Author: newpoplit

Late Summer Musings

Pop Lit Fiction

LATE SUMMER in much of the country, if not the world, is a time of sunny days combined with cooling evenings. A sign that time moves on, all good things come to an end. Evening becomes not just a time for fading melancholy sunsets, but also wistfulness– which may, on occasion, lead into nostalgia. Nostalgia for what was, and may someday be again.

It’s in that spirit of latent nostalgia that we present a glimpse at the 1950’s in the form of a short story by Nick Gallup, “Growing Up Is Hard to Do.” A story about high schools and homecomings, ballroom dancing and football teams, with a touch of innocence and romance.

BUT– along with nostalgia for a brief moment in time free from the many turmoils, hectic pace and strife which mark the world and everyday life now, can we have nostalgia, perhaps, for a lost art? Namely, for short stories which connect with everyday readers, as they once did. As Nick Gallup said in a tongue-in-cheek “WARNING” note accompanying the text of his story:

If you’re looking for pretentious Master of Fine Arts BS, please look elsewhere. I didn’t catch my mother having sex with my uncle, nor do I believe I can go blind from excessive masturbation. So, don’t look for any deep emotional meaning in this story. It is intended to be self-effacing and hopefully evoke a laugh or two. If you’re looking for a literary experience, I suggest you fork over $200 and subscribe to “The New Yorker” and be bored out of your freaking mind. 

At New Pop Lit we believe that terrific short stories, if not necessarily “literary,” are literature. We could point to any number of past ones– the Saturday Evening Post stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald for instance, which were written strictly as entertainment. A good example being the Basil and Josephine stories, which carry a wistfulness, a sense of feeling, of humor and life, which transform them into art. If anything can be called art.

Nick Gallup has written some terrific stories. We hope you enjoy another example, which we’re pleased to publish.

More Summer 2024 Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

SUMMER: A time to escape from the rat race world– as the character in our new story has done– and hopefully into the pages of books. Supplemented of course with online reading on literary sites such as this one!

TODAY’S FEATURE is flash fiction by Andrew Arasimowicz— “Vacation Home”— which captures a summer mood, albeit in a distinctly offbeat way. A new twist on things? Read it and see.

“Hello? Hello? Somebody in there?” The voice belonged to some strange man. More the reason not to budge. “I can see a light in the window. There’s nothing else around for miles. I know you’re in there.”

(ALSO watch for new poetry coming soon to our Fast Pop Lit site!)

Pop Lit Summer 2024

Announcement, Poetry

WE ARE HERE to celebrate life, the world, humanity– including the celebration of ART and the joys of prose and poetry. Despite wars and inhuman tragedies filling our phones, our screens, and our brains, the world is for the moment still here– it’s summer. July! Let’s enjoy it.

TOWARD THAT END we have several pop lit happenings to announce.

FIRST, our new feature, “Four Poems by John Zedolik,” which consists of– you guessed it– exactly four thought-provoking new poems by John Zedolik, one of the best practitioners of the poetic art around today.

SECOND, ongoing happenings and happiness at our pop-lit literary art gallery, Fast Pop Lit. The current week’s special-on-the-menu, “Ad for Contemporary Artist Wannabes,” is by hyper-talented actress-writer Zoé Mahfouz. Summer writing with flair and energy.

THIRD, we have coming up in less than a week at Fast Pop Lit an impromptu Hemingway Festival(!!) as tribute to one of our favorite authors and literary role models. (Without doubt the best of the highly-touted 20th Century modernists.)

Things are happening. Don’t miss any of it!

Fiction and Energy

Pop Lit Fiction

WE LOOK for several kinds of attributes on our path toward discovering and presenting the literary New. One of them is a certain level of energy– energy in sensitivity, ideas, or style. A piece of writing is like a song. It can be a calm but moving aria– or can rock the house with crashing guitars and a steady fast beat. In either case the work hits you from the moment you enter the venue and take your seat.

WE WANT the writing we offer to hit readers, so that whatever you think of it, yea or nay, it strikes you with a vibe. Some strong level of aesthetic experience. Which we believe our newest offering– in the form of a featured short story– does capably: “Climax of Horrors” by talented writer Benjamin Fidler. The story presents a vibe of chaos– but is it a vibe of the future or the vibe of today?

This was way before all those bodies were splattered across the highway, back when you could still get a decent banana, buffets were still all-you-could-eat and not all-that-we-have, back when the moon was a lot brighter, more like a lightbulb than a pinhead. This was after Freddie, but before Ricky with the round butt. Before Andre with the rough hands. Back when it seemed to me the world could use a fox or two less. Granted I had a predisposition to be afraid of foxes. I blame that salty stray Red Ridinghood. I mean, who goes around throwing compliments about another person’s teeth? You’re just asking to get bit. And before you go there, yes, I know, it was a wolf. But samesame really. Wolf. Fox. Both slinking around acting like they own the whole damn gut pile. 

More Human Fiction!

Pop Lit Fiction

SHORT STORIES written by human beings? What will they think of next!

We have a good one. Short, but full of humanity. A robot wouldn’t get it. But we think even hard-to-please Count Leo Tolstoy of What Is Art? fame would enjoy this one. Joe Del Castillo, who we’ve featured before, returns with a neat little tale, a piece of artistry, of humanity: “The Witnesses.”

NOW, horrify the soulless robots and their clueless backers by reading it. Thanks! You’ll do your small part in keeping humanity– and art– alive in this increasingly mad society.

“My grandmother says they’re feeble minded.”

“I think collecting the Sunday donations is all they are capable of.” 

“Be kind, the parish relies on them.” 

 He leaned over and kissed Moira’s cheek.

May Day Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

WHAT’S HAPPENING?

A LOT OF STORIES are happening in America right now, from coverage of overseas wars to college encampments as symbols of unrest and dissent. In our opinion the chief story in this country is the widening gulf between rich and poor in America. A wealth gap of a kind that’s never been seen, not even in the robber baron days of the late 19th century. Today’s ruthless $200 billion-and-counting robber barons, Musk, Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg and company make the previous kind look like unambitious storekeepers.

As our newest featured fiction we have a short story which gives us a look at what’s happening, “The Unhoused Gift” by Peter R. West, via characters on both sides of the equation. The story is set in Southern California.

I have a sister who lives in California. She keeps me informed on what’s happening, has said the state is a model for what will soon enough happen in the rest of the country. (I tell her there already are increasing numbers of homeless where we live.) Rising rents and cost-of-living; more unhoused people. “Your state’s going to turn into Brazil,” I say, about a country long known for its extreme wealth gap. “It already has,” my sister replies. Anyway, please read the new story and see what you think!

Like a bird of prey, Stanley Newman swooped down the curvy road that connected his Los Angeles hilltop mansion to the sprawling city below. The grin on his face grew bigger as he listened to a news report recounting how his client had walked away from the tabloid-covered trial. Stanley used every trick he’d developed over twenty-five years of legal scheming in the often-sensational Los Angeles criminal scene to help another big fish escape the hooks of justice. 

Fiction at Fast Pop

Pop Lit Fiction

ONE THING we’re trying to do at Fast Pop Lit— a key part of the New Pop Lit project– in addition to using it to be quicker at posting new material, is to inject more color into today’s moribund literary scene. The “POP” in our title means we’re not just a literary site, but have been heavily influenced by other art forms, including music and painting.

WHICH MEANS in part posting work which jumps out at the reader like a painting– such as this piece by Perry Genovesi, “Sketch Rex.” Take a look at it and see what you think!

They want to don their blue newsboy cap, visit the Boulevard to watch the young people sitting on the benches downtown, smoking by the statue of the giant granite head. A cold thought like wet paper towel presses itself against their face and snakes out their eyes.

What’s Authentic?

Poetry

PATHS TOWARD REVIVED LITERATURE

WE LIVE IN A WORLD where increasingly everything is fake. Fake images sounds food faces– chain restaurants with fake Taco Bell Olive Garden artificial cuisine, dupe the masses, sell them robot dates, pump the digital AI-generated fake voices shouting hype to keep the money flowing– fake crypto currency money backed by nothing but the promises of megabillionaire tech hustlers whose only purpose in life is to rob you blind.

WHERE do we find the real, the genuine, the authentic?

Well, maybe in art, for a few last waning days when we can glory in the work and words of actual human beings, before a mass of content generated from the Machine drowns everything.

WHEN reading our new feature, “Two Poems by James Lee,” I thought of a 1998 quote by music critic Dave Marsh, in a book of his essays which recently came out: “That kind of culture, existing in isolation from the Ted Koppel world, exists only at the extreme margins today. A hammer dulcimer picker here, a maker of Cornish pasties there, a quilter in a cabin off in some holler or a rancher singing old corridos in some Southwestern arroyo.”

YET if we’re to become grounded, we need to get back to our roots. Culturally, because only culture will save this mad society. Revived culture. I don’t know exactly where poet– or Odist, as he prefers to call himself– James Lee is from. Tennessee, I think. Perhaps from the kind of isolated place Dave Marsh speaks about, where’s he’s been more in touch with our linguistic roots. His poetry has that sound– the kind of word music which could’ve been heard in England by the Bard himself. No, we’re not going back to some archaic, outdated, or impossible past. But there’s no reason why we can’t draw on elements from the past– examples and techniques from a variety of people, places, sources, as culture traditionally has done (see the roots of rock), like drawing clear water from an underground stream.

THE GOAL: Revived writing. Fiction. Essays. Poetry.

We hope you like James Lee’s poetry!

I Think I’ve Found My Place
Within The Swamps Of Belamour
Liquored Honey From The Gods
Brought There By The Mods
Who Escaped The Plastic Pods
Rising High Above All Odds
We All Go Running In The Streets 
Being Chased By Suits And Neats

Art of the Memoir

Feature

AUTHENTICITY AND ART

In the insane new world of Artificial Intelligence and everything fake, we at New Pop Lit believe the proper response to tech insanity is to embrace the natural and real– including real-world experience, and writing based on real-world experience. As exemplified by our new feature,“The Big Time” by Bob Bozic, a chapter from Bob’s memoir, Still On My Feet. Few people have had as varied and tumultuous a life as Bob– including homelessness, hospital stays, world travels, bartending, and as the featured chapter describes, boxing. Tough, atmospheric reality. We know you’ll enjoy reading it.

By 6:45, Bev returned. After ensuring I had all my fight gear—boxing shoes, sweat socks, shorts, jockstrap, protective cup for the groin, and two mouthpieces (in case one got lost)—we made our way to the Garden. At the back entrance on Eighth Avenue, the bookies’ betting line on Chuvalo remained at 3-1, but the line on my fight had tightened slightly to 8-5. This led me to wonder if Bertie had placed a bet on me through a connection, possibly shortening the odds. I mentioned this to Bev while changing into my fight gear, to which he responded typically, furrowing his brow as he admonished, “This has got nothing to do with us.”

(Featured painting: “Dempsey and Firpo” by American “Ashcan” painter George Bellows.)

Canadian-Americans

Essay

NEW POP LIT’S EDITORS grew up in the Detroit area and have lived in and around the city– usually close to the Detroit River– much of our lives. Our current residence-headquarters is in Wyandotte, Michigan, which rests on the river, directly across from Canada. We were and are influenced by Canadian radio and television– we still listen regularly to CBC Radio– in the same way many Canadians are influenced by American culture. And of course, many of those who live and work in Detroit and throughout Michigan are from Canada.

Which is our way of introducing our new feature, creative non-fiction by essayist David Wayne Stewart, “New to Class”— which tells his own story as a kind of vagabond moving back and forth throughout Canada but never completely belonging, before ending up in the United States. California, specifically. A story of adjusting, trying to fit in, as all of us continually are adjusting and fitting in, finding roots, identities– or at least experiences– along the way.

Charlie and I stepped out of an underground parking garage and into the bright urban sunshine. After a five-hour drive from Montreal, we had arrived at the final stop on our father-son tour of Central Canada: the sprawling city of Toronto. As a steel door clanged behind us, I squinted up to read the street sign: Yonge Street. Locals call it “the longest street in the world”. Even now it was pulsing with neon lights, fancy cars, and loud music. 

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(ALSO: Check out our new Report at the NPL News blog about latest happenings on the AI front!)