When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot: A Miscellany of Stories & Commentary [Paperback]

by Nathan Tyree, Bookmunch

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. "Peggy (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. Sadly, it is one of the weaker stories in the book.

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 that has no idea who it is she is sleeping with each night. This girl has the improbable name 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).

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 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 is effective and the result of it is the collection of short stories and essays entitled, "When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot" published by The Drill Press.

The collection is broken into two parts, the first covering short stories; the second covers rants on various social topics that bug Mr. Levin.

I am torn on the first piece, the short collection. While each story, I believe, if read at various times in a span of a few weeks would stand out to be the best thing you read that day, as a collection they lose their effectiveness. Each piece rarely escapes a box which only include first person point of view, limited (if any) dialogue, limited action, always some sexual joke or reference if not the entire point of the story, mixture of intelligent humor and witty story telling. If I had read them here and there, I think these stories would have stood out to me more than they did reading them in one sitting. As they are quick reads and the entire short story section only reaches roughly fifty pages, one sitting is really all that was called for and so at the end, the stories blurred together. They lacked range, which in a collection, made it more evident.

The second section of the book covers social rants and observations. Now Robert Levin is a great writer. More importantly he is an intelligent writer. The combination is quite effective and his essays are interesting however they lack follow through or any information except for his final essay on Jazz. He points out things that bug him (much like a Seinfeld episode) but does not offer solutions to issues, not information supporting his point of view but simply note that perhaps the service industry is subpar, insurance companies are frauds and that the Middle East has problems. Not ground breaking material but interesting nonetheless. Again, the collection is weaker then the standalone article if you had read it in a magazine or newspaper.

On a whole it is a quick read and if you are in need of some reading material for little windows of time, I would suggest picking up a copy of "When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot" and reading it here and there to get the most out of it. Each piece is enjoyable and you will find it hard not to laugh at many of the stories (especially "Spinning the Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception")!

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.

Although the book comes across as something which has been just slapped together, it is funny, and that's its saving grace.

Armchair Interviews says: Fun and funny read.

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.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  4.7 out of 5 stars