From the Editor…

The eleventh issue of Socrates on the Beach is the largest one yet. Twelve sterling pieces. First off there is a special section with Steven Moore’s wonderful essay on Cynthia Buchanan’s cult novel Maiden, from 1972—a favorite of William Gaddis. And then there is an excerpt from that work’s beginning, concerning Fortune Dundy, a waif who has been a virgin too long—told in an indelible wry narrative voice. The other four works of fiction include an excerpt from Patrick Autréaux’s astonishing Pussyboy, carefully translated by Tobias Ryan, of which Edmund White said, “…at last a sex memoir that explores religion, the history of painting, history itself! — and that finds in sex the connective tissue of all our experience.” This is followed by the stories of David Kuhnlein—small, absurd, funny, and dusky portraits of American ontology. Michelle Latiolais’s brilliant “Opaline” also examines the disconnect in the country, this time through a teacher and her travails in the classroom and in her mind. Finally, there is Mikra Namani’s “Lifeless, No. 29,” a searing portrait of the late 19th-century centered on Van Gogh and the people who knew him—it’s also an examination of feelings and perspectives, taking up those distant voices of silence. 

The essay side of the issue is fully packed, with five startling works on a variety of artists, including Mandelstam, Pound, Rothko, Proust, and Aesop. Richard Fegelman pours words into a spiky, though lyrical serving of prose on Mandelstam’s storied life, while Eric Racher wisely elucidates the role of music in the poetry of Pound, Milton, and others. Katherine Everitt wonderfully burrows into Rothko in a fragmented manner with a distant though grand gnomic Wallace Stevens-like voice. Brian Patrick Eha’s epic piece on Proust takes the reader into the mysteries of being and other people, through Swann and other literary figures. Then Nick Norton takes us into everything Aesop and fable in his riveting, perceptive “Certain Drolls After Certainty.” Finally, Adam Kosan’s glittering, meditative “A Small Part of Recent Time” presents a voice in the wild trying to make sense of our time and the Beings hovering above.

Certain spellings from across the ocean have been maintained.

Thank you for your attention,

Greg Gerke