Revenge

Christopher Marlowe died a violent death and there is a whole genre of Elizabethan revenge tragedy epitomized by lesser playwrights like Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy (1582). Theatergoers are more likely to see themselves in these plays than Hamlet. A contemporary example might be titled Road Rage, another Fighting My Wy WAY OUT which deals with the kind of person who perpetually finds themselves stuck in a paper bag. This last is particularly disconcerting, literally the country cousin to Psycho (1960). Here's the plot: The protagonist wants to get back at a friend for their cosmic indifference--by not showing up at an event where the nemesis is honored. No one, least of all the person at whom the gun is pointed cares. In the end the avenger is left holding that same bag they were trying to punch their way out of.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Are Men From Mars?

Genitals are a touchy subject. One talks of phallic men. These type-A personalities are similar to the elite teams portrayed on Strike Force. Uterine women? In this age of gender-free pronouns, how is it possible to detect the effect of secondary sex characteristics on personality or even consciousness?Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus is the title of a onetime bestseller which probably would meet with pushback today. It gets more complicated. People who come out can be like exchange students who return from their year abroad speaking another tongue. One wonders where the stereotypes of femininity or masculinity actually live. You’ve undoubtedly met up with francophiles who are laughable parodies. Is being manly necessarily a characteristic of one born with XY chromosomes? Are women sashaying because of high heels or morphology? In terms of role-playing, the Hermaphrodite raises questions which may be unanswerable but perhaps tantamount to Valentine Michael Smith, the earthling who returns from Mars in Stranger in a Strange Land, not knowing his ass from his elbow.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Todtnauberg

Heidegger's hut

There are lots of jokes about the benefit of being alive. The alternative is not being alive. So it’s a  no brainer. These comedians may not be familiar with the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan which is btw the soundtrack for Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia (2011). The Danish director is obviously trying to make a point when he plays it ad nauseum. Liebestod is literally "life in death," a term which is almost, but not quite, synonymous with another German word Leidenschaft or "passion." Juliet is a perfect example of this since she is dead and alive a little like Schrodinger's cat who is both here and not. Heidegger remarked that only in the awareness of death can humans live an authentic existence. Paul Celan the famed poet of the Holocaust once attempted to visit Heidegger in his Black Forest, Todtnauberg retreat one would guess to ask how a great philosopher could support Hitler? He might have also asked Hannah Arendt how she how she as the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism could have slept with her proto- fascist professor? That’s another thing about the world of the living. It’s full of things which are hard to understand.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Hard Knocks

photo: Meanwell Packaging

“Knock, knock.”

“Knock, knock.”

“Knock fucking knock already,”

“If you don’t say ‘who’s there?’ I’m going to knock this fucking door down."

What are you supposed to do? You keep knocking on the same door with no one ever giving you any more than the same yawn of cosmic indifference. 

Thank you for asking but the answer is "no!"

The pounding gets louder. There's the sound of splintering, as a fist finally penetrates the wood.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

   

The Anschluss

During the Anschluss the Nazis annexed Austria, then followed the occupation of the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. Trump started by attempting to march into Greenland. When that failed, he kidnapped Maduro the leader of Venezuela and placed him in The Metropolitan House of Detention, where he is still resides. It was lights out for Cuba which deprived of oil would be the next domino, but not before the mullahs were assassinated. If you redraw the map of the United States it will now include Venezuela and Cuba which is not strange when you consider Puerto Rico and Hawaii. Iran is a bit of an outlier. The closest state to it, in size, would be Alaska (a bit larger with 665,000 square miles to Iran's 636,000) though Iran has a bigger population with 93 million versus Alaska's 748,000.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Inscriptions

As the world shatters into oblivion, old inscriptions have a new urgency and profundity. Here is one found in a second hand copy Library of America Nabokov Novel and Memoirs 1941-1951,purchased on Amazon (which includes the unspeakably beautiful Speak, Memory):

"When as if he believed in God, V.N. said, 'I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.' Thanks for being a good student and friend. All the best (signature not parsable)." 

Guess, the student/friend needed to deaccession a book.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Political Violence

Can you be against political violence and still wish that certain politicians were dead? Or the very un Christian question of people in general? If you turn the other cheek, is it likely to get slapped? In the old days people got tarred and feathered or put in stocks. In The Scarlet Letter Heather Prynne is forced to wear an A on her dress. Certain people won't die no matter how many times you kill them. The trope of the vengeful monster returning drives many horror films. There are people who believe their thoughts and wishes come true. They desperately try not to wish that a certain figure will burn in hell. Usually they don't have to worry.

read "Current Events" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star