and shoot people or for that matter create a cabinet level secretary of golf. The opposing parties in the Middle East are more intractable than ever. Israel will retaliate against Iran any day and the Iranians will attack back. The "two state" solution is a perfectly sensible compromise that extremist elements on both sides never allow to occur as October 7 demonstrates. But who is to say it won't work in the US? All the big cities New York  LA, Chicago, Atlanta would be given to the Democrats and all of rural America would remain red.

read "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and listen to "Make American Great Again" by Pussy Riot

The Infernal Machine

Jean Cocteau's The Infernal Machine premiered on April 10, 1934 directed by Louis Jouvet. It's a wonderful title since it hearkens to the ineluctability of the Oedipus myth. Oedipus, as you may call, famously brought about what he feared. Sometimes  you hear about self-fulfilling prophecies, but that's not Oedipus. He doesn't say I'm going to meet daddy at the crossroads and hence undo us both. He doesn't know his interlocutor is Laius. It's a seemingly didactic point that accounts for the true tragedy at work ie the infernal nature of ignorance. Who cares? Spiro Agnew who must have been the bastard of Fred Trump once railed at effete intellectuals. His life was devoted to demonstrating that stupidity pays. The philosophical and spiritual state of being a dumbbell is the lingua Franca of history from the Greeks right down to Matt Gaetz.

read "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy The East Hampton Star 

and listen to "Land of a 1000" by Wilson Pickett

On the Nature of Things

When you're born you begin to die becoming Yeats' "tattered cloak, "sans everything" as Jaques says in As You Like It. Then there's the exchange between Nagg and Nell in Beckett's Fin de partie. "Do you believe in the life to come?" "Mine was always that." But what about the fly swatter or "Roach Brothel, " SNL's satire of Roach Motel. The fact is there's no God to punish or protect. A soothing and terrifying notion propounded by Lucretius in his 1700 line poem De rerum natura, On the Nature of Things. You might say that Democritus who introduced the atom to the Greeks was the country cousin or ancestor of the Roman, Lucretius. Time may be eternal but life is horrifyingly finite with the famous sign over Dante's Inferno warning "Lasciate ogni speranza all ch'entre." No mention of another Italianate expression, "the dog that barks doesn't bite." 

read "The Sale of My Parents' Apartment," Metropolitan Diary, The New York Times

read "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Astor Place

You read about relativity and space/time but when you're seeking limited objectives like running to catch the Third Avenue bus, you're remanded to a Newtonian universe where apples accelerate at 32 feet per second/per second. Btw here's a problem which neither Einstein, Newton or Schrödinger would likely be able to solve. You're on your way downtown and there are plenty of buses going to Astor Place, but whenever you're going uptown from Chinatown on a cold rainy night when you have to take a pee or worse, there isn't a bus in sight--something which defies even the simplest notion of physics ie, "what goes up must go down." Can it be said that cosmopolitanism is a science unto itself which has yet to follow any precepts other than say Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. People go to weddings and funerals, memorials from which they run to be in time for yoga or their afternoon tryst. No law is at work other than the fact that you will pay a $75 fine for parking in front of a hydrant. New york is one game that has an infinite number of connections. You're not going to solve Manhattan life with A.I.

listen to "Boogaloo Down Broadway" by Johnny C

and read "Francis Levy's Divine Comedy,"Exquisite Corpse

The Paris Review

If you'e an artist or writer has your partner ever told you they're tired of seeing depressing images or reading one more vignette about receiving rejection slips on rainy days? Sure Edvard Munch painted "The Scream," but people have already gotten his drift and either cottoned to it or not. About rejection what can one say? Unless they're self-employed most people have gotten pink slips and KOs --which is exactly how those "we regret to inform you" letters feel like. Remember how Al Goldstein did his "fuck yous" on Channel 35? Remember April 15 in high school, the day all the rejections came? It was biblical. There were the thin and fat letters and then the accusatory stares from disconsolate parents who had to tell their friends you were in your way to Podunk U--which didn't they know has a top rate home economics department and a division one mahjong team. Your response to being upbraided about another rejected book, story or poem, which, btw, is undoubtedly some thinly veiled and self-fulfilling tale of rejection is probably a defensive take it or leave it attitude. So take it or leave it. Oh yeah and va te faire foutre!

read "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Rejection

 Kudos to The New York Times Book Review for all the first novels reviewed in last Sunday's issue, but it's not only the willingness to hear new voices that's praiseworthy. Many of these books reviewed appear to be wonderfully negative and gratuitous. The Scaffolding by Lauren Elgin "traces the multiple infidelities of two Parisian couples a generation apart." Transition by Angela Lashbrook concerns "a woman..haunted by change while grappling with the death of a friend." However, the piece de resistance is Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte," about which the reviewer of the book, Dwight Garner, who is also a Times staff member remarks, "I read Rejection during a week when I felt down, and it almost snubbed me out, like a cigarette. If it were an Instagram friend, I would have unfollowed it." In one fell swoop Garner has redefined the meaning of what it means to write the kind of review that writers and publishers crave. "Rejection" is, indeed, a fertile theme that is too often passed over by editors who think the submission they are reading is a self-fulfilling prophecy, or roman a clef to be. As of today Rejection is #3796 on Amazon which is a pretty damned good!

read "Ultimate Rejection!"by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and listen to "Land of a Thousand Dances" by Wilson Pickett

Armageddon

photo: The Daily Beast

The eBible Fellowship predicted the world would end with the Final Judgement on October 7, 2015 Turns out they weren't far off, considering that Hamas unleashed their attack on Israel 8 years later. Donald Trump is The Anti-Christ whose technique is gaslighting. As he threatens election workers, he paints himself as the defender of democracy. One of the platforms of his ticket is retribution against all his enemies. The screams of the Grand Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada's victims are woven into historical memory. BTW this is truly the Dark Ages in case you haven't noticed, pandemic=plague, crusades=Mideast crisis. Remember Bergman's The Seventh Seal, where the Knight plays chess against Death? What tortures will Trump inflict on his opponents? Nancy Pelosi's husband had his head bashed in. Will Biden be hung by the same mob from which Mike Pence was barely spared? ISIS is the paradigm of millenarian revolt which has spread throughout the Middle East. Liberation through Armageddon. Let the world go up in flames so that Zionists and other infidels may die. Iran is a different kettle of fish (or sharks). It lobs missiles at Israel after Hezbollah, its terrorist proxy, is shuttered. So what is there to look forward to? Israel destroys Iran's oil fields which allows fuel prices to skyrocket in turn allowing Bibi Netanyahu to put his Trumpian Anti-Christ back in power. The new axis is Russia, China and North Korea who all go to war with NATO over Israeli and the Ukraine. This result is as close as you'll get to a Brueghel or Bosch imagination of the end of the world.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Armageddon (Not the Movie)

The Grand Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada

The eBible Fellowship predicted the world would end with the Final Judgement on October 7, 2015 Turns out they weren't far off, considering that Hamas unleashed their attack on Israel 8 years later. Donald Trump is The Anti-Christ whose technique is gaslighting. As he threatens election workers, he paints himself as the defender of democracy. One of the platforms of his ticket is retribution against all his enemies. The screams of the Grand Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada's victims are woven into historical memory. What tortures will Trump inflict on his opponents? Nancy Pelosi's husband had his head bashed in. Will Biden be hung by the same mob from which Mike Pence was barely spared? ISIS is the paradigm of millenarian revolt which has spread throughout the Middle East. Liberation through Armageddon. Let the world go up in flames so that Zionists and other infidels may die. Iran is a different kettle of fish (or sharks). It lobs missives at Israel after Hezbollah, its terrorist proxy, is shuttered. So what is there to look forward to? Israel destroys Iran's oil fields which allows fuel prices to skyrocket in turn allowing Bibi Netanyahu to put his Trumpian Anti-Christ back in power. The new axis is Russia, China and North Korea who all go to war with NATO over Israeli and the Ukraine. This result is pretty close to a Brueghel or Bosch imagination of the end of the world.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis is a nightmare superimposed on reality. New Rome, the bustling metropolis, is not the hedonic ancient world of Caligula nor the future but a deadly version of the present. It's a fable (the directors own word) Coppola style, a Gesamptkunstwerk in which a cinema legend pulls out all the punches for what is stated to be his last go round. Apocalypse Now would have been a good description of January 6 which is one of major obsessions of Megalopolis, which is is also a swan song for a generation of cinema legends from Lawrence Fishburne, to Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voigt. The movie is also a mess of operatic proportions. When you hear "to be or not to be," quoted by Adam Driver, the film's. visionary Ayn Rand style architect, you at first think it's a joke. Then you realize it's serious when "this is the stuff that dreams are made on" is tossed off. And what about the leaden dialogue itself? It's as if the screenplay had cotton in its mouth. No sign of the masterful transactions that characterized The Godfathers and almost every other film Coppola laid his hands on.  One can't help noting the allusion to Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). It's interesting though that this metropolis is not really visionary. Rather it's post-apocalyptic and ragged in a Mad Max kind of way. The sets look like they've been hit by a hurricane. One scene in the major's office desk is sinking into sand. This is more than an imperfect world.  Is the film's dreamlike quality the message (as in Taumnovella, the Schnizler work on which Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut   (1999) was based or a byproduct of Megalopolis' own flaws?

listen to "Marc Antony's Funeral Oration" by Lord Buckley

Depression

 

Pinocchio by Enrico Mazzanti

Over 333.3 million American are depressed. That’s more than the entire population or over one for every 333.3 million people. Depressions are also holes or dropping points in an otherwise flat surface, but that's a matter that has little to do with the mental health of the citizens of this country. Lot of people have addressed depression but if everyone suffers from it, then it's no longer an anomaly. Imagine a population of people who all suffered from psychosis and were delusional. Normalizing any state of mind confers a legitimacy on it. If we all think there are gremlins outside the window, then that becomes the reality. It's unbearably simplistic to carry this argument into the political sphere where lying has become the lingua franca and the Big Lie about the 2020 election is accepted by MAGA Republicans as a form of scientific truth--but here you go. 

listen to "Marc Antony's Funeral Oration" by Lord Buckley

and listen to "Rapper's Delight"by The Sugarhill Gang

#MeToo Redux

Akhmatova by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin

Not to equate Harvey Weinstein with Akhmatova. But the worst excesses of #MeTooism are tantamount to the Stalinist purges--only worse, since no one speaks up when an editor of The New York Review of Books is recused for allowing a Canadian journalist to defend himself against the accusations against him. Only a Screaming Pope can get away with saying these things since "they" have nothing to lose. Here is a quote from Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station. "Salomon Maimon, in the century before, had tried to reconcile rabbinical philosophy with Kant. Karl Marx, also a teacher in the Jewish tradition, but not quite free of the Judaic system and with all the thought of Western thought at his disposal, was to play an unprecedented role as a leader in the modern world." Remember Philip Roth's "Defender of the Faith?" Here is a lovely non-sequitur from Meyer Schapiro, "Hipsterism is Hasidism without God."

read "Making the Graphic Novel Graphic" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

and listen to "Boogaloo Down Broadway" by Johnny C

Cat Person

Was Trump inspired by the hit musical Cats when he accused the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio of eating Pets? Perhaps he's a lover of the T.S. Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" or Kristen Roupenian's NewYorker short story, "Cat Person," which became a cri de coeur of the #MeToo movement. Trump notoriously talked about how famous guys like himself can do anything they want and grab women's genitals in between killing pedestrians with impunity on their way down Fifth Avenue. It's not much of a leap from adult cats to pussies. So it turns out that Trump and Vance both will be deported with all the Haitians due to what their onerous eating habits. Trump has said he will solve the whole Ukraine problem lickety split upon being reelected. He should eat crow.

read the starred review of Francis Levy's The Kafka Studies Department in Booklife

and listen to "Can You Feel It?" by The Jacksons

Yorick

A skeleton key opens many doors, but what about a skeleton crew? And what about the skeletons in your closet. If you're not cremated, you'll quickly become a skeleton, but if you get on a Keto diet or take Ozempic, you won't have to wait to hear people say you look like one. Indeed there are those who would rather drop dead or look like it then get fat. Model is a  interesting word in this regard since it refers to a condition one would look up to. You model your behavior on someone's. A model is like a clothes horse in which garments are hung. Hamlet stares at the remains of Yorick's skull in pointing to the ultimate condition of man--which is non-existence whether one is a skeleton or not--"death, the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns."

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and listen to "Boogaloo Down Broadway" by Johnny C