Bennett Lovett-Graff, New Haven Review



So who the hell is Robert Levin? Well, there’s always the Wikipedia article, where you can learn that he’s a jazz critic, a short story writer, and a writer of music liner notes. He seems to have had his heyday here and there—a critical article in the Village Voice about the 1963 March on Washington that drew a year’s worth of responses; a 2004 recipient of “storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Story.”

That story is the title of a collection of Levin’s writings, When Pacino’s Hot, I’m Hot: A Miscellany of Stories & Commentary. Dare I confess that I read this slim 90-page volume over the course of seven dog walks? (Yes, I can walk and read at the same time; I can also chew gum and type.) Let me add that it was one of my more pleasurable dogwalking experiences, which is otherwise a dreadful bore. The reason is simple: Levin is funny. Leaving aside the eponymous lead short story, itself a ribald tale of mistaken identity and the sexual pleasures that can derive therefrom, the miscellany and commentary are laugh-out-loud grotesques, some weirdly Dickensian in their exaggeration of the mundane, others Jamesian in their syntactically elaborate transformations of the bizarre into the clinical or poetic. Only examples will do. In his screed “Recycle This!” on a recycling notice asking residents “to sort and…rinse [their] garbage before leaving it out,” he writes: “So while I’ll allow that self-immolation would constitute a disproportionate form of protest, I have to say that reacting with less than indignation to so gratuitous an imposition would also be inappropriate.” That’s a fairly ornate response to a recycling notice. Like I said, pure Dickens.

Or consider “Peggie (or Sex with a Very Large Woman),” a story so wonderfully offensive that it would be impossible not to relish the absurd attempt to poeticize the physical challenges set before Levin’s narrator: “…Peggie’s particular body could have served as a Special Forces training ground for the field of hazards and challenges its presented. I’m speaking of the twisting climbs and sudden valleys, the crags, the craters and the amazing plenitude of gullies, ravines and bogs that I was, and on my hands and knees, obliged to negotiate and traverse in my search.” And don’t even ask what he was searching for. You can probably guess.

In some ways, Levin is at his best wringing every drop of qualification from a feeling or thought, an instance of rage or fear, often in one long but densely packed sentence. The bathos of the stories and of some of the miscellany—there are cantankerous whines about cashiers and their stupidity, smoking bans, HMOs, aging, the aforementioned recycling notices—is actually what makes it all worth the reading. Levin, in essence, gets more out of the mundane through an overwrought prose style that is utterly apropos to the sensibility behind it.

But there’s no substitute for the man himself, so let’s conclude with his thoughts on when one of God’s “natural wonders”—in this case a solar eclipse—fails to deliver the goods: “I’ll allow that, however disappointing it may be, it’s ultimately of small consequence when He mounts a shoddy eclipse. But it’s something else again when, for one especially egregious example, He leaves you to blow out all your circuits trying to figure just where a mindless inferno of neuroticism like Mia Farrow fits into the notion that everyone’s here for a reason.” Consider my own circuits blown.

by Nathan Tyree, Bookmunch

Terrific new collection blazes a trail on to the Bookmunch "must-read" list...

I had not heard of Robert Levin before When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot arrived in the mail. I'm not really sure how I had missed him. Much of his work has appeared in publications that I sometimes read, and yet he had slipped completely beneath my radar. That fact is something of a shame.

When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot is a slim volume, split about in half. The first forty or so pages are devoted to Levin's short stories, the second forty or so made up of his commentary. It is the first half of the book that interested me most.

Levin writes rude, bawdy, strange, idiosyncratic tales. His characters are obsessed with sex and with themselves. They tend to be losers and bores (but are never boring). Levin crafts stories often in the first person, with a raw wit and free Id. There is a discomfort (with life, existence, sexuality, the body) that bleeds out of his characters. These are not the strong, sleek, beautiful protagonists that hang about so much of today's fiction. These characters owe something to Bukowski and Burroughs.

All of the tales that make up this book deserve some level of mention, but a few truly stand out. "Dog Days" is disturbing. "Peggie (or Sex with a Very Large Woman)" is hilarious. I found myself putting the book aside while reading that story, to compose myself and let the laughter trail off so that I could finish reading it. "Spinning the Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception" has one of the best titles I have seen in years…

The title story is most deserving of discussion. "When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot" is a fascinating and nasty tale. It follows an unattractive man. He describes himself thus: "Just under average height, more skinny than slim, and with long, usually unkempt hair hanging over my ears and forehead and down the scruff of my neck, I also have heavily lidded eyes, sunken cheeks and a pallor that's cadaverous."

Reading that self description, one may be surprised that our narrator "Gets his pipes cleaned" all the time by a variety of women.

His secret is that a certain type of woman will mistake him for Al Pacino, or Dustin Hoffman, or Bob Dylan, or some other celebrity that doesn't meet the standard of beauty in the modern world. We are presented with a holy litany of the times he's been laid due to mistaken identity.

Eventually he falls into a relationship of sorts. He begins living with a girl who has no idea who it is she is sleeping with each night. This girl has the improbable name of Roger (her father had wanted a boy). She is one of the strangest characters I have ever read about. Something in her reminds one of Anthony Burgess' Enderby. She is flatulent and sort of disgusting in her habits. This girl is a fountain of malapropism, mixed (or twisted) metaphor and strange construction. When excited she is "excruciated". She wonders why strangers don't "notarize" her boyfriend (who she initially believes to be Dustin Hoffman) on the street.

The two of them make a strange pair in extremis. It is, in its own way, a sad tale. We know from the start that it can't end well, and of course it doesn't. Along the way we are given some of the best characters to appear in a long time.

Any Cop? I'm tempted to call Levin a sick comedian, but how then to account for the pathos and the genuine sadness that permeates these stories? How to account for the fact that I am about to set aside several other books so that I can read this one again?

by Ócháni Lele, Majestic/Lit.org

...“All right,” Robert Levin writes, “maybe my book fell a hair or two short of greatness, and for sure, it hadn’t sold very well – even my parents, went my standard joke, waited until it was remaindered to buy their copy. Still, my book had made it onto a library shelf. A library shelf!”

That was the first passage I read in Robert Levin’s collection of stories and essays as I sat there, sipping a diet coke and flipping mindlessly through the pages of this slim volume. The story was titled, “The Author,” and being an author myself, I’d found a point where I could begin connecting with his work. I was hooked. Cautiously, I let myself giggle a little, but soon I was so engrossed in the humor and political incorrectness of the book that I blew soda out of my nose. Seriously!

In the space of 91 pages, Levin examines, dissects, desiccates, and illuminates everything from love, sex, smoking, conception, mistaken identity, art, writing, and politics; and he does it through a bevy of characters conjured from his own life-experience. More important, he does it all with a wry sense of humor and an eloquence of language that can only be described as masterful.

To be honest, Levin hasn’t written a "book" in the classical sense of the word; he’s written a feverishly funny exploration of his own life and social/political views, tying it all together with the title of his opening story, “When Pacino’s Hot, I’m Hot.”

In truth, Pacino has gotten cold in his old age, and I doubt he’ll ever be at the top of his game again, but Levin is hot with his writing. Spend ten bucks on this amazingly humorous read. It will provide you with an enjoyable evening of laughter and wit.

by Rachel Kendall, Sein und Werden

"Stupidity is among the most effective means available to reduce existential terror to a tolerable disquietude."

Robert Levin's collection of short stories and commentary had me laughing out loud with its societal quips and lashes. I had published a story of Levin's previously in Sein und Werden. "Dog Days" is about a man who is caught in flagrante delicto with his girlfriend's dog. So I kind of knew what to expect with these stories. Yes it's bawdy. It might be toilet humour. But it's very intelligent and it spares no one. It takes the piss out of society.

"'Sylvia,' Helen said, 'why are we talking about your ass now? You know your ass isn't the issue... I told you what it is; it's your ankles. They've started to make me cross. I can't help it.'"

Mostly it takes the piss out of its own protagonist.

"A subversive I may be, but I've never been of the militant variety. When the SDS was blowing up banks in the early '70s, I was expressing my displeasure with the establishment by intentionally omitting zip codes—that'll jam their gears!"

I enjoyed the stories. But I loved the essays. Levin has written for Rolling Stone. He's written for the Village Voice. He knows about music. He's co-written two books on jazz. He's also slightly bitter. A little bit twisted. Someone I can relate to. He talks about sex and death, ie, fear of the unknown, fear of dying without having really lived, fear of pain and terror. He has something to say on the subject of non-smokers: "Like you I'm dealing with an out-sized fear of dying," where the smoker seizes control of his ultimate cut-off point by taking the risk of cancer out of the hands of death and into his own nicotine-stained fingers,

people who recycle:

"These people are coming from the secret hope that if they suck up to nature by not wasting any of it—and get the rest of us to follow suit—nature will return the favor and arrange to perpetuate their existence in some other package once their current status expires."

and general stupidity...

"Let me hasten to say that I value stupidity as much as the next man. I do. Stupidity is, after all, one of the best solutions we've come up with to the problem of being mortal."

This is a brilliantly entertaining book, which will have you nodding in agreement whilst feeling slightly guilty for laughing so hard. To conclude this short review, I'll let the author himself say a few words:

"I wish I could make my cat laugh."

by Casey Quinn, Short Story Library

Robert Levin has three things going for him. One, he is extremely intelligent. Two, he has complete control of the English language and makes the most of it. Three, [he] has an unusual sense of humor. The combination of intelligent humor and witty storytelling is effective and the result of it is the collection of short stories and essays entitled, When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot.

by Armchair Interviews

This book is a little oddity--half what the writer call "stories" and half what he calls "commentary," something like essays and editorials.

Most of the stories relate hilarious encounters in sex, from his contention that when some male movie stars are considered "hot," he is mistaken for them and gets lucky, to things like "Peggie: (or Sex with a Very Large Woman;") and did we mention impotence and bestiality? (Yup, more sex.)

The commentary essays run the gamut from "Stupidity: Its Uses and Abuses," quite funny, to a serious and weighty piece on "Free Jazz" and the death of the Sixties. Levin writes in a nervous and chatty style, albeit a very funny one. But underneath his hip humor he has a very dark outlook on life: we're all going to die, anyway, and culture is our coping mechanism. (Check out "Everything's All Eight in the Middle East" and "Get Your Face out of My Cigarette!") My favorites were "Arena" and "Redefining Insurance Fraud," which are written the way a smart, savvy columnist would write them, to get his point across.

He is the author and coauthor of a couple of serious books: Music & Politics and Giants of Black Music, with numerous published pieces in magazines—from which some of these are drawn.

Armchair Interviews says: Fun and funny read.

by Midwest Book Review

5 out of 5 stars. About a dozen funny bone poking short stories and commentaries

From pondering about the universe itself to poop jokes—this is the range of humor that author Robert Levin brings in his short story collection, When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot: A Miscellany of Stories & Commentary. With about a dozen funny bone poking short stories and commentaries, Levin looks at the world from the way it should be looked at—with an eye that cannot take anything too seriously. When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot: A Miscellany of Stories & Commentary, is highly recommended for community library short story collections with a focus on humor and for short story enthusiasts in general.

by J. Kaval, Katha Kshetre (India)

…An American would love to read this book. A British may frown upon the content, an Indian may replace it on the shelf after having read a page or two…because the book does not entice his/her curiosity.

We appreciate the book for it’s author’s versatility and verbosity displayed in his rather humorous stories and essays. The language and the style of narrating are superb. The book is a holy handmaid for travelers both in air and on rail.

by Natalie Wood, Perfectly Write

...All of which brings me to the crazy world of American short story writer and essayist, Robert Levin, whose excruciatingly funny tales and waspish views—interlaced with often unbearably sad meanderings—are as rich, raw, dirty as anything published.

Levin, a jazz journalist, is shackled in a deep, dank, noisome internal cave and diaries his endless struggle for the top with a sort of non-stop yowling reminiscent of a lone wolf baying at the moon. When it is less than first class (some of the essays are imperfect), the stream of consciousness reads less as soliloquy than verbal self-abuse. But at its best, its silvery top notes and sombre cadences reminiscent of the 'free jazz' improvisations he holds so dear, this collection of short stories and commentaries—headlined by the laugh-out-loud "When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot," whose anti-hero is a cross between Woody Allen and Stanley Unwin—is music.