More Human 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.

February Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

CREATIVITY: What is it? Sometimes it’s presenting a new way of looking at things, a new angle, new viewpoints. Merging genres or mixing styles. Or contrasting, as with our new feature story– “Molasses” by Bud Sturguess— comedy and tragedy. A look at the Titan submersible disaster of 2023 and reactions to it. The story is really about: us. Humanity, with all our flaws, quirks, ambitions and foolhardiness which make us the unique– or uniquely foolish– creatures we are.

Creativity is the goal of this project. Which means offering entertainment to readers, but at the same time, varied vantage points on art, life, writing. Anyway, we hope you enjoy the story!

Whenever I heard of the Great Molasses Flood, I used to grin and think, “how do you not outrun molasses?” It must have looked like a scene from Ghostbusters II, the evil slime oozing down streets and tunnels. I mean, molasses is used as a metaphor for slowness; how could anybody fail to escape a “flood” of it? Or did big fat globs of syrup rain down from the sky and trap whoever they landed on, like a mosquito in an amber fossil?

XXX

ON OTHER FRONTS, we hope to soon revive our Open Mic blog, with new ideas planned for it. In the meantime, we’re offering a short, energetic piece of music there by Ben Macnair: “Fat Chaffinch.” A signal of the energy which will be coming to this site.

The Search for New Writers

Pop Lit Fiction

WE MAKE NO SECRET of the fact that as a literary project we look for writing talent. Talent not of the approved predictable “literary” variety– we’re not out to be the next The New Yorker or Paris Review. Instead, talent with an edge to it– and which shows hints of openings toward new viewpoints or new directions.

For our final feature of 2023 we present one such story, “Straight and Narrow” by Joshua Vigil. Click on, plunge in and see what you think.

She lived in a gated community with low hanging fronds that draped every door in fit boxes of shade. The bell clanged an unlovely sound. But she was graceful in how she opened it. Taking a step back. Scrutinizing me for a split second before deciding that yes, I would do. I felt my worth, and I strolled in with some misplaced confidence, leaving the perfect fronds and the perfect shade for the giddy unknown.

What Will New Fiction Look Like?

Pop Lit Fiction

FOR US, that’s the big question, as we’re a forward-looking literary project out to decipher how the literary art will change– how it must change to retain any place in this crazy noisy society. Or in any society. (One criterion we look for in new fiction is universality: Is it enough of a tale to appeal to anyone anyplace?)

We’ll take, in our mad quest, pieces of ideas from anytime in the past– if we believe they’ll work with readers today. For instance: the yarn. The kind of Mark Twain Bret Harte Jack London story told at night around a campfire, or under an urban streetlamp, or in a dorm room. Something maybe over-the-top, often imaginative, and definitely so compelling you couldn’t stop listening– or reading– if you tried. Three months ago, New Pop Lit’s two editors (we hope to add others) were sitting around a coffee shop discussing this very notion. We’d presented several terrific tales in the past, but we wanted more. Give us stories! we shouted (not really), but wanted to, whether propelled by the love of literature and art or from too much caffeine. Lo and behold, arriving into our Inbox that very day was a wild story– definitely a yarn– set in New York City, that maddest, wildest, most ambitious of all cities. The story: “Give the People Guns” by Bela Seitz. Please click on the title and read.

Bela Seitz anyway seems wildly talented. Perhaps one of a phalanx of new prodigies prepared to bring fresh imagination and excitement into today’s literary game? One never knows. Idealists that we are, we hope so. We also hope you enjoy the story.

Grey billowing clouds rushed across the sky, as though someone had a high-powered fan propelling them across the vast blue expanse so that the weather could match the demeanor of the collected reporters. They used to have passion in their eyes, but now their faces were taut, stretched with the gravity of the situation and an innate understanding that the news was no longer something to look at on your phone and laugh about – but was something to be taken seriously.

More Fall Fiction!

Pop Lit Fiction

WE’RE in a race to pick up our game to be the best literary project on the planet, to point a direction out of the doldrums for literature and restore it to its rightful place as leading force in the culture. NOT marginalized, not an afterthought, not a forum for niche thinking and satisfied-with-obscurity players, of whom today in the overground and underground there are far too many.

How do we find a path out? It begins with relatable, real, relevant writing. Like our new feature story: “And the Angels Sing” by Joe Del Castillo. A tale about a dying music fan and five young subway singers.

The question is: Does the literary art belong only in airless halls of shuffling professors in Ivy-covered universities who clutch selfishly to the treasured object and won’t let it out of their grasp for public enjoyment– OR in locked rooms inside thick-walled insane asylums where doomed individuals scream solipsistic obscenities under the guise of self-expressive “alternative” or “outsider”? (Way outside.)

The answer is: NO! We can do better as a culture and art form and we will do better if we reach readers with emotion and meaning.

As, for instance, Joe Del Castillo does in our brand-new feature. We hope you enjoy it.

Autumn Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

Hello! Welcome to autumn and more great fiction. We’ll be presenting fewer full features at this site, as we move many of our hit-and-run activities to our Fast Pop blog (see top of this page)– which is why we’re making sure the features we do present are choice. Emphasis on the reading experience.

As example, our new feature– “White Crane Spreads Its Wings” by Aspen Audley. A tale about a tai chi class– something with which many of us can relate. Is there a Mr. Know-It-All in the class? Of course! Read the story to see what happens.

It was only my third lesson, but I’d already fallen in love with this beautiful dance-like form of martial arts. Its slow, graceful movements soothed me, and I was intrigued at how every motion, no matter how elegant, had its roots in self-defense. It was all about harmony: for every right turn, there was a left; for every pull, there was a push. The steps and poses somehow felt intuitive to me, as though my body had been designed for them.

Summer Fiction 2023

Pop Lit Fiction

SCIENCE FICTION– OR REALISM?

Hello! With writers and actors strikes against giant movie conglomerates in Hollywood; with every scam artist on the planet joining the AI-hype techno-bubble big money bandwagon– and contentious politics on all sides (plus ongoing war in Ukraine), we thought we’d present a moment of summer escapism. NOT! Our feature story, “The Henry Plan” by screenwriter Matt O’Reilly (on break from his usual writing for some reason– it’s perplexing) is not exactly designed to lower any widespread fear and paranoia. But it might wake people up to the direction in which this technology-at-all-costs mindset is taking us.

He continued toward the far end of the hall, but well before he got there, he spotted something that made him stop short and stare, wide-eyed. Staining the floor ahead of him were years-old blood stains that trailed down the hall. Henry followed the blood stains with great eagerness. Where would the trail lead? It was as much excitement as he had felt on the station for as long as he could remember.

(Speaking of AI and writers, and ongoing happenings, we still have our “Save the Writer!” petition out there, our small contribution toward saving human creativity– one of numerous petitions and actions from a wide variety of artists and writers of all kinds across the world.)

Art and Life, Life and Art

Pop Lit Fiction

WHERE do the experiences of art and life meet? It’s a question the artist– any artist– at some point is required to ask. When an actor is playing a role, he becomes that role– that character– yet at the same time remains the original person living through the experience of playing the part, on stage or in front of a camera.

These are thoughts occasioned by our new feature story, “Something to Tell” by John Van Wagner, in which his character is overwhelmed by the museum art around him– yet is about to have an experience to match or surpass it. The well-written tale is the latest in a series of excellent short stories we’ve been privileged to offer over the past year.

We hope you enjoy the experience of reading this absorbing story.

His trembling fingers search photos, flipping through scores of pictures of paintings, so lifeless and flat, now, sterile stabs at vicarious experience.