Happy Hemingway Day!

Feature

Today is July 21, birthday of the person who remains America’s most famous writer (counter-arguments invited): Ernest Hemingway. The man was born in 1899– he was a millennial of a different kind. If alive today he’d be 117 years old. His words remain very alive, so we hope you’ll join us in celebration.

First, read the Answers to our big Hemingway Question. Respondents include a few literary critics and a score of outstanding writers.

Next, scroll down the New Pop Lit home page and see what else we’ve done to honor the big guy the last few weeks. If you’re a fan of reading and literature, you’ll enjoy all of it.

Keep up on the day’s activities via our twitter account, @NewPopLit

(Go easy on the absinthe. Don’t overdo the partying!)

Diminutives

Pop Lit Fiction

(“Premonition” by Walter Nessler copyright Royal Air Force Museum.)

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Our month-long Hemingway celebration continues with a striking new story by Samuel Stevens, “Diminutives,” whose setting of Paris is a nod to Ernest Hemingway and the Lost Generation. But so is its style. Few writers understand what Ernest Hemingway was fully up to when he revolutionized writing. Stevens is one of them.

Note how Stevens’ story is like a Modernist painting– a collage of parts expressing the fragmentation of our time. As if helplessly riding a bus about to crash, we’re replaying– reliving– that broken insane world Hemingway experienced. Around us is a sense of foreboding. Imminence. Chaos.

Stevens’ story is simple but at the same time it’s a mix of impressions and ideas. A splash of confusion, or a slap in the face. The story is there in front of us, like a painting. Right there. It’s very short, but there’s enough in it to like or dislike. Or hate.

Provocative and topical.

But what do you think?

There were no subjects to write about any more, either in America or here; the world was too mixed up to really stop and look at it.

Inspired by Death in the Afternoon

Poetry

Our month-long tribute to Hemingway continues with five short pieces by Jess Mize– a very talented young American writer, as Ernest Hemingway was once a very talented young American writer. Let the celebration continue!

I thought about death in the afternoon and how once, over half a century ago I was gored in the groin performing a sarcastic veronica and confident with the knowledge of money to come and the scent of arrogant Spanish wine by the pool in San Sebastian.

Searching for Hemingway

Feature

BECAUSE of his giant persona, Ernest Hemingway remains to us a mystery. Who was he? What was the impetus behind his writing– and his need to be a writer?

New Pop Lit’s editors recently journeyed to northern Michigan in search of answers. . . .

(Or, today we kick off our month-long Hemingway celebration! Read our write-up.)

Ernest Hemingway spent much time in Petoskey when he returned from his service in World War I. His story “Soldier’s Home” indicates that he felt out-of-sorts with his family and Oak Park neighborhood. So he escaped– fleeing to where the air was clean. In northern Michigan. He could refresh his thoughts. He could also write.

Tunnel Vision

Pop Fiction

What happens when you mix homeless veterans, a subway system, and a shady-but-not-all-bad lawyer?

Our new tale, “Tunnel Vision.” Summer reading from Steve Slavin. American reality with a heart.

I ain’t no Robin Hood. Yeah, I do take from the rich and give to the poor, but I’m really in this just for myself. And let me level with you: I make out OK. In fact, more than OK.

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(Photos c/o Marie Curie via Untapped Cities.)

A Month of Hemingway!

Announcement

That’s what we have planned for the month of July anyway. Toward that end, New Pop Lit‘s editors drive up this weekend to Petoskey and environs in northern Michigan, looking for the ghost of Nick Adams. Searching for the elusive roots of “Papa” and his literary art.

Why Hemingway, you ask?

Because Ernest Hemingway was American literature’s greatest pop icon– the last writer whose persona was huge enough to overshadow other pop celebrities of his time– from movie actors to sports figures to pop singers. Sinatra, Gable, Dempsey, DiMaggio– Hemingway was a bigger cultural figure than any of them.

What do we have planned?

-Photos and descriptions of our Petoskey excursion.

-Answers to our second Big Lit Question, which concerns Ernest the Hem. See this.

-New work from two talented young writers, Samuel Stevens and Jess Mize, which if not completely Hemingway themed, is Hemingway inspired.

Our objective in presenting these two striking talents is to recreate some of the excitement that occurred when young Hemingway himself began writing, in his twenties, in the 1920’s– likely the most exciting American literary decade.

-Plus any and all other Hemingway ideas and stuff we can come up with and implement in coming weeks.

You will not want to miss ANY of it!

The Lawn

Pop Lit Fiction

Summer is upon us! Lawn season. In keeping with the season we have a story by writer/musician Jeff Schroeck called, appropriately, “The Lawn.”

We live increasingly in a society about regulation, order, and conformity. Do this! Don’t do that. Follow the rules. Please comply. Aaarrggh! “The Lawn” is a metaphor for that conformity– presenting a situation with which many of us can identify.

I looked over my own copy of the agreement. They had no authority over my property but made sure that it was unpleasant for me to have disagreed with them.

Prattlegate

Pop Lit Fiction

The power of media is something we witness every day. We’re bombarded by it, from television screens to Yahoo news feeds and supermarket tabloids. all of them screaming insane headlines on all sides. Fear! Scandal! Hysteria!

It becomes more and more impossible to know truth from imagination from PR.

This is the premise of “Prattlegate,” a great new story by Ken O’Steen. It may give you a moment of perspective on what you’re daily experiencing.

Richard made the final click, and the story was disseminated.

“Thirty seconds already?” Raymond asked.

“About.”

“Shit. We’re already past a minute. You’ve got to take it down. Yikes,” Raymond said, clutching at his hair with both of his hands.

Interview with Samuel Stevens

Interview

New ideas.

Our mission here at New Pop Lit is to present exciting new ideas. No, we’re not a stale-and-stodgy business-as-usual literary site. We exist to CHANGE the literary scene. Change is inevitable. Change is sweeping. Change is part of nature and people. Constant. Onrushing.

Meanwhile, established literature operates as if it were still in the early 19th century. Tops-down, insular and clubby, promoting a literary art which changes at a turtle’s pace. (We give established literati enough credit not to call them snails.)

Where is literature going?

In our quest for answers we interview up-and-coming writer Samuel Stevens for our Hype page. Part of our showcasing the nation’s best new writers.

If you want to stay current on the future of books, publishing, and writing you have to read this site! As always, we welcome your feedback.

There’s definitely a shift in the zeitgeist. It’s just a very long battle. It’s not just “liberals” who limit free speech, you also have major corporations–the same ones mainstream conservatism loves to defend–love to push the same message.

Four Poems by Erin Knowles Chapman

Poetry

Warhol or cheeseburger?

Cheeseburger or Warhol?

Such are dilemmas of running a pop literary site. Do we headline our current offering with a photo of a cheeseburger, or one of Andy Warhol?

The New Pop Lit staff engaged in a furious debate over the matter.

The question came up because we feature today four poems from talented Detroit-area poet Erin Knowles Chapman. One of the poems has to do with pop artist Andy Warhol. Another mentions a cheeseburger.

We finally asked ourselves: “What would Warhol do?”

Being a pop artist– loving American pop culture– Andy Warhol would undoubtedly have run with the cheeseburger, which screams “Americana.” Which shouts, “pop.”

Who are we to argue with Andy Warhol? We are, after all, a “pop” cultural project.

Anyway, please read the four poems. We hope you enjoy them!

Snow, the size of thumbprints, diagonally descends.

Do the Fates constrict our naked hands?