From the Editor…

The ninth issue of Socrates on the Beach is an eclectic mix of styles, languages, and concerns, mostly hovering around the dark side of life. Devyn Defoe’s “We Are All Alone Here and We Are Dead” sets a tone with a mordant work of off-kilter lyricism in the face of desolation. This matches well with Hugh Sheehy’s “Above and Below,” a powerful story that pictures the irreality of social media on the back of the starkness surrounding us all. Jacqueline Feldman’s exquisite “The New Naturists” also touches on the night-side of things while a relationship peaks and flounders in a magical setting. Rounding out this key is Tor Ulven’s surreal “Gold, Winter” (translated from the Norwegian by Jordan Barger), an uncanny description of a place that leads to ghostly people, things, and feelings—a recipe only to be conjured in a work of fiction.

On the essay front, two indelible works examine the depths (and the heights). Christina Tudor-Sideri’s “Our Daily Drowning (Fragments on Elias Canetti, Krzysztof Zanussi, and the Question of Meaning)” is a glittering, ambidextrous piece of personal criticism weaving Canetti, Zanussi, and the meanings that make them and make us. Patrick Autréaux’s bewitching “A School of Life” (translated from the French by Tobias Ryan) tells of the author’s beginnings as a writer, while sunk in the profession of doctor, before his own bout of illness settles over the whole picture, creating certain paradoxes.

The final two pieces are sui generis. Jack Houghteling’s excerpt from the novel Sunnyside proves to be unlike almost any other contemporary fiction; Houghteling is equipped with a stunning verbal toolbelt to tackle Americana’s be-all and end-all—American football. Steven Moore’s vibrant “Wild Talents: Pynchon, Gaddis, and Charles Fort” traces the connection from the two vaunted authors to Charles Fort, a writer who specialized in anomalous phenomena.

Certain spellings from across the ocean have been retained.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you will enjoys these works.

Greg Gerke