Friends, Writing, Stories, and Humanity

MUCH discussion has taken place this week in the online literary world about distinguished(?) Granta magazine running a prize-winning short story later discovered to have been generated by AI. This raised the question of what kinds of stories literary publications, such as our own, should be running. How do we react to the ongoing AI onslaught?

WE BELIEVE the key to survival of the art is to keep it grounded in reality, with emphasis on our humanity. Our experiences, emotions, sensitivities, friendships and frailties. As portrayed in our excellent new feature short story, “A Fading” by Aspen Audley. A tale about two childhood friends, and the progress of that friendship over the years. We hope you enjoy it!

That was when our M-C folders were born. Megan came up with the idea. She said she wanted to “preserve” my letter, “make it a testament to true friendship”—“for our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, our great-great-grandchildren, and all future generations of best friends.” We found a couple of cardboard folders, mine bright orange, hers royal blue, and spent the afternoon decorating them. Megan invented a secret code, and in lieu of a blood oath, we cut sections of each other’s hair and taped them to the cover. I suggested we put our commitment to each other in writing. We got two sheets of notebook paper and, on each one, wrote the following:

This is to proclaim that forever and ever, Megan and Camila, also known as M-C, will be best friends and love each with all our hearts.

Pushing Back: 2026 to ?

Pop Lit Fiction

WILL LITERATURE RAISE ITS VOICE?

PUSHBACK against mad tech overdogs and an increasingly insane society has begun. Along the margins, so far. Among the people. At local city council meetings, citizens raising their voices against this planned technocratic atrocity or that one. From-the-ground-up happenings. The question for the populace, We the People, is how far to go. Open rebellion? Out of the question. Definitely not recommended with ICE and military budgets seeing big increases under this not-fascism regime.

Disconnection? Some may be trying it. A former member of the notorious Underground Literary Alliance (all mention of which is banned among the literary elite), who I’ll call here Paul S., has created an offline discussion group, using snail mail. A return to the defunct organization’s roots. Possible foundation for a revived literary alternative during an upcoming “Dead Internet” period–?

The idea of disconnecting from today’s technocratic dystopia is also addressed in our new feature short story, “Opting Out,” by Evan Brown. Fictional, yet timely and real. And after all, who knows what actions out there in the expanses of this vast country already are planned, or taking place? We hope you enjoy it!

Right-wing and left-wing podcasters warned the revolution would start in big cities like New York, San Francisco, or L.A. What the world learned from their daily hot takes and nightly news broadcasts was just how out of touch the opinion-makers really were.

Today’s Stressful World

Pop Lit Fiction

STRESS IS EVERYWHERE, and has been in this mad society at least since the pandemic. Move faster, take on more demands, growing to-do lists about cars kids pets schools jobs, keep up with everybody as our screens multiply and costs skyrocket, accompanied by brutalist redesigns and algorithmic advertisements, politicians becoming hysterical and neighbors catty while everywhere we turn is growing anxiety until we, everyone of us, wants to shout, “Enough!”

NO ONE has captured this aspect of the contemporary world better, in our opinion, than Elizabeth Ohga in our new feature short story, “Portrait of a Lady in Gold.” Or: life today. The writing is so spot-on perfect that instead of one excerpt here, as is our usual practice, we could give a dozen. Instead, click the link, read the story– plunge into the narrative– and discover it for yourself.

Penny used to have it under control. She was breaking the cycle. Then 2020 happened. Everyone acknowledged it was a bad time for working mothers, though Penny’s boss saying “we see you, moms, and how hard you’re working,” did not add hours of sleep to her nights or dollars to her bank account. It didn’t put food on the table or change Lulu’s diapers. And then the people in charge decided they were sick and tired of Covid – just completely over it – and deemed the pandemic over. Nothing to see here, folks, let’s get back to work and make the good old American dollar. Get vaccinated, or don’t. Wear a mask, or don’t. But we are not going to let a stupid virus upend our lives. Except for people like Penny, it already had.

The Hustle Is Not a Dance

Pop Lit Fiction

LIVING IN AMERICA TODAY

In this insane society there are two kinds of hustlers.

One kind are the multi-billionaire tech boys painting visual sci-fi pictures of futuristic craziness while scamming in every possible way to pump up their money bubble to further increase their enormous wealth.

The other is the traditional hustling-to-survive kind, still seen in parts of hectic cities like New York. Which is the kind portrayed in our slightly crazy new feature story, “Casanova Must Die,” by Dan Shapiro. A story which well captures the unique east coast city street vibe, and the fast-moving fast-talking characters who inhabit those towns. Especially fascinating is when one of the characters is a gorgeous woman.

Jump into the story. You’ll enjoy it.

The entire time not a single glimpse of the woman who stole his wallet, but plenty of women who reminded him of Madeline, something he hadn’t anticipated. Not so much facial resemblance, but the way they dressed. Cream-colored summer sun hats, with wide brims for extra protection. Long, flowy white short-sleeve sundresses that billowed in the breeze and swayed as they walked. Standard tote bags hanging off their shoulders.

Our Chaotic World

Pop Lit Fiction

NO DOUBT, as anyone who watches the news can attest, we live in a world and society in chaos. Given ups and downs, this has long been the case.

As example we present our new feature short story, “Contact” by Joe Del Castillo, who writes with humanity and heart. His latest story circles around the murder in 1980 of a public figure. As public– as famous– as one can get. Moreover, a figure known for his humanity, his often-flawed stumbles through this hectic world, as we all stumble through it.

The theme of Del Castillo’s story, so necessary in this age of robots and cruelties, is our common humanity. As the title implies, the need of all of us for human contact.

He gazed at the pictures and read the liner notes, knowing but not yet comprehending that a door had shut, a wall had risen, over his past.

WE’LL ALSO be posting in coming days many new thoughts and provocative writing at the other parts of this project, addressing various aspects of literature and the world. These spots include Fast Pop Lit, our NPL News blog, our Interactive page– which we need to make more interactive c/o quizzes and such– and we hope to soon revive our book review feature.

THE QUESTION for us, as perhaps for others, is: How to address the world without being corrupted by it? We’re still working on that one!

Topical Art

Pop Lit Fiction

IS THE TOPICAL POLITICAL?

(“Guernica” by Pablo Picasso.)

CAN a story, essay, or poem be political without being topical? Of the now, the moment, addressing today’s dark dilemmas and hectic happenings? Can an art form truly be meaningful or important if it never does? After all, literature is supposed to be “news that stays news,” but people forget the first part of the equation: becoming news to begin with.

Which serves as Introduction to our new feature, “Stormtroopers” by New Pop Lit Editor Karl Wenclas. Prodded by his co-editor to run it as a feature, rather than at one of our soon-to-be-jump-started blogs. A story submitted first to a two-week-response-time, relatively prominent literary journal for the heck of it. (Their loss.) A two-week delay! When being topical– “news”– a two-week delay might be crucial. But way better than dinosaur The New Yorker’s six month response time!

State of the moment and state of the art? That’s for you to judge.

From the first day, for Stewart it was go-go-go, like being pushed through a tunnel. Beginning with the Academy, which crammed four months of training into 47 days. A hiring blitz was on. 120 were in his class, which was one of more than a dozen classes at the facility. New agents ranged in age from 18 to 60. If you were an adult, willing, and breathing.

What’s Punk?

Poetry

A QUESTION that maybe needs to be asked in this time of turmoil, of madness and civilizational collapse– talented poet Chris Cipollini is asking the question in our terrific new feature, appropriately titled “True Punk.”

THIS IS in our estimation a time of crisis in our society. Can writers be blind to happenings on all sides around us? Traditionally, it was the job of poets to speak truths to the culture, the people, the rulers, the world. Observation and outrage turned into art. May we see more of it.

NOTE: This is our first feature of the year. We hope to be doing a few new things with our features in coming months, in conjunction with better utilizing our other pages and blogs, Among them, our Fast Pop Lit site, our Interactive page, and our NPL News blog. We’re lining up contributors and will be looking for more of them, undergirding our features with quirky, critical, short, entertaining, and newsy support posts. Stay in touch with all of them.

Our aim? To be the True Literary Alternative!

Into a New Year

Announcement

WE HAVE a lot of ideas to pursue in 2026, chiefly on the drawing board, but a few we hope to implement on our site. 2025 was challenging for us for a variety of reasons, but we survived, are still in the game. The present and future look to be challenging for everybody, but as they say, in crisis comes opportunity. In the literary game we see much crisis, many challenges, and a few opportunities.

Lined up as features for our site over the next two months are at least two terrific works from talented writers: one fiction, one poetry.

Our News of the Moment: the daughter of Tom Ray, a member of our Advisory Board, is making a movie based on a story of Tom’s we ran over a year ago, about AI insanity. Find out about it at our NPL News blog, here. See if you can support the project, or at least, help spread the word! Thanks.

Christmas 2025

Announcement

ON CHRISTMAS DAY 2025, we’re presenting words to one version of the popular Christmas song “I Heard the Bells”– recorded famously by Johnny Cash and many others– because they express the way many of us may be feeling. (The words were originally written by Henry Longfellow in 1864, at the time of the Civil War, a crisis worse than anything we’re experiencing.)

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play;
In music sweet the tones repeat,
“There’s peace on earth, good will to men.”
I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along th’ unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead nor doubt He sleeps
The wrong shall fail the right prevail
With peace on earth goodwill to men
Till ringin’ singin’ on its way
The world revolve from night to day
A voice a chime a chance so blind
Of peace on earth goodwill to men
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead nor doubt He sleeps
The wrong shall fail the right prevail
With peace on earth goodwill to men.

Merry Christmas from Karl and Kathleen

What Is Pop Fiction?

Pop Fiction

WHY do we have “Pop Lit” in our name? What’s that about? Isn’t anything pop scorned right now? (In truth, isn’t it because most well-hyped pop music at the moment is corporate-produced generically-imagined garbage?)

The great thing about the word “pop” is it has several meanings depending upon context. Popular. Populist (with a political edge). Pop Art in the Andy Warhol sense.

At its most basic, pop means fun. A word which seems to have been chased out of today’s literary scene in our time of snobby profs and conformist critics to whom writing is synonymous with “work”– meaning, a serious drudge, images of stony-faced monks or mandarins behind thick walls forcing themselves through “difficult” writing– the most dull and inaccessible examples possible. (Think Virginia Woolf staring monotonously at lighthouses.)

“Let’s be serious, people. Art isn’t supposed to be fun!!!”

ANYWAY, today we have a short sci-fi tale about creatures from outer space: “Quest of the Globules” by John Haymaker. A colorful story which is fun, and maybe a quick commentary on our crazy society besides. By the end of it, you might be saying, “We want the Globules!” We hope you enjoy reading it.

A vibrant sound had reached Globiliad, a planet 10 billion trillion light years from Earth and inhabited by a highly evolved alien species known as Globules. Their commander, General Nimble, organized a quest to locate the sounds’ source. His assembled forces, a brigade of multicolored Globules the exact size of tennis balls, streaked across space fleet as a comet’s tail. . .