News

Decline of a Corporation?

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ANATOMY OF A NEWS STORY

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THE LATEST GENERAL MOTORS FIASCO

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SIX WEEKS DOING NOTHING

News in the social media age evolves swiftly. Too fast for the moribund PR bureaucrats at the General Motors auto company, apparently.

THE LATEST PR fiasco is news breaking nationally about virulent racism at a Toledo parts factory, covered in a story at CNN– a cable network with international reach.

TURNS OUT the story first broke on November 29, in an article written by Jamie L. LaReau at the Detroit Free Press.

According to the CNN story, response to the lawsuit and the initial accusations has been tepid at best.

I FIRST HEARD of the matter on my twitter feed yesterday. I checked both @GM and the twitter account of their CEO, @mtbarra. Hundreds of disgruntled customers were posting on their twitter feeds. Their response? Nothing.

The story had gone viral nationally, with articles at Slate, New York Post, and other places. Locally, with the NAIAS Detroit Auto Show taking place– positive press the order of the day– there was hardly a murmur. A couple perfunctory article eventually appeared. A recycling of the November 29 article by the Detroit Free Press. A short piece at the Detroit News. (I was traveling about, keeping tabs on my twitter feed on my phone.)

From General Motors, not a peep. Not a tweet.

This from a company which has received a mountain of bad publicity over its abrupt closure of several area factories during the holiday season– one the Poletown plant, about which many questions remain. Such as: HOW MUCH were the massive tax breaks General Motors received to build the thing?

The Poletown plant was built upon the bulldozed remains of a historic Polish-American Detroit neighborhood. (Disclosure: I was born in a hospital in that neighborhood.) An example, one could perhaps say, of ethnic cleansing.

MEANWHILE

Meanwhile, today, Friday, this evening, new congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and DSA people are to lead a protest downtown Detroit at the Detroit Auto Show, protesting the recent plant closures, among other things.

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They may as well add to their actions a protest about GM’s inaction, its inertia, its lethargy. Just saying.
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-Karl Wenclas for NEW POP LIT News

Blackballing 2018

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A FICTIONAL EXAMINATION OF DEPLATFORMING AKA CENSORSHIP

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WE BELIEVE that fiction is a valid way of addressing current issues. “Fiction” can illuminate truths escaping other forms of investigation and argument.

The trick, of course, with writings that are in any way political, is making them credible. Putting balance into them so they’re not simply polemics. Not merely an unbalanced screed. Toward that end I focused as much on the failings of the lead character as on the issue he deals with. That much-dissed concept of objectivity comes into play.

The short story is “Safe Zones,” posted at one of my several personal blogs. (When deplatforming of myself occurs, eliminating all my forums and writings will be no easy task!)

***One of the things I wanted to convey in the story is how we’ve completely lost control of our own lives. That everything we do today requires a technological platform of some kind– without them, it’s difficult to live; to survive.***

Feedback to the ideas expressed, and to the writing itself, is welcomed.

-Karl Wenclas, New Pop Lit NEWS

The Short Story Process

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REINVENTING AN ART?

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In 2019 we plan to change things up a bit. Our commitment to excellence and artistic change will increase. The poem and short story both have become generic. Needed are drastic new ideas to improve them. Possibly, to blow up both forms and start over.

And so, “The Process.” We’ll start with the short story. I’ll be posting at one of my personal blogs several short stories I wrote in the 1990’s. Apprentice work, but a foundation for where I plan, personally, with my writing, to go. The first of these to go up is titled “The Revolutionaries.” A story with a connection to recently-deceased George H.W. Bush, so it’s appearance will be timely.

Before this I may post one of the new stories I’m working on, tentatively named “Safe Zones.” Again: timely.

Co-editor Kathleen M. Crane is also back writing, working on a rough draft of a new story– one which will carry forward her own ideas on clarity and conciseness in the short story art.

I’ll be discussing the process more in future posts. We have an end point– through radical artistic change, badly-needed renewal of the entire literary art.

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Stay tuned.

-Karl Wenclas for New Pop Lit NEWS

 

Pushcart 2018!

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NEW POP LIT’S 2018 NOMINATIONS

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And the nominations are. . . .

Every year we vow not to do Pushcart Prize nominations and every year we send them in anyway– usually right at the deadline.

After all, in 2018, despite our ups and downs, we featured a lot of talented writers. The difficulty is choosing among them.

This year we’ve nominated five short stories and one poem. A stylistically diverse mix of the offbeat and the traditional.

FICTION (in order of publication date):

–“The First Time” by Anne Leigh Parrish.

–“The Hunting Cabin” by Brian Eckert.

–“Up On the Mountain” by Jack Somers.

–“On the Rails, Off the Rails” by Elias Keller.

–“Yelp in Reverse” by Wred Fright.

POETRY:

–“On Midsummer’s Night” by C.A. Shoultz.
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We thank all writers who allow us to present their writing.

(We thank Pushcart Press for their tremendous work!)

Neo-Beats Out of Control!

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style

(Classic style.)

At least, they’ve taken over the New Pop Lit site. New Beat writing in all its various iterations.

First, a review of an anthology of Beat-style in-the-larger-sense fiction and poetry.

Second, a current poetry feature of lakebeatgrunge poems from beat56.

AND, a home page Intro to all of this.

HELP!!!

(Our self-appointed task is to cover what’s happening in the lit world. What’s happening at the moment might be right here.)

A NOTE ON STYLE

One thing the cultural period of the late 1950’s and early 60’s had was style. The Beats were the obverse to the established “Mad Men” look. (Think Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, pictured.)

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As such, the Beats were relentlessly satirized by established pillars of culture. Thoroughly mocked– in venues ranging from television shows such as Dobie Gillis and The Beverly Hillbillies, to movies such as Funny Face starring Audrey Hepburn. The point is that poets and writers mattered. The Beats suffered the slings and arrows of the culturally challenged but they also created exciting fun art.

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(Audrey Hepburn.)

 

Fiction Illuminating Life

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TWO classic American stories are wry commentaries on non-fictional news events.
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“The Girl on the Plane” by Mary Gaitskill, written in 1993, concerns a man on a plane flight who gets into a conversation with a younger woman sitting next to him. This takes the man back to events in his youth. I don’t want to give away the plot, but IF you’re at all interested in the allegations about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, especially those coming from Julie Swetnick, I suggest you read the story. As the man on the flight says, “It’s complicated.” OR– things are never as simplistic as camps on both sides of the aisle pretend to make them.

READ IT– Not least because it’s well constructed and packs an emotional punch. One of the better– and more relevant– American short stories ever written.
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“Come Out the Wilderness” by James Baldwin, written in 1965, illuminates an event much talked-about of late: the similar Senate hearings which took place when current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was nominated. In the Baldwin story, a young black secretary has lunch with a black executive from the same company. He drops the company facade for a moment to speak in an earthier tone. It’s a reflection of sorts on the more awkward conversations Clarence Thomas sought to have with Anita Hill, which were taken in a less kindly light than does the secretary in Baldwin’s story.

James Baldwin wrote several dynamite short stories which rank with any writer’s. This is one of them.

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-K.W. 

Our “Best of the Net” 2018 Nominations

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Here are our Best of the Net nominations for 2018.

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They encompass work published online between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018.

(Best of the Net 2017 is here. The Sundress Publications website is here.)
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AS ALWAYS we had more good work than we were able to nominate. For fiction, we nominated two of our longer stories– both require some investment in reading. Both stories required an ample investment in imagination and work in writing. Both stories are excellent in very different ways. They exhibit the range available within a “Pop Lit” designation.

WE hope you read or re-read all of the nominated works.

We thank these writers and all the writers who’ve generously allowed us to publish their work.

Fiction:

“Churchgoing in New England” by Richard Greenhorn,
published 9/28/17.
“The Rottweiler” by Alex Bernstein,
published 1/12/18.

Non-Fiction:

“Hemingway” by Samuel Stevens,
published 7/28/17
“Cry Wolfe” by Robin Wyatt Dunn,
published 11/16/17.

Poetry:

“Black Water” by Robert Beveridge,
published 10/16/17.
“Processed World” by Rus Khomutoff,
published 02/02/18.
“Starbucks Bars to Be Sung I” by Timmy Chong,
published 4/12/18.
“Jonesing” by Timmy Chong,
published 4/12/18.
“Tourist Trap” by Holly Day,
published 4/18/18.
“Losing Another One” by James Croal Jackson,
published 5/7/18.
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Why Did They Publish It?

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THE COLLAPSE OF BIG FIVE PUBLISHING IS ONGOING

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Call it a collapse of credibility more than anything.

James Frey may be the most egregious person on the literary scene today.

Frey’s 2003 best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was later revealed by The Smoking Gun to contain large fabrications.

In 2010 James Frey was shown by Suzanne Mozes of New York magazine to be running a “fiction factory” ruthlessly taking advantage of aspiring young writers.

Frey’s just-released novel, Katerina, is getting slammed by literary critics.

-Including by Ron Charles at the Washington Post, who says it may be “the worst novel of the year.”

-Including by Claire Fallon at Huffington Post, who states firmly that “James Frey Still Sucks.”

THE QUESTION everyone is asking is “Why does James Frey continue to be published?”

It has to be more than Ms. Fallon’s take that he’s published simply because he’s a white guy. There are scores of talented white male writers out there who aren’t landing big book contracts from Big Five publishers like Simon & Schuster. At New Pop Lit we’ve published many of them, including Clint Margrave, Jack Somers, Brian Eckert, Richard Greenhorn, Gregory Yelnish, Alan Swyer, D.C. Miller, Alex Bernstein, Alex Olson, Jon Berger, Michael Howard, Don Waitt, Wred Fright, Joshua Caleb Wilson, and Elias Keller, to name some of the more recent names.

simon & schuster bldg(Simon & Schuster Building.)

COULD IT BE that giant book companies which are part of gigantic media conglomerates and insulated by layers of bureaucracy within Manhattan skyscrapers are simply unable to locate actual literary talent? Instead they take the easiest path: “Round up the usual suspects!”

It’s a top-heavy and feckless system worthy of collapse.
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-Karl Wenclas, New Pop Lit NEWS