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 

Hic Sum

When a life passage is in the offing, you don’t need to dot the eyes (i’s). You merge into the exit with the actual event, even it is death, an after thought that almost gets lost, following the initial shock. The deceased is at first surrounded by mourners then dies alone as the funeral cortège turn their backs on the grave diggers with their shovels. Then a new stage begins for the survivors who are left with little more than  memories and a headstone which is more likely to be inscribed hic sum rather than quo vadis?

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

Astopovo Station

 

Astopovo Station in 2010

That train has left the station joins wheelhouse, sounds like a plan and same page as another shorthand for experiences that are pregnant with simplicity. Tolstoy ran away at the end of his life and died in the Astapovo Station. A wheelhouse is defined as a place of shelter for a person like a captain who is steering a ship. When you use this expression, the implication is that you're going somewhere where there a limited number of  possibilities in your ken. Sounds like a plan is clear enough but what does it really mean  to be on the same page in this era of devices where few people use paper anymore?

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