topical fiction

Topical Art

Pop Lit Fiction

IS THE TOPICAL POLITICAL?

(“Guernica” by Pablo Picasso.)

CAN a story, essay, or poem be political without being topical? Of the now, the moment, addressing today’s dark dilemmas and hectic happenings? Can an art form truly be meaningful or important if it never does? After all, literature is supposed to be “news that stays news,” but people forget the first part of the equation: becoming news to begin with.

Which serves as Introduction to our new feature, “Stormtroopers” by New Pop Lit Editor Karl Wenclas. Prodded by his co-editor to run it as a feature, rather than at one of our soon-to-be-jump-started blogs. A story submitted first to a two-week-response-time, relatively prominent literary journal for the heck of it. (Their loss.) A two-week delay! When being topical– “news”– a two-week delay might be crucial. But way better than dinosaur The New Yorker’s six month response time!

State of the moment and state of the art? That’s for you to judge.


From the first day, for Stewart it was go-go-go, like being pushed through a tunnel. Beginning with the Academy, which crammed four months of training into 47 days. A hiring blitz was on. 120 were in his class, which was one of more than a dozen classes at the facility. New agents ranged in age from 18 to 60. If you were an adult, willing, and breathing.


More 2025 Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

What should 2025 fiction– of the here and now– look like?

COULD it capture today’s chaotically volatile up-and-down economy and markets? The “let’s make a buck” societal mindset? The culmination of a tech wave of ambitious innovators and hustlers eager to make fortunes? Who are these guys? Have any writers captured the personality and/or mystery of them?

Well, yes– in our new feature short story, “Crypto” by Jonathan Stone, one of the most intelligent short story writers around.

NOT ONLY is it a glimpse of a unique moment of history– this moment– it’s an excellent story, about the pursuit of a kind of excellence. We’re sure you’ll agree when you read it!

Nine figures doesn’t happen every day, but for Mark, its pathway is utterly unsurprising – money that comes from money. Ahmet’s eight figures is inherently far stranger – produced from nothing but an idea, walked into the right receptive investor at the right market moment. When it came time to transfer proceeds – required distributions per the fund charter, and then unloading into cash equivalents when they all dumped their shares – Mark had overseen the allocation to Ahmet’s brokerage account. A deposit requiring phone calls and letters with signatories. Eight figures in a fell swoop. The American dream, on steroids. Or better yet, hallucinogens.

Literature As News

Pop Lit Fiction

LET’S GET RELEVANT!

“Literature is news that stays news.”
-Ezra Pound

Except writers today aren’t even trying to get the first part right. To make fiction and poetry a vibrant part of today’s debates. IF literature is to survive and thrive in this time of new technologies, it needs to become part of the cultural conversation. Literature carries into this battle unique assets: its ability to not only describe everything happening, supplemented by the reader’s own experiences and memories– without the expense and apparatus of television and movies– but also to move inside the heads of people, to understand them and to show what they’re feeling and thinking. Because writing consists of condensed information– still the quickest, most efficient and least expensive way of communicating knowledge (letters and words a sophisticated data network)– it can address current issues and events quickly. To compete in this hyper-noisy age it needs to address the world quickly, in compelling, insightful and knowledgeable ways. Which we attempt to do in our new feature story, “The Advisor” by New Pop Lit editor Karl Wenclas. We hope you read it.

Allison noted the room’s evident props. Paintings of several past presidents, prominently displayed. The current president had added his own pagan touches– garish gold statuary. In-your-face exhibits of his well-known lack of taste. Allison realized that for the Advisor, the President was himself a prop. Allison by now knew the Advisor’s worldview– he admired the orange man, but only as a historical relic. As if P.T. Barnum or Colonel Tom Parker were in the room. A cutting-edge businessman for his time– master salesman– but his time had passed.

ALSO: Speaking of fiction, we have a flash fiction piece– about an overturned salt truck and other things– by the one-and-only M.C. Schmidt now up at our Fast Pop Lit site. The title: “Mandala.” How is that topical, you ask? Well, here in Michigan it snowed yesterday. Talk about good timing!