Premise four: Because the depressed person finds no possibility for life within the cloistered limits of the normal, she becomes radically open to other possibilities. She opens herself to the random. In this way, the depressed person becomes the portal of the beautiful. She becomes the creator of counter-worlds, other places where she might be able to live without being this miserable thing that she ineluctably is. Through her, a sort of happy-making playfulness comes to rule. She learns how to laugh. When she laughs, she really laughs. She is an incredibly great laugher. This is of some considerable consolation to her and her depressed friends.… Continue Reading
A Reading List for “The Mind”
If you read enough about materialism, you start to wonder if you accidentally picked up an intelligent design book. The language is weirdly similar: we are all machines, we have no free will. It’s just that in materialism, there is a scientific explanation for why this is so, rather than a religious one. The materialist… Continue Reading
Excerpt from “Compliant,” by Daphne Gottlieb
She does not miss the swampy smell of One Eye, or the ragged rasp of John’s breath from the closet. She does not miss the click of 72’s footsteps, pacing the street outside her home. Did you hear that? she would ask. Her family never heard anything.… Continue Reading
Announcing Issue Eight: The Mind
Your brain is like a computer. How many times do we read this obnoxious statement in contemporary science and philosophy? Your brain is a computer, your body is a machine. You are just some parts, cobbled together, functioning until you do not. Here is why you love: it is hormones and endorphins and a drive… Continue Reading
Misha Semenov on Theories of Literary Translation
Born in San Francisco to Russian parents, Misha Semenov is currently studying Translation and Urban Design at Princeton University. Misha wants English-language readers to truly experience Russian poetry, its waves of sound, its rhythms, its cadences, and its rhymes, and thus believes in the importance of keeping the meter and rhyme in his translations as… Continue Reading
Hysterical Speech with Mats Kempe
Mats Kempe, a Swedish writer little known in the States unfortunately, contributed two pieces to our Hysteria issue. (You can read an excerpt from “Concepts” here.) Here he discusses writing and other hysterical states with his translator, BJ Epstein.… Continue Reading
Lia Mills Speaks About our Chapbook Series
At the launch for Mia Gallagher’s Spoils chapbook “Quasimodo,” the writer Lia Mills gave this rousing introduction, in support of the written word, the short story, the physical object. And if you are so inspired after reading Mills’s piece, you can then buy copies of our chapbook in our store.… Continue Reading
Read an excerpt from Mats Kempe’s “Concepts”
The Swedish writer Mats Kempe has two pieces running in the Hysteria issue of Spolia, both translated by B.J. Epstein. Below is an excerpt from the abstract yet emotionally complex “Concepts”:… Continue Reading
The Hysteria of Multiple Personality Disorder
Your therapist is probably giving you multiple personality disorder. Oh sure, he’s going to deny it. He will say you obviously had some problems to begin with, and that he just uncovered the form they’re taking and their source. And there you will be, disassociated into several different personalities. People you don’t know will greet… Continue Reading
Introducing Our Sixth Issue, Hysteria
Now available for download: Hysteria. With contributions by Rebecca Brown, Ana María Shua, Andrei Codrescu, Sjón, Suzanne Scanlon, and more. In 1518, in Strasbourg, a woman began to dance in the street. She danced for days without stop. Soon, other people joined her in the dancing, and found that they too either could not stop or had no… Continue Reading
