Paul Levinson
Bio
Novels The Silk Code, The Plot To Save Socrates, It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles; LPs Twice Upon A Rhyme & Welcome Up; nonfiction The Soft Edge & Digital McLuhan, translated into 15 languages. Prof, Fordham Univ.
Stories (742)
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Review of David Browne's "Talkin' Greenwich Village". Top Story - January 2025.
If ever there was a time-travel ticket to a past and a place that you knew so well you could still see the sun glinting through the tree leaves, hear the din of the eateries as you walked by, and, most important, still hear the music that actually defied any given time or place, it would be David Browne's book, Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital. That's because Browne has a way of writing, an eye for detail, a penchant for commentary, that draws you in to fill the background you in one way or another actually experienced, or, what Marshall McLuhan called "cool".
By Paul Levinson12 months ago in Beat
Review of 'Aporia'
Readers of my posts here on Vocal will know that my favorite genre -- as a viewer, reader, and author -- is time travel, and its close relative alternate history. You'll know this because I say it in just about every other post. But you would also know this because, at least by my lights, excellent and even good examples are not easy to find (and, I'll immodestly or modestly say, as an author, to write).
By Paul Levinsonabout a year ago in Futurism
Review of 'Dune: Prophecy' 1.3-1.4
Lots of dramas on TV give us flashbacks to the earlier lives of current characters, to give us a sense of who they are and their motives, but Dune: Prophecy is doing that better than most, and in episode 1.3 devotes most of an entire episode to the younger Valya and Tula sisters, at the time Reverend Mother Raquella, the first Reverend Mother and founder of the Bene Gesserit, was still alive and very much in charge.
By Paul Levinsonabout a year ago in Futurism
Review of "Beatles '64"
Just saw Martin Scorsese's Beatles '64, up today on Disney+. It's everything you would expect from a master like Scorsese and his masterful 1978 The Last Waltz, but much more, given what the Beatles were and are to so many millions of people on this planet. As I began saying in the 1970s, that impact will last for thousands of years, right up there with Socrates and Shakespeare, even though at one point in the documentary, a young Paul scoffs at The Beatles having anything to do with "culture," preferring instead to say that what The Beatles are about are "laughs". Here are some of the highlights of Beatles '64, made possible by some of the footage the late Albert and David Maysles brothers took of The Beatles first trip to America -- for their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, concert in Washington DC, and concert back in New York in Carnegie Hall -- that had special resonance with me. I present them in more or less chronological order in the movie:
By Paul Levinsonabout a year ago in Beat
Review of 'Disclaimer'
I just finished watching Disclaimer on Apple TV+, the series of just seven episodes adapted from Renée Knight's novel of the same name, which I haven't yet read. The short series has so many twists and turns, that I'm really going to try to give you a review with no spoilers, and try hard to confine myself to the powerful and deep generalities that animate the narrative.
By Paul Levinsonabout a year ago in Filthy
