Francis Levy's short stories, criticism, humor, and poetry have appeared in The New
York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Village Voice, The East Hampton Star,
The Quarterly, Penthouse, Architectural Digest, TV Guide,
The Journal of Irreproducible Results, and other magazines. One of his Voice humor
pieces was anthologized in The Big Book of New American Humor (HarperCollins).
He is presently the co-director of the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study
of Imagination
(philoctetes.org)
where he supervises roundtable discussions on topics as varied as “The Psychology of
the Modern Nation State” and “Traffic Congestion, Behavior Theory and Imagination”.
Reviews:
"The book's raw but thoughtful carnality comes off as at once serious, clever and crude
in sending up the absurdities of contemporary hookings-up. It's not a traditional
love story, but debut novelist Levy puts thought and genuine feeling behind all
the doings." -Publishers Weekly
Advance praise for Erotomania: A Romance:
"Erotomania, although one can trace bawdy influences - from Rabelais to Henry Miller
- all over the place, is unlike anything I've ever read. It offers a hermeneutics of
the erotic, by turns shameless, funny, romantic and poignant. Although ostensibly about
the search for a real-life woman who can live up to the narrator's vision of sexual bliss,
the novel is really about the way we long for intimate connection in and beyond bed.
Written in the form of a spiritual quest for a carnal idee fixe, this novel wears its
avid penis on its sleeve and is all the more surprisingly affecting because of it.
I applaud it." -Daphne Merkin
"This is absolutely the only novel of its kind ever written. It breaks new ground on every page.
An obsessive phantasmagoria of sex and longing, it manages to be wildly original,
clever and hilarious, a tour de force that defies expectation and interpretation.
Bukowski and Henry Miller are among its forebears, but Erotomania goes where even
Miller and Bukowski never dared to go." -David Evanier
"Erotomania is brutal, hilarious and horrific. It's as if all those fantastically filthy
Frenchmen (Bataille, Genet, et al) came to 21st Century America, ripped its panties with a
switchblade, and made it beg for more." -Maggie Estep
"Brilliantly and hilariously expressed here at last is the story of our gargantuan
amounts of consummation (sexual) unnoticed and hidden and camouflaged in the
supposedly humdrum acts of daily living." -Barney Rosset Synopsis: Erotomania is a comedic, absurdist portrait of a modern day romance.
Erotomania traces the development of James and Monica, from a couple that
is forced to move to a nuclear fall-out bunker so their explosive sex life doesn't
physically harm their neighbors, to James' one-night bout with alcoholism, to Monica's
sexually-fueled obsession with abstractionist expressionism, to marriage counseling,
to a new-found reliance on reality television and microwaveable meals.
Blog:
Visit the official, authorized blog for Erotomania: A Romance, maintained and
authored by Francis Levy.
Click here.
Here is a short excerpt:
"Every morning, Mr. Levy rolls out of bed, stands on his head for 30 seconds, does
20 push-ups, about 50 sit-ups and ends with a somersault down his hallway. He then
lifts weights in his living room, using dumbbells, barbells and a weight bench. He'll
do one set of seven repetitions of bicep curls and triceps extensions with 25 pound
dumbbells, and bench press 145 pounds. He follows that with more sit-ups and push-ups
on a bo stick (a martial arts weapon). He also has a pull-up bar at home and next
completes ten pull-ups, hanging leg raises and five more pull-ups. A short writing
break usually follows and he returns for another set of pull-ups..."
Review copies:
If you are affiliated with a media review outlet and would like to receive an advance galley
copy of Erotomania: A Romance, contact Brian Obenauf at brian [at] twodollarradio.com.
