You’re reading it here first.
The #2 seeded writers for the Tournament are:
A.) F. Scott Fitzgerald
B.) Ayn Rand
C.) Toni Morrison
D.) Jack Kerouac
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Explanations will be forthcoming at the chief Tournament blog here.
OUR OTHER TWO writers selected as top (#1) bracket seeds for the Tournament ARE:
C.) Herman Melville
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D.) Mark Twain
We’ll explain our choices tonight at New Pop Lit‘s “Fun Stuff” Interactive blog.
Let the catcalls begin!
Two American writers were so gigantic in standing and influence, even on the world stage, that they’re automatic #1 seeds. Both of them, in ways good or bad, helped define what it is to be American.
A.) Ernest Hemingway
B.) Walt Whitman
We’ll explain our choices this afternoon at New Pop Lit’s Interactive blog.
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We’re re-discussing the other two #1 seeds. May not announce those until the weekend. . . .
JUST IN CASE readers don’t “get” it:
The All-Time American Writers Tournament and events surrounding it will be fictional– though we do hope to mix in opinion and comments from actual readers and writers, as well as the occasional fictional depiction of a living literary personage. Our plan is also to use real persons as judges for the matches themselves. (Not too early to volunteer!)
The Tournament could be called an on-line novel, which mixes in some literary criticism and satire. Where exactly it’s going; how it will end? We have no idea.
A CONTRARY VIEW
LITERARY ARISTOCRACY LIVES!
At least, it lives within tiny literary circles in London and New York. The aristos exist in small rooms with mirrored walls which make their numbers and clout appear greater– to themselves– than they actually are.
And so, Granta Magazine‘s “Best of Young American Novelists 3” has sent shock waves through the clubby room, if nowhere else. Which well-connected New York-based writers should have been included? Which had better been left out?
We’re not talking the 1920’s, when there were a host of culturally-and-artistically significant young American novelists to talk about– Hemingway/Fitzgerald/Faulkner/Wolfe/Dos Passos– giant names, talents, personalities, personas.
No, there is no young Tiger Woods waiting to revive the literary sport. What we get is what we get. The Granta 21.
One can assume the presented writings of the Granta 21 will appear daring to established literati. That everything said by them will appeal to the New York literati mindset and the greater literary mob. They wouldn’t have been included otherwise.
But enough of this rant. What are the facts?
THE FACTS
17 of the 21 novelists are captives of New York-based “Big 5” conglomerate publishing. (Random House with the most.) Of the other four writers, two live in New York City. Which proves that, for establishment lit people, New York remains center of the universe.
Most, if not all of the Granta 21 came up through the system– jumping through the required hoops at select writing programs of Stanford, Columbia, Iowa, or Brown. Most have been awarded with lavish non-profit (tax shelter) largesse: MacArthur Genius awards; grants from PEN, Young Lions, Guggenheim, National Book Foundation– large pools of well-protected wealth. Fellowships as well: MacDowell, NYFA, Fulbrights. There remains a truly massive system in the United States for creating approved writers; the greatest ever seen in world history. Huge bureaucracies. Enormous expenditures via sprawling real estate-gobbling universities, and Manhattan skyscrapers bursting with agents, editors, and publicists. The Granta 21 is what the giant behemoths have produced. Best of the best of system art, for whatever that’s worth.
Our contention is that the 21 aren’t representative of America, so much as a well-screened, well-indulged fragment of America.
IMPERIAL LITERATURE
Even more than New York City, London– where Granta is based– has an ingrained imperialist mindset. The point-of-view is always tops-down, with the rest of the world there to be colonized by those with the proper tops-down mindset. Everything stems from the ivory towers of Cambridge and Oxford. (In the U.S.A., Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Brown et.al.) Those from outlying territories can join the club by coming to the Imperial City or going through one of the elite academic screening centers.
The sun never sets on the Anglo-American cultural empire.
This isn’t bad or good. It just IS.
EXCEPTIONS
There are a few ringers thrown in. or at least one, in the person of Halle Butler, who lives in Chicago and is published by an indy, Curbside Splendor Publishing, based in Chicago. Hail Halle!
There are two African-born writers who may be American, or may not. Dinaw Mengestu was educated in the U.S., but now lives in Paris. Close enough. Chinelo Okperanta was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African writers. In this day and age, editors get diversity any way they can. Everything is global, after all. (Globalism has always been a euphemism for Imperialism.)
Then there’s Mark Doten, published by indy Graywolf Press; fiction editor at indy Soho Press. Doten teaches English at Columbia University, as does one of the four Granta judges, Ben Marcus. Mark Doten straddles both worlds.
QUESTIONS
We have two questions.
1.) Is any one of the 21 “best” novelists under 40 qualified to be in the All-Time American Writers Tournament? They’re the future, after all. The present. Is forty years enough time to show outstanding talent?
What about Garth Hallberg? Hallberg received an enormous advance for his novel, then a tremendous publicity blitz behind the book from the Manhattan publicity machine. Ever hear of Garth Hallberg? Does he deserve to be ranked with Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Morrison, and company? (Uh, no.)
2.) Are any of the Granta 21 even as talented as the four young writers, under the age of 30, that we recently profiled? See our Overview, which contains links to their work.
Granta‘s 21, or our four? Judge for yourself.
-K.W.
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New Pop Lit is at New Pop Lit.
HYPER-TALENTS OF THE NEW LITERARY AGE PART IV
(Painting: “The Detective” by Jozsefs Rippl-Ronai.)
Why pop short story writers?
Because in the days of Jack London and O. Henry, the short story was THE popular American art form. Any renewal of literature starts there.
It’s begun!– particularly with various styles of “flash” or short short fiction, which puts an emphasis on brevity, clarity, and punch. But there’s no reason why entertaining and accessible stories can’t be longer, as they once were.
Recently we published a fairly long pop story by Norbert Kovacs, “The Fight,” which gives a hint at what’s possible.
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We’ve published several writers who skirt the line between pop and pop lit, often through different twists on genre fiction. Among them is Ian Lahey, whose most recent story for us, from 2016, is “What I Don’t See.”
Ian uses a genre style and setting of agents conducting an interrogation to throw the reader off balance– making us see in the situation what we otherwise might not see.
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However, the best pure pop story we’ve run to date is a new one by Alan Swyer, “Country Sweetheart.”
What makes Swyer’s story work is its sense of humor, along with the affection Alan Swyer has for the characters and for the often-quirky world of country music. It’s an entertaining story about entertainers– and about other things like authenticity. Authentic art. The main character may in some ways be a fraud (to put it mildly!) but at the same time his feeling for the music, his colleagues, and his audience is thoroughly genuine. The suspense comes from the question of how long he’ll be able to get away with the imposture. Or, how will he be caught?
The tale is quintessentially American in a variety of ways. Not least of them is the theme of reinvention– that, contrary to what Scott Fitzgerald once said, there are second acts in American life. (Why people came here in the first place.) But also the story’s love for the land and people, combined with a sense of good old fashioned fun-loving ballyhoo. The American quality of finding yourself through being an entertainer. Entertaining through singing, or entertaining through storytelling.
Our interest here is in the latter. . . .
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Next up in this series: “Underground”
WE EXIST to showcase exciting new writers. One of them is Calder Lorenz, who has released his new novel One Way Down (Or Another). It can be ordered here.
Then read Calder’s newest story available at our main site, “The Good Road Gone.”
(More book announcements are forthcoming.)
Part III of our overview, “Hyper-Talents of the New Literary Age,” will be a bit longer than the previous, so we created a separate page for it, available here. We’ll be featuring new writing from four different millennial writers. We’ll be adding profiles to the thread as we go along. This, as we scout the landscape for other young talents. If you want to know what’s happening on today’s literary scene, this is the place.
PORTRAITISTS: Part II of Hyper-Talents of the New Literary Age
We’re not into solipsistic convolutions of words, the postmodern linguistic games many status quo writers use to justify their funding and station. We prefer writing which is clear and direct, so that emotion and meaning hit the reader straight on, between the eyes.
We believe art is about meaning and emotion. We believe if done right, good writing can be appreciated by almost anyone. That’s where “pop” comes into the equation.
Many new writers are portrait painters. Their stories are usually short. Their words are brushstrokes, painting an image which enters the reader’s head.
These do not give you every last detail of the setting or experience. They’re impressionists, in which simplicity achieves a more intense version of reality. Less truly is more in their art. “Bang. Bang. Bang.” The tale is suddenly over. The reader is surprised. Moved. In some cases, devastated.
Their work is the heritage of late-nineteenth century painters via literary interpreters like Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway– the past fifty years of postmodern game-playing passed over. To everyone’s relief, except French intellectuals and American professors needing tenure. But at least as great an influence as painting is American popular music, starting with rock and roll. The direct expression of emotion, culminating in the hyper-fast, hyper-simple expression of punk. Granted, most of the new writers don’t look like punks! We believe they’ve been subliminally influenced. (Sneering guitar-destroying DIY-focused Elvis Presley in the 1956 movie “Jailhouse Rock” has been said to have been the first punk.)
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Who are the best of the literary portrait painters?
Near or at the top has to be Anne Leigh Parrish. While Anne Leigh lauds lit-establishment story writers like Alice Munro, she doesn’t quite go in for the long sentences, the lengthy descriptions and paragraphs which characterize the typical New Yorker magazine writer. The John Updike model where the sentence is all. What for a more literary-minded critic might be a handicap, we see as a plus. A new story by Ms. Parrish shows what we’re talking about: “Picture This.”
The story sneaks up on you. It begins simply. It’s a nice little tale about a couple in Maine. An artist trying to “make it,” and the woman who supports him. Then, suddenly, bang, bang, bang, emotion kicks in. Simplicity has become art.
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Another talented literary portrait painter is Sonia Christensen, whose second story for us, “Dry Bones,” was featured at our site a few weeks ago. As you can see from the story, Sonia similarly deals with relationships.
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Among other literary portrait painters is our own Kathleen M. Crane, a Detroit-area writer recruited into this project as a result of her first short story with us, “Donnie Darko,” a short tale about a shelter cat. Could anything be simpler? Her follow-up story presented at our main site, “Sam,” about a young musician fighting addiction, characterizes our pop-lit ideas. Indeed, Kathleen has helped define our ideas, pushing New Pop Lit in a Hemingwayesque direction– daubs of style and sophistication added to a pop core.
I asked my consulting editor Kathleen how she writes her stories.
“I imagine I’m taking a visual snapshot of a moment or person in time. I use details, but not all details. Instead, the important details. One can get lost in too many details.” (This said with a deadpan expression but a wry glint in her eyes. Like her stories, her words carry a an underlying sense of humor which says the world can be cruel, but also absurd.) “I want my writing to be clear and concise.”
The Pop-Lit philosophy in a sentence.
We’ll present a new short fiction piece by K.M.C. in a few weeks to further illustrate our points and the kind of writing we look for– understanding that we want writers to outdo our own work. We’re mere literary travelers, seeking for stars and superstars.
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New story writing today is characterized by a large wave of flash fiction writers– who by the nature of the form are required to get to the point! No long digressions. No endless descriptions. No attempts to display for academy profs the well-written sentence. They have only so many words to use. (Flash fiction can be as brief as six words. We generally look for stories that are a bit longer.)
We’ve published some of the best of the flash fiction writers, such as Ana Prundaru and Andrew Sacks. Two new flash fiction pieces we’ve accepted from Mr. Sacks exhibit the way flash fiction gets quickly in and out. Tells the story and closes down. Like a quick, cutting pop song. We’ll be presenting Andrew’s latest in a month or so. Please watch for them!
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NEXT UP in our Overview of today’s new writers:
III. “The Lost?: A New Generation.”
IV. “Underground, Popsters, and Other Fronts.”
Or, much excitement to follow. Stay tuned.
-Karl Wenclas
(Self-portraits by Gustave Courbet and Paul Gaugin.)
COMING SOON or already out are a number of new books from our favorite pop lit writers. (Scroll down on this blog to read about one from Alex Bernstein.)
This includes a new book of stories, By the Wayside, from Anne Leigh Parrish. New Pop Lit editor Karl Wenclas is privileged to have written a blurb for the book, displayed on the back cover.
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Coming soon– in a day or two– is Part Two of our Overview of new writers, which we call “Hyper-Talents of the New Literary Age.” Included in the discussion will be a few words about Anne Leigh Parrish herself, who’s among those leading the charge for a reinvented literary art. That continued discussion will appear right here, so don’t miss it!
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