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.
***
(Photos c/o Marie Curie via Untapped Cities.)
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.
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.
What makes a great short story? What elements create an unforgettable reading experience?
Part of the proper mix has to be character, setting, and reality– crafting a place in space so visceral and authentic you can jump into it with your mind.
Part of it is simply hooking the reader like Hemingway hooking a marlin. Then keeping the reader hooked on the narrative line right to the end.
We believe Scott Cannon achieves this with his newest story for us, “Ergo Propter Hoc.” Why the unusual title? Well, the story has to do with the legal profession, and a process server, a lawyer; a search and a situation. . . . But read the story!
The guy half turned to him. His hand on the bar next to Eddie was the size of a small ham. Dime shaped scabs covered the first three knuckles. “Ever been to San Francisco?” the guy asked.
After 50 years of stagnation the American short story is changing. Stories now are expected to be entertaining– as they once were, incidentally. It’s the only way stories can compete in an increasingly noisy society with a myriad of choices.
That’s the premise, anyway, behind this website! Today we have a shoplifting story by James Guthrie, “Code 99,” which is short and simple. We believe it’s also entertaining. As they say in the restaurant biz, enjoy!
“You,” the floorwalker shouted, pointing straight at me. “Let’s go.” And off he sprinted, assuming I was close behind.
ARE we entering a golden age of the short story?
The case for the proposition can be made, based on the kind of stories being written– and more and more published by outlets like NEW POP LIT.
What characterizes new story writers is their ability to combine a clear writing style, reader friendly, with intelligence and meaning.
One of the best of them is Joshua Isard, who has terrific short stories upcoming at a number of places. We were fortunate to snag one of them, “Nanoseconds.” The story is about a young woman with tattoos trying to make her way in a buttoned-down institutional setting.
Where is the short story going? Read it and see!
She could feel everyone looking at her forearm. She turned it slightly, to make sure they could all see.
“Would you have asked me about my ink if I was a man, Dr. Kerr?”
Spring is here! Time for a fresh start, a new attitude.
What’s coming at New Pop Lit?
A lot! A mix of prose, poetry, and hype profiles.
First: stories. You want stories? We have stories! By some of the best short story writers in the English-speaking world, if not the entire universe. This includes tales by James Guthrie and Joshua Isard. It includes terrific new work by Anne Leigh Parrish and Scott Cannon, who’ve both appeared here before. Their talent is off the boards. We’re amazed we’re still able to obtain work from them– in different ways they exemplify a dawning new golden age of the American short story art. Would that these writers become as recognized as Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald– but that’s our job!
Toward that end, we have a hype interview planned for Ms. Parrish– not before we post a profile of Jessie Lynn McMains and an interview with Samuel Stevens.
Finally, there’s poetry. We don’t publish a lot of poetry, but we received striking work from two very different poets, John Grochalski and Erin Knowles Chapman. Their work was too good to ignore.
If we get a chance to squeeze in another “Question of the Month,” we’ll do so. The first one was spectacularly successful.
Thanks for staying up on us. Our readers are all.
-K.W.
We talk often here at New Pop Lit about reinventing the short story. We ask for contributions and help in this endeavor– but we also spend time working toward the objective ourselves.
Today we have a story from our own Kathleen Crane entitled, simply, “Sam.”
Note how “Sam” has similarities to our previous story– in its slice-of-life realism– but differences as well, mainly in terms of style.
In the artistic choice between fantasy and reality, we lean toward reality– it’s the source of the most moving and meaningful art. At the same time we know that realistic writing has to be more than bland accumulation of trivial details– it needs to connect as immediately as possible with the reader. Does the story “Sam” achieve this?
Kathleen Crane believes in simplicity in art– that a work can be superficially uncomplex yet express a great deal of power and meaning.
The attributes of her story might be described as simplicity, compassion, and truth. That was the objective– only you the reader can tell us if we’ve reached it or not.
She was an angel, and she had loved him, Sam. They had lived on the beach together in Miami, with him busking for money, and Melody dancing to the music on the white sand, long golden hair swinging in time.
(Artwork by Martin J. Crane Sr.)
Underground writing? Have you ever read underground writing? Did you even know there was such an animal as underground writing?
We’re very high on zine/underground writing, because that’s where our roots lie. More than that, zines are authentic roots literature. They present writing that’s unprocessed and unfiltered– NOT strained through banks of editors and agents and committees and workshops full of politically correct, go-along thinking. They’re also throwbacks in their commitment to print, and to the U.S. Postal Service, in the way they present their art. Creating a zine, where you do literally everything yourself, from editing to formatting to designing to marketing and selling, is an arduous endeavor– but also fulfilling.
Today we have a story from one of the best, most politically-incorrect zine writers, who goes by the name of Fishspit. Read his story here, and see if it’s a more uninhibited story than the status quo variety!
Two things to note about Fishspit’s tale. 1.) it’s told in a folksy vernacular. 2.) in its voice but also its underlying theme it’s very populist– the reality of today’s economic situation is not broadly stated but everpresent.
(We have to ask: How many other struggling writers have donned the Clifford costume at some point?)
But we like the story because it’s entertaining!
I looked in the paper and the goddamned Smackover Library was hiring someone to shelve books. It was only a r a week gig . . . and it paid abysmally. Yet it somehow seemed prestigious . . . to work in a library . . . a far cry from all those fucking factories. To go from a factory grunt to a library employee seemed a step up, even though it was a step down in pay.
(Clifford photo courtesy of renowned children’s author Kathy Ellen Davis. Thanks!)
Dummies! No, we’re not talking about the nation’s political candidates. We refer to actual dummies– the crash test kind. (Quite appropriate, as this website is based in Detroit. Did we feed to our featured writer, Dave Petraglia, inside information?)
Petraglia’s story asks: What happens when a crash-test dummy desires a change? What kind of a change? Read “Crash Tested” and see. The story is very 2016!
In the process, Sean had skipped the childhood admonitions, the isolation and suffering, and found that in the catalog of human emotions and her reactions to them, she was not who she’d been molded to be.
(Artwork by Dave Petraglia.)
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