Book Markers 10.13.11

Francis Levy’s “Seven Days”

    What price buttocks? Ask Kenny Cantor, he’s a money-minded Manhattan C.P.A. taking a sex tour of a profligate South American city in Francis Levy’s “Seven Days in Rio,” just out from Two Dollar Radio. Mr. Levy, who has a house in Wainscott, will read from the novel on Saturday at 3 p.m. at the East Hampton Library.

    There’s more than tight pants, waxed privates, and pre-op transsexuals to the tale, however — try a stint at a psychoanalytic conference on for size. As the protagonist himself says in the book’s epigraph, “I have come to regard almost everything that happens in life as a form of therapy.”

    Mr. Levy, the author of “Erotomania: A Romance,” has had his stories, humor, and essays published in The Village Voice, The Times, and The Star. He is co-director of the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination and writes a blog at TheScreamingPope.com.

Food for Your Head, Too

    You’re probably familiar with the experience of opening wide for a steaming burger barely contained by its bun, but what about pairing that with a simultaneous effort to wrap your mind around top-flight fiction? It’s all waiting for you at Rowdy Hall in East Hampton, where the Rowdy Readers Club convenes hourlong book chats on Thursdays at 12:15 p.m.

    Sad to say, a chance to chew over Denis Johnson and his new novella, “Train Dreams,” has passed, but fear not, today’s book is “The Buddha in the Attic” by Julie Otsuka, and next week brings Gunter Grass’s “The Box.” Readers can then wipe their mouths and head over to BookHampton for a 15-percent discount on the titles in the series, which runs through Nov. 10.

    Can’t do lunch? In Sag Harbor, Phao, the Thai joint, has started a reading group that meets on Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m., the twist being a focus on short stories of the past 50 years, with a different decade each week. “Goodbye and Good Luck” by Grace Paley, from the 1960s, is slated for next week, for example, and on Oct. 26 it’s Ann Beattie’s 1970s story “The Cinderella Waltz,” which appeared in The New Yorker. After that, the late great Raymond Carver, and onward till Dec. 14.