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. . .

The Importance of History

Uncategorized

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
-William Faulkner

Meaning: Life consists of ongoing narrative threads, like musical motifs in a vast symphony.

ONE of our themes as a literary project is the relationship of American writing to American history. That nothing exists in a vacuum. That art is an expression of time and place, that it springs from the roots of a culture and represents the authentic voice of a people. Culture is not simply a dry artifact preserved in a jar and imposed by snobby profs in high-brow universities. It belongs to all of us.

As our new feature, we present a slice of American history ably written by J.B. Stevens: “The Marshal.” History come alive, in front of our eyes.

The War for Independence was a test of will, and he had passed. Unfortunately, there was a price, the foul dreams never relented. Musket balls passed nightly, and he woke in a sweat. He paid it no mind—his impacted British flesh, and the redcoats always missed, and the morning always came. 

Fall Fiction!

Uncategorized

What’s happening out in the world?

As opposed to, say, in stray literary areas of gentrified New York, where what’s happening among a self-absorbed media elite seems to be an article in Harper’s magazine about, er, self-absorption.

We say, enough! Time for writers to not be as insular as an AI chatbot, but to become interested in other people. To plunge into real-world human experience– the one edge we have over our new programmed, computer-generated competitors– then write about it. As Jeff Nazzaro does in our excellent new feature short story, “Of Music and Men.” All it does is capture our prime goal as a literary site: to present humanity and reality. Isn’t that what art has always been about?

Up here over the South LA freeways, it’s hazy and cool. I stop and let the dirty air wash over me, then I see a man come up the steps, stop at the top, turn, and take a seat one step down from the platform. My friend from the train? I can’t see his face, but no, I don’t think it’s him. And what difference would it make? I walk over to get a closer look. He wears dark pants and a gray hoodie, the hood pulled up and drawn tight. He’s hunched over on the top step, sobbing.  

New Literary Criticism

Opinion

Don’t kid yourself. We’re not living in a golden age of literary criticism, as a few scribbling souls clinging desperately to their crumbling status would have you believe. Criticism exists in a symbiotic relationship with the art form it addresses. You can’t have a golden age of criticism without a golden age of the art.

There was once a golden age of rock/pop criticism, centered on magazines like Creem, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone and featuring critics Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus and others. They were a big part of how rock/pop bands were promoted into the 1980’s and 90’s, through liner notes and kick-ass reviews in publications both underground and established, from writers excited by musicians and their work– and the music in that era was indeed exciting. With much emphasis on “The New,” and in response the art remained in a state of perpetual change.

TARGETING A NEW AUDIENCE

What should be the audience for books and literature? ANSWER: Those who can read, who often do read but aren’t reading fiction or poetry.

The role of the literary critic is to get people reading. To create and grow an audience. To create buzz, contention, disagreement and enthusiasm. To let the world know: “Hey, we’re out here! Check us out.” Then not bore or perplex those readers who do.

WHAT WE’RE AFTER

We’re not looking for rigorous criticism of the microscopic for-nerds-only variety, but short reviews: analysis that’s punchy and striking. Occasionally over-the-top. Maybe once in a while, way over-the-top. What’s the actual purpose of arts criticism? To provide jobs or dissertation subjects for professors in universities? NO!! It’s to explain/promote/draw attention to the underlying art. To make sure that especial art matters to the world-at-large.

As we discuss in a new post at our Fast Pop Lit site.

The literary art has been so marginalized in our culture that every aspect of it is, or should be, up for evaluation and change. Which is what the New Pop Lit project is about.

Living In the Actual World

Uncategorized

RECENTLY I read an article about famed film director Stanley Kubrick’s “cool precision.” Not long after, I read about the conflicts Kubrick had with actor Marlon Brando during the filming of the 1961 Western, “One-Eyed Jacks,” which resulted in Stanley Kubrick leaving and Brando taking over as director of the project. Which started me thinking about approaches to writing, and to art in general.

Kubrick, like Hitchcock, Spielberg, and other well-known movie auteurs, was a control freak who saw every shot beforehand, down to the actor’s lines and expression, in his head. Brando wanted a more spontaneous, instinctive approach. We have no idea how Stanley Kubrick’s version of the film would’ve turned out– but we do know that Brando pulled career-best performances from the cast, from Karl Malden, Pina Pellicer, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens and others, by not asking them to follow perfectly the script, but instead to bring something of themselves to their roles. My thought: That in this robotic age, perhaps in literature as well as in cinema, we need to emphasize the human aspect of life and art.

Which brings us to our new feature, “The Wrong Crowd” by Lyn Michele Stevens. Focus is on the humanity of the two characters, who appear to us as characters, in both senses of the word. Fully-rounded, flawed, real, with back stories which reveal how they came to this point in life. Distinctive, all-too-human personalities which pop out to us from the page. Maybe just a little out of control, not following perfectly an intended script. -KW

Sex aside, the rush of freedom was exhilarating. Everything was a dare. Allie landed a job as a receptionist. Pete played open mics all over town. High on weed and booze, they went to concerts on the pier, museums, the zoo. Anything for free. A year later her body turned on itself.  Bladder dysfunction, numbness in her legs. The vertigo was the worst, this wild pulsating city spinning out of control. Pete stayed on, blending protein shakes and snorting coke laced with speed but once she started using the chair because her balance was so unpredictable, the disease took over life.