Christmas 2024: Rich and Poor

OUR CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

WHILE many of us enjoy Christmas with family and friends this year, let’s remember that others live in more difficult circumstances, and won’t have any kind of Christmas at all. Given the drastic increase in the cost of living the past few years– rents, food, electricity, gasoline, health care– many are having a hard time not ending up in the streets. Increasingly of course, many Americans– and those in other countries– are on the streets. Not to mention the ever-widening wealth gap, as plutocratic moguls become ever wealthier– potentially to increase even more in 2025, accompanied by a shredded safety net. Not to mention the unspeakable brutalities of our era’s wars, with tech guys at companies like Palantir and Anduril devising ever-more ways to kill and maim people. (Civilized? We call this time we live in civilized?)

AS REMINDER that many poor people are out there, even today, we present this Christmas a classic short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Heavenly Christmas Tree.”

What to make of Dostoevsky? An out-of-date relic from another time period? Or a timeless artistic genius?

Whichever, we invite you to read his story.

He thought that this was still his mother, but no, it was not she. Who it was calling him, he could not see, but someone bent over and embraced him in the darkness; and he stretched out his hands to him, and . . . and all at once– oh, what a bright light! Oh, what a Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas!

-Karl and Kathleen

Human Potential

Pop Lit Fiction

OUR SOCIETY is designed to place all of us into narrow categories based on this standardized two-dimensional test or that one, gauging our ability to fit into a technocratic economic system. But can they possibly measure all human abilities? IQ tests and others like it have their uses, but are only one way of quantifying human potential. There are many ways of perceiving and interacting with the world, some which go beyond the easily measured or comprehended.

These thoughts provoked by our brand-new feature short story, “The Meteorologist” by Olaf Kroneman— about an autistic young woman whose abilities run outside the norm. A story in line with our goal to present more work which emphasizes our humanity– in this dawning age of the artificial; of robots and AI. Also, this terrific story is simply a great way to end our year of new featured fiction and poetry. (Though we may have a quick classic surprise come Christmas Eve!)

“Mr. Andrew is going to die,” Sarah said. Her voice was loud and piercing, almost a scream.

She became mute and returned to her mysterious parallel world, but it seemed like she could still hear everything we said. As her long-time family physician, I had grown accustomed to her living in a private world. She would interact with me when she needed something basic or when I attempted to drag her into my world.

Too Much Technology?

Pop Lit Fiction

2024 or 1984?

DO PEOPLE EVER CONSIDER that George Orwell’s novel 1984 was set forty years ago, that we live in a dystopia but it’s more benign albeit subtle and insidious than Orwell’s vision, creeping incrementally but steadily into every minute aspect of our lives? We’re proverbial frogs in a pot of water only the water is 95% boiled and no one’s noticed. Thoughts provoked by our new feature story, “What Does It Cost to Be Civil?” by Tom Ray, about an ordinary couple in an ordinary community who just haven’t quite adapted, yet, to the changing conditions of the world we live in now. Anyone who was bombarded during the recent election campaign by texts and phone messages from hosts of strange numbers will definitely get it. Enjoy!

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am Albert. When you answer a call from me you become argumentative sometimes. Other times, when you’re on your laptop and have YouTube open, you play ’25 or 6 to 4’ by Chicago for me. That’s funny. Why that song, I wonder? And you know about spoofing, which you’ve explained to people who’ve called your number.”

He exhaled. “I thought you were a computer. If somebody answers, you transfer the call to a real person.”

“Oh, I am a computer, but I’m a person, too.”

Late Fall Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

November! The last days of autumn. A time of falling leaves and dropping temperatures– at least where we’re at. Moments of shortening daylight, cooling breezes, and wistfulness– accompanied by the sudden pulling out of closets sweaters, hats, scarves– and overcoats. Which brings us to our new feature short story, “An Overcoat” by Tony Covatta. About a lawsuit over a missing coat, with glimpses of restaurants, businesses, attorneys, and courts– also a case which must be wrapped up as quickly as possible.

Why is that? You’ll have to read the story to find out!

Here was a chance for astute Gino not only to repair relations with favored client and disgruntled “chief” but also to display his blossoming courtroom chops. Lawyers who try cases—litigators, in short—are a breed apart. They are the jet jockeys of the profession, just as surgeons of essential organs are in medicine. Success, even on a small case involving a missing overcoat, could advance Gino’s climb up the greasy poles of firm acceptance and professional renown.

Art Perspectives

Pop Lit Fiction

AT NEW POP LIT we’ve long believed in creative innovation. Artistic, human innovation. Among new techniques holding great potential in the literary sphere is what we call multidimensional fiction: offering multiple viewpoints in a single work. A change from the omnipresent solipsistic “I”– sometimes called autofiction– which dominates so much literary writing today. By presenting several perspectives, you create a more rounded work. More realistic, to the extent it simulates our three-dimensional universe.

Which Becky Tuch does well in our new feature short story, “Where the Rivers Meet.” Appropriately, the story’s chief setting is an art museum– places which offer a variety of perspectives.

OUR purpose as a literary site is to offer different perspectives and exhibit the best writing we can find– to be a kind of literary gallery which readers can walk through, and discover in various rooms fresh techniques, new ideas, and stimulating word canvases. Maybe also, works which capture a particular moment in time, as with Becky’s excellent story. Check it out!

Forget the fact that Erika had risen from sales associate to store manager after over a decade of assiduous work, that she had dropped Bess off with a steady rotation of friends in order to attend countless trade shows around the country, that she had stayed continually up to date on what was being done in stores all over the world—wooden wave-shaped chairs in Amsterdam’s Kunst Museum, a floor made of sand in Malta’s Military Nautical History Museum, puzzles, posters, magnets featuring the unsung women of Impressionism. Forget the personalities Erika put up with, the snotty or distracted curators, the petulant or neurotic artists, all to coordinate exhibits inside the store, all so shoppers would have an experience.

Fall Fiction 2024

Pop Lit Fiction

AN ALL-NEW SHORT STORY!

HOSPITALS are places all of us will have experience with at some point in our lives– whether in them as patients ourselves, or through visiting friends, relatives, and loved ones. They’re like throbbing mass organisms with endless bustling activity which to us appears incomprehensible. Who organizes this hectic madness? How do they get things done? Yet they get a lot done, amid tremendous drama.

Our new feature story, “The Memorial” by Brent King, presents some of the drama. Brent has been in the business, so to speak, and knows these places. He does a great job conveying that knowledge, and the emotion which goes with it. The question, though, is what you the reader think.

Check it out!

Tina and I were working together that day. She got the intubation equipment together while I started working on a central line and the nurses started CPR and then got the Lucas set up to compress Sophie’s chest. I knew it was Sophie lying on that gurney and briefly I thought of all the times we’d seen her in the department; tried to get her into rehab, but I pushed all of that down deep and focused on the steps of getting the line and on keeping my breathing steady.

Time and Art

Pop Lit Fiction

ANYONE interested in figuring out an art form’s place within a society, a culture, a civilization, begins thinking about such things as waves and cycles, growth, peaks, plateaus and declines, as if everything’s on a long-term rollercoaster-style chart. The universe pulses and breathes, as does every part of it. Far be it for our tiny human brains to understand the patterns or plan– but we try. A key part of this modest project is understanding where literature is— where it’s been and may possibly be going. Determine that, and we might just own the literary future. In the same way, maybe, Brian Epstein saw a raw working-class band performing in a smoky underground club in Liverpool, England, and realized that he witnessed the future of popular music.

One writer we’ve published, Zach Smith, writes imaginative stories centered around ideas of time, space, aging– and about the universe itself. His newest story, “Millennia After Millennia After Millennia,” which we’re running as our newest feature, delves speculatively into those questions as much as anything we’ve seen from him. We hope you find it entertaining and thought-provoking!

“One hundred years ago, we took off from the launchpad of Quark. Our planet was dying, and we set forth with all the raw materials we needed to build a new society on a planet in the Zygorch Star system. The starship was a wonder, the pinnacle of what our society could create. She was covered fore and aft with panels that drew power directly from the stars, sails that could ride the wind of the stars, and twenty-seven rockets to blast her off the planet. We called her the Eringostar.”

The old man took a sip of his whiskey, a drink he claimed to invent, the recipe a secret he shared with few, as the potion was quite powerful.

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!)

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.