innovations in literature |

Achieving Artistic Breakthrough

EVERYONE involved with today’s literary scene knows the art is in trouble. Complaints pour in from every direction. “Not enough male readers!” “The New Yorker story is overwritten!!” “Genre fiction is all the same!!!”

Proposed solutions to the problem are tepid at best. Needed: drastic change in the art itself to better connect literature to the general public. To wake people up. To shock the world like a sudden surge of electrical current leading to artistic and cultural–

BREAKTHROUGH!

To get to that point, all received wisdom– every stale assumption about what is-or-isn’t allowable– needs to be set aside. Prevailing prescriptions for the health of the literary art don’t work.

THE STATUS QUO

The problem with approved literary intellectuals is they know only one direction. They pursue it relentlessly, under the influence of their literary gods and icons. The Approved Canonical Works: texts written as if existing within a narrow corridor, the narratives trapped, unable to escape. The reader follows the verbiage as it travels along, constricted, words following words, then more words. Where is it headed? What does it mean?

Professors are employed full-time at universities to explain what it means, along with esteemed critics– stuffed and mounted on metaphorical walls– at highly touted stuffy publications, and you can only say in response to their explanations, “Makes sense, I guess?” Bullied to accept every part of it, because, after all, these are the experts. Authorities. A circle of approval perpetuating itself like a clock, existing without independent thought.

But those approved tomes haven’t connected to your life or the ongoing life of the society around you. They haven’t moved or enlightened you and they certainly haven’t entertained you.

When it comes to saving literature, the only credible solution is to turn pop into art– or art into pop.

BUT HOW?

Our primary idea has been pop-lit: the fusion of popular writing with the “literary” to create an all-new hybrid reflecting the best of both styles. Going a step beyond that, more recently we’ve been working on “hyper-pop” multiple viewpoint stories in order to achieve a quicker, quirkier, more 3-D effect. (See, for one example, the novella The Loud Boys.) Impetus for this is our belief that anyone who can radically change the art of fiction, improving the reading experience, will own the future of the art.

We see the New Pop Lit project as an Innovation Island, but without the crutch– the necessity– of new electronic technology. THAT innovation wave has peaked, and is showing signs (AI) of increasing desperation to keep the investment bubble backing it inflated.

Better: A new wave of creativity based on long dormant human-centered innovation.

WAVE THEORY

Most people in this mad technocratic world are indoctrinated from birth into a linear mindset. One step followed by another. This includes a progressive, linear view of history. They’re unaware of the concept of waves, articulated by Nikolai Kondratieff, Ralph Nelson Elliott and others. The question always is where a cultural form is, in its particular wave or cycle. In the early stages? Ascending? Peaking? At a plateau? In decline?

BOTTOMING OUT? Which is where I place American literature at the present moment.

THE LAST GREAT CULTURAL WAVE

That would have to be rock-pop music, which coalesced around various strains of roots music– blues, folk, gospel, country– in the mid-20th century, before igniting and taking off like a rocket ship on February 9th, 1964, when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

INSTANTANEITY

To better understand exactly what happened then– the quick cultural breakthrough– I’ve been reading several books on the period. Among them, Revolution In the Head by Ian MacDonald, which analyzes Beatles records and their impact. One term MacDonald uses caught my attention: instantaneity. He described it as “an elusive maelstrom of fragmentary impressions, perceptions, and jokes reflecting the collage spirit of an instantaneous, simultaneous, chance-embracing new age.”

But, he adds: “Not that The Beatles were fans of formlessness; quite the opposite.”

Structured chaos? A controlled cultural nuclear explosion? The term, anyway, gives us much to think about as we attempt to leap ahead of the literary pack with new artistic ideas.

-Karl Wenclas for New Pop Lit NEWS

Prototypes

Posted on April 21, 2022 by newpoplitnews

MAKING CREATIVE CHANGE PART V

ONE OF the first steps in creating the New is development of a prototype. That which can hint at innovations to come. As Henry Ford did with his first prototype, an automobile constructed largely from bicycle parts.

A prototype is a demonstration model intended to serve two purposes:

1.) To show potentials of the design or concept.

2.) To reveal flaws when ideas become reality.

By definition a prototype is not a finished product, or the ultimate expression of the intended product. But it should point a direction– a new path for creators to follow.

*Prototype of first Tesla Roadster c/o Tesla Motors.*

We’ve developed prototypes of new kinds of literary journals (see them here). But we’re also working on what we call the multidimensional or “3-D” short story.

One of the simpler ones we’ve released to date is “The Perfect Candidate.” Note how the opening is intentionally disorienting– the idea to disorient readers then quickly reorient them. (“Where am I? Who’s speaking?”) The narrative in this one is linear– but the changing viewpoints allows the writer to hint at what he wants, obscure what he wants, and reveal what he wants.

The story is designed-– as designed as a modernist skyscraper or the layout of a glossy New York magazine. The goal: a more rounded version of reality. The idea behind this story, this prototype, is to point to the endless possibilities of the well-designed story.

THE NEXT STEP is looking upon the short story– or the nonfiction essay– as part of an entire aesthetic.

THE CHALLENGE

The objective is to put the literary world into a state of flux, where change becomes constant– the only way to diminish the built-in advantages of an institutionalized, monopolistic status quo. Then– to stand out among the innovators.

Timing is key, as it was for Henry Ford. No one remembers the other tinkerers and pioneer automobile innovators, the other hundred-or-so fledgling car companies in the first couple decades of the Twentieth Century.

No one will remember this project unless we achieve artistic breakthrough.