Taxinatra

 

Emanuele Della Seta (il Duca 40)

Imagine finding yourself in a taxi in Rome with a driver singing "NewYork, New York". Finally you've arrived in Fellini's Roma where everyone knows everybody. Taxinatra (his real name is Emanuele Della Seta and his Duca 40 cab is legendary) is your Virgil this time and every time you stop for a red light, the window goes down. What seems like an ongoing, almost eternal conversation, picks up where it left off. As you approach Termini to catch your train, Taxinatra who turns out to have his own You Tube channel asks if you have cash. "Yes" you reply. "Cash is king." It's a statement one doesn't need English to understand.

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

The Picture of Dorian Gray

At a certain stage you of life a child realizes the birthday cake is for them. The recognition of one’s own visage in the mirror is a similar developmental signpost. However with age these kinds of eye openers fade to the point where one may become surprised and even think “who is that?" as a reflection comes towards them in a store window lining a sidewalk. Unless you're articulately vain you probably stopped looking at yourself holistically. Sure you shave or apply makeup but these involve a facial compartmentalization that leaves little time for evaluation. Moreover what is one to say? “I’ve aged.” Following that the crushing truth is repressed in order that one may perpetuate the delusion of eternal life.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Making Out

photo: Francis Levy

There is a lot of talk about relationships but relatively little about the kind of love that occurs when you can’t get your hands off each other and think about someone all the time. Relationships are currency with one night stands as the now anachronistic penny, culminating in marriage as the Ben Franklin. Before the advent of the euro you had francs and marks and lire. How would these be translated into sensations such as second base or 69? The Breton Woods Conference of 1944 established the international monetary and financial order which is tantamount to what Cialis and Viagra accomplish despite the dulling effect most serotonin re-uptake inhibitors have on desire.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Rosemary's Baby

Once you’re dead, there be no one to talk to, though luckily you won’t know it. Much is made about all those you’ve left behind, but know what? What? “Knock, Knock” “Who’s there?” “Knock, Knock” “Goddammit, if you don’t answer, I’m going to knock this fucking door down.” So both the person who dies and those they leave behind are caught between a rock and a hard place, unless they are part of a cover and attend a satanic rite, as in Rosemarys Baby.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Too Far to Go

Do great artists create the drama that they write about? The most obvious example is Too Far Too Go, the Maples stories about the breakup of Updike's marriage. After reading the book, you ask why? Was Wild Strawberries a premonition of Bergman's life. Fanny and Alexander, the piece de resistance, as far as autobiography is concerned, is a whole other matter. Karl Ove Knaugard's Min Kamp, whose title is a famous act of provocation, presents another variation, in which artistic production and life are one and the same. 

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

Transactional Man

It's politically incorrect to talk about primitive mentality eg one that is not informed by scientism. Max Weber coined the term "charisma" in describing the unmediated relation of early Christian’s to God.The passion informing sects gives way to institutionalization and the corruption Luther would fight against as it manifested in pardons. Modern geopolitics has no monopoly on transaction. It’s the history of more than one “faith.” Perhaps early rather than primitive is the word that should be used for the kind of awe that’s untarnished by the scholastic impulse.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Propinquity

Propinquity means closeness, an increasingly rarefied condition in this era of ghosting. It seems everyone is either ghosting or being ghosted. “Devices” are to blame. In what seems like a far away world of fairies and gobblins you might get snubbed when you tried to talk to someone at a party. In Marxian terms, the rejection was reified. You had comparatively a lot to go on or to give out, as it were. "Devices" are part of the villainy inherent in Jacobean drama. Now extinction lies at everyone’s finger tips. No sooner have you deleted the offending sensibility than they have zapped you back. In fact you may find yourself getting rid of annoying mindsets before you ever have a chance to encounter them. Welcome to the world of virtual reality where you marry someone you’ve met on Tinder or even the cheating service Madison in anticipation of a physical encounter that may or may not occur in your lifetime. In the meanwhile daily life is a mixture of Night of the Living Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a troll or too from The Silence thrown in for good luck.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star